Niobe

January 2011

If you don't want to be told you look like Robert Smith, you shouldn't knit things in black mohair, it turns out.

This pattern was designed to be knitted up with one strand of kid classic and one strand of Kidsilk Night held together. Kidsilk Night has now been discontinued, but I gather it was sparkly, and that's why it was originally used.

I decided to just use Kid Classic on its own, but at a tighter gauge than the pattern called for. In order to make up for that I made the second largest size, when I fact I usually wear about a 32". I did some rather complicated maths and worked out what size I'd need to make to get something in the region of a 32" sweater at my tighter gauge.

It worked, too. Alright, my lacy panel was a bit smaller than in the book (and it did occur to me that if I'd been very clever I could just have expanded the chart outwards and upwards a bit) but other than that, when this came off the needles, I was pretty pleased with it.

On blocking, it grew and grew, though. Maybe I shouldn't have wet-blocked it. Maybe I should have blocked my gauge swatch before I even started. Maybe I was just having one of those days. In any event, it's now much too big for me and not at all flattering. In fact it's only thanks to a few strategically placed pegs, pins and so on that I could stand to photograph it at all.

It sucks when you love a pattern but hate your own execution of it. Meh.

Pattern: Niobe by Kristeen Griffin-Grimes

Yarn: Rowan Kid Classic

Amount: 5 skeins

Colourway: Smoke

Needles: 5.5mm

Size: Custom

On ravelry: here