Cuffed

Click now for JiffNotes



Obligation October was supposed to be about getting Christmas presents done early. I "only" had to bead a necklace for my youngest sister. (She doesn't want anything really fancy, so you wouldn't think it'd take long. Of course, since it's me, it will take longer because it requires me to "create" a pattern. It'd be much faster if I was just following one.) I thought I'd also make some bracelets for my nieces. I've given them bracelets the past few years. A bracelet is a good, non-committal fashion accessory. They aren't integral to an outfit, so you can give a cool one to someone with a greater-than-normal chance it might actually be worn. This year, I thought, I'll knit bracelets. One had come up in my Knitting Page a Day Calendar that looked like a good candiate. I went to an LYS to get the sparkly yarn for it, but they didn't have the yarn the pattern called for (R2 by Rowan). So, I bought pretty much the only sparkly yarn they did have (it was my first visit there, so I felt like I needed to get something). It wasn't silver and copper, like the pattern called for, but gold and pewter should still look cool, right?? Forget about the fact that one was a chainette and the other a tubular; I mean, really, what could go wrong?

Honestly, the random yarn was the least of my problems. I'm going to list the "corrections" I made to the pattern here, just because, even with my limited knitting experience, I'm pretty sure there's no way you're going to end up with what's in the picture if you follow the instructions. I mean, logically, the bracelet is supposed to have picots on both sides. If the instructions tell you to make picots at the beginning of every fourth row, is it going to have picots on both sides? Why, no. No, it's not. It's only going to picots on one side. That was once I had to frog. And forget about the instructions given for the picots. I did what made sense to me. Frog deux! Also, if you count the beads you're supposed to put on each yarn (12 each = 24 beads), and then count the number of times you use a bead in the pattern (4 x 3.5 repeats = 14 beads), they are disturbingly dissimilar.

I can't find my notes on this pattern right now, so I'll update this post later. But here's what I remember. Every row immediately following a row that starts with MP, MP in the same color as the previous P on that same side. After the first time through, MP at the beginning of row 1 as well. There's also a missing row in the instructions, but it should be fairly obvious what it should be to continue the pattern.

Also, I did another two repeats (sans beads), because the bracelet wasn't long enough.

And after all that, I'm not too enthused about it. I'm thinking of trying some other things for the other two nieces--maybe a bookmark and a set of wrist warmers. Of course, one of the nieces is getting married next April...hey, I could knit her a garter!! Anyone know any good patterns???

JiffNotes
So much for getting Christmas gifts out of the way quickly.