Indecisive

You all know the story of Solomon and the two women, right? The one where they both claim the same baby and Solomon says we'll just cut the baby in half and you can each have part? The real mother, of course, says no, but the other says "Sure, great deal." I'm not sure at what point "split the baby" became the metaphor for compromise in our home, but there it is. I'm not sure I want to think about the implications of that, either.

So, back to knitting. Whilst all this experimentation has been going on, I bet you think I've been ignoring my dilemma with the Bubbly Curtain. Not so. The advice has all been resoundingly contradictory. I'm splitting the baby.

I'm not frogging, I'm calling the first one a swatch. I am extending the pattern, at least a little bit - 20 or so rows (the curtain is going to have to cover a window that's 4 1/2 feet tall, for Pete's sake.). I'll be starting a second one. I'm a product knitter, so two less repeats across the width sounds good to me. If I'm wrong, I'll trade and finish the original curtain. One of them can be my biggest geeky thing to date.

This is all in my head right now. No progress means no pictures. Blogs must have pictures. It's the law, or something. Here's the next couple rest-stops on the road to Sweet Indulgence. These are the Berroco Cotton Twist (left) and the Filatura di Crosa Portofino (right).

I suspect they're going to be too fragile to survive the laundry test. Portofino seems particularly so. It's as if someone took stranded flower thread and wrapped it loosely in marlitt (if you embroider, you'll know what I mean).

So, I still haven't decided on a yarn. Exactly. But I'm developing strong inclinations. Thanks in part to Deb White (the designer! of the Sweet Indulgence Robe), who left a comment that Cascade Pima Tencel, double-stranded, was one of her original choices. This caused me some concern, since parts of the SI Robe call for double-stranding the silk. I pursued Deb (I was trained to go for original sources). She replied to my email, explaining, "The reason I used the double for the border was to give the silk a bit of extra weight at the bottom so it won't roll up (silk doesn't like the iron, so it needs to be blocked to stay that way) Using 3, or 4 strands at the bottom edge would give it that weight so that it stays neat and tidy (not frumpy and rolled up)." My free interpretation of this is, I don't have to carry four strands of yarn for the border unless I want to. Thank you, Deb!

Clare has chimed in, too. She's not sure she wants a solid color robe, (although, unlike Diane, she likes the Pueblo) (which is so not orange) but wonders if we could do something with the border. I'm thinking, I could add a third strand of something to the border, to mimic the texture of the original without having to juggle four strands of yarn. (I don't know why I think three will be so much easier, but I do.)

See? Splitting the baby.

Oh, and if you haven't gone over here, play this:

The Robe in person (okay, the amazing No Sheep Amy is there, too, along with other projects from the book, but the main thing is The Robe).