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Showing posts with label nupps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nupps. Show all posts

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Thirty Days

It is my second to last real day in this apartment before I pack up some things and move back with my parents to await the wedding. When I come back—save, maybe, a night here and there if I need to be in the city for some reason—it will be with Keith, and it will not be to this corner bedroom, with its sunny windows and desk in the corner. I am both glad of that, and a little nostalgic.

Right now I am knitting nupps for my bridal shawl, and it isn’t the horrid struggle so many knitters complain of, but a peaceful process. I sit here, all the blinds drawn open, surrounded by trees that wave through the windows, as though I myself am sitting in their branches. There are passing cars and muffled voices, but those tend to fade into the background of my awareness. There is also a chiming from someone’s windcatcher, a series of high, melancholy notes that follow one another sometimes at a distance, sometimes on each other’s heels, and I think I should like to write the story they are telling, the one that pulls at something in my chest and the corners of my eyes.

Friday, June 3, 2011

I shall not be dismayed ...

... by other knitters' intense dislike of nupps.

For non-knitters (or just non-nuppers), a nupp is when you increase my knitting multiple times into the same stitch--usually making five or seven stitches out of one--and then on the next row you knit or purl all those stitches together. If you have the wrong needles, or your stitches are too tight, or the yarn is slippery, it can be pretty difficult to get all those stitches knit together.

Which is why so many people hate them, including my mother. :) I had a bit of a hard time with them on my Annis, but then I got the hang of them a little ... and no, they didn't look the best, but practice makes perfect, right? And while the Raspberry Dream stole didn't have *nupps*, it did have k7tog which is pretty darn nupp-like--and I had no trouble with it.

So.

Now for my real reason for posting:

My two choices for my bridal shawl are the Swallowtail and Echo Flower shawls. Which should I do? (Imagine them in teal. :) )

I want to cast on today or tomorrow but I can't decide ... so I'm gathering opinions.