I worked very hard at not working on my current design project during the week before I went to the coast. I wanted to have an established work in progress so I could be sociable while I knit.
I want to combine brioche and assigned pooling, two of my favorite types of knitting! I was planning to use a V’d stitch like in Fanfare. In my imagination, they’d be airier because there would be the brioche purl stitches between the knit stitches, and I was going to dip down and out to the side to make upside down Vs. But I found out pretty quickly that it would not be very much fun to make those Vs if the pooling color happened on the wrong side of the fabric. I need a pooling stitch that will work on both right and wrong sides. And it needs to fit into the rhythm of brioche.
I used brioche increases to make my Vs instead. So sweet! I set the project aside, ready to knit at the coast.
It took 70 rows of coastal knitting, but I finally realized: All of those cute stitches *really were* increases, and they were going to throw off my shawl shaping. You can see in the picture above where all the increases have thrown off the straight edge on the right. Oops. Also, I had elongated the Pear Leaf edging from 10 to 12 rows, and it didn’t really look like a leaf any more. Double oops.
So this is my project, frogged, at the coast. Since then I’ve knit and frogged and restarted it at least 5 more times while settling on the syncopated cream colored edging pattern (not pear leaf after all) and how to handle the pooling stitches. Remember, I make the mistakes so you don’t have to! And now I’ve figured out where it’s going. I’m kind of obsessed, and all I want to do is knit this gorgeous yarn. Why yes, that’s Yarn Snob Keith’s Bellina colorway again, this time paired with cream. I love the combo; it tones down the green just a little bit. No previews yet.
What are you knitting for spring?
PDXKnitterati 
You are indomitable, that’s all I can say !!!
Bonjour Michele! Absolutely adore your new shawl here……….just gorgeous! Thank you for working so hard to make it just right!
I love the Yarn Snob Keith Bellina colors—and wondered—are you using a Fingering weight yarn? Merci beaucoup, Dawn ________________________________
Hi Dawn! Yes, this is fingering weight yarn. 437 yards/100g. So lovely!
I started an assigned pooling tee and ended up frogging it. I hated the assigned pooling stitches. Maybe I should try the fan stitch?? Currently the yarn is in major timeout since I hated it so much. I’ll have to make a note to try the fan stitch.
Hopefully it’s just that particular stitch pattern? Which one were you using? My two favorites are the star/flower and the criss cross stitches.
I did the Dawn Barker Flower and then her sprout. The sprout is slightly more tolerable. The yarn has too much assigned pooling color and not enough background color. I don’t like a line of color, pool the middle color, followed by a line of color. Floreting all three colors is much too large. Doing three “sprouts” is more tolerable but I do not find it enjoyable to make the “sprouts”. Planning to over dye the yarn.
And each ske
Now that I learned the basics of brioche (love it!) I am going to knit myself a scarf! 🙂