Masters Monday 2.11

Did you arrive early, find nothing but old posts, and think I was skipping Masters Monday again? Sorry about that. I was fiddling with a video/slide show of birthday pictures for my granddaughter Kaylen's blog instead of getting my own blogging done. If you're up for a round of "Happy Birthday" and watching a wee one discover birthday cake for the first time, pop on over to Kaylen's blog and wish her a happy 1st birthday.

And yes, I did work on my Masters Knitting this week. I worked and worked actually, but this one swatch (and its pattern) is all I have to show for it right now.

This is Level II, Swatch 14, Cable of Your Choice, but with a twist to the assignment that wasn't there for Level I. In this level the knitter has to choose three stitch patterns, do the math, and write out the patterns for each of the swatches themselves. This results in the absurd situation of swatching for the swatches. An initial swatch must be made to determine gauge so that you can not only make the final swatches within the size limits, but also correct for "cable flare" - where the edging bulges and gathers because the seed stitch and the cables are of different gauges.

I actually have more done than shows here as I did my initial "swatching for the swatches" with all three cables on the one practice swatch. I have also begun the rough drafts of the patterns for the other two swatches. I learned with the first one that it works best to write the pattern and then knit from it, rather than the source the stitch pattern was found in. I found and corrected several omissions and mistakes as I attempted to knit from my own pattern. Hopefully now I won't have my patterns thrust back at me with "errata" to be corrected.