Sunday, December 12, 2010

How to Clap: For Dummies

My lovely auntie wanted a soft, black scarf. Most knitters hate knitting with black yarn, and I'm no exception. However, it's the price one pays for having the handknits be practical and useful to the recipient.

In order to meet the softness requirement on a reasonable budget, I went with alpaca. However, my LYS (Bonnie's Spinning Wheel) only had black alpaca in laceweight. So I triple-stranded it, and set to finding a pattern. This poor scarf got frogged four times! First I tried the Saroyan scarf - too fancy, didn't even show in the black yarn. Then I tried something else. I don't even remember, because it was that awful. Frogged again. Then I found the Dummy Clap pattern, based on the oh-so-popular Clapotis - but dumbed down. (We all know that Christmas is in a few weeks, right? I need dumb.) After a third false start (too wide... frogged again), it all came together.Simple stockinette, no need to strain my eyes looking at black yarn - pure autopilot knitting. A few hours of Dexter later...


A "knit 3, drop 2" pattern is knit in the last row to create the lacy, deconstructed effect. Just what I needed, and the alpaca drapes so wonderfully. Another successful knit! (On the heels of a few failures. But shush.)

6 comments:

  1. Love the effect and thanks for yet another last minute, handknit, Christmas gift idea!

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  2. Looks beautiful, Jenna. I've been wanting to do a Clapotis for a while, but it keeps getting dropped to near the bottom of my list.

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