Drat you gauge!

A little while ago, I mentioned my plans to make a totally kick-ass bright knit jacket from several of the Clan of Igor colors I received in the spring. I knit up my gauge swatch, washed it, measured it…

and then sat on it for a while as I slowly came to accept that I don’t have gauge, can’t get gauge, and don’t want to rework the pattern to the degree the gauge I have would require.

First, why can’t I get gauge? Well… technically, I probably could, if I played around more with slightly different needle sizes and materials. But it’s really clear that the fabric this yarn would create at gauge is not one I’d want. The original yarn the Nithya pattern calls for is Holst Garm Supersoft. This is listed as “light fingering” with 314yds per 50g – or 628yds to 100g. Descriptions say it “blooms considerably when washed”. Now, I was rather hoping that my yarn, at a mere 437yds to 100g, might work as a substitute.

But nope… I mean, the Holst Garm Supersoft must be super duper woolen, airy, and take up a LOT of space for the amount of fiber. Mine, especially as a superwash, doesn’t have bloom, and is spun pretty thin and tight. It’s just not going to make a decent fabric at the stated gauge.

Now a lot of you know me by now – I’m not shy about altering patterns, messing with stitch counts and the like. This is why it took me a good long time to realize I just don’t want to do it for this pattern. Not to the degree I would need to. As it was, I was planning to alter the jacket to use three colors instead of two. Some of what I love about the pattern is the little pops of contrast color along the edges. At a tighter gauge, these would get smaller. So either I accept a jacket with a different character, or I’d ALSO have to alter how many stitches or rows I’m using not just for the right size, but the right “look”.

And I just don’t want to do that. So I’ll need to think about whether to perhaps buy the recommended yarn for the jacket instead. It does come in LOADS of colors, and is at a pretty affordable price point.

I am thinking about switching up how I use the colors together, and pairing the pink and blue up with the sherbet gummi worm yarn from August. What do you think? I have been thinking about doing “Oppositional” (Ravelry link) by Fatimah Hinds for a while, and this pairing might work, since it needs a DK with a fingering. I might alternate rows of the pink and blue to give an almost purple appearance next to the gummi worm colors.

In the meantime, I’ve started another little miser’s purse. I’m making it up as I go alone with two colors of crochet cotton (size 10). For  simplicity’s sake, I’m skipping any beadwork this time.

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Community News

BIPOC MAL – Fall 2020

Desamour Designs is hosting another BIPOC MAL. There are two rules for this one:

• The designer is black
• The designer has less than 10k followers on Instagram

There are prizes being given out each week between now and when it ends December 18, 2020. One of them includes the pattern for the wonderful Dionne shawl by Jeanette Sloan, which I made last fall. Check out the rules on Desamour’s blog post for how to participate and win.

More Ravelry Updates

Ravelry has announced some additional updates on their home page as well as on their blog. The really big one is the formal announcement of the end of life of the Old Rav design – it will go away on March 31, 2021. I expect this will be a lot sooner than many people were hoping for, and there’s still a lack of transparency regarding what their plan is to ensure 100% of current Ravelry members will be able to safely and comfortably continue to use Ravelry.

In the meantime, you can still freely switch between the available options – Old Rav, New Rav – Merino, and New Rav – Herdwick. They’ve also added some additional settings in New Rav for customizations (such as a Reduced Motion option) as well as additional tags/filters for patterns to improve peoples’ ability to find patterns in accessible formats.

I thought, what with all the additional updates Ravelry has made since the original roll out, it might be helpful to some to be able to compare the views easily without having to switch their selections over and over. Thus, I’ve pulled together a PDF showing a selection of pages across each of the three options.

Having done this, here are my observations of the current state:

• White space: Whether there is more or not depends on what you mean
  • Total unused space on either side of the main content area is mostly the same. In some cases, New Rav is slightly narrower, but in others it’s noticeably wider. However, New Rav is more centered on the screen, particularly in the forums.
  • Pale header & more spacing around elements within the content area increases overall amount of white on the page as well as the space it takes to convey the same amount of information.

• Scrolling: So yes, both “New Rav” options do require more scrolling
  • This is because of the increased spacing around various elements as well as greater space between lines of text
    • Impact on pattern browsing, stash pages, and similar pages is less once you get past the initial headers
    • Amount of text per line can be increased by changing to Helvetica or Sans Serif in settings.
      • This won’t drastically change the posts per visible screen except where long posts are written

• Drop Shadows: They are used differently in Old and New Rav.
  • Old Rav has them around patterns & stash entries. New Rav uses them on buttons, and they are sharper and darker.
  • These are removed entirely in New Rav – Herdwick.

• Outlines: Many people are still complaining about the outlines in New Rav
  • Forum post outlines are very similar. On the boards the Old Rav are nearly invisible, and are stronger in the New Rav.
  • Where Old Rav was using drop shadows to create an outline (on ½ of the image anyways), New Rav relies on a darker outline
  • Basically, this is a pretty mixed bag depending on where you are in Ravelry.

Michelle Obama – Now a Knitter!

And to end on a lighter topic… Michelle Obama started knitting as a new hobby during the pandemic. Isn’t that cool?

In honor of this awesome new member of our knitting community, The Neighborhood Fiber Co has temporarily brought back one of it’s limited addition colorways in an awesome deep purple and pink blend. If you haven’t knit up your Empower bandana yet, this would be a great fit.

And, as Michelle would remind us, make sure you vote this election!