It’s done! It’s done! The Cleopatra Wrap is done!
Pattern: Cleopatra Wrap from Sensual Knits, pattern by Miriam Felton
Yarn: Sundara Silk Lace, “Copper over Bamboo” (from the first Seasons Club)
Time Elapsed: Almost 4 months, but during most of that time the stole was sitting with just 7 rows done. Early pregnancy brain strikes. This is a fairly quick lace project, definitely under a month of actual knitting.
Notes/Modifications: The only way I really deviated from the pattern was that the Sundara is about 300 yards short of the recommended bamboo yarn. I still got a sizeable stole, about 20 inches x 73 inches, but I definitely could have blocked it wider if I hadn’t run out of yarn. I couldn’t think of a project better suited to this luscious stuff, though.
The stole is gossamer-light, the color is subtle and beautiful. I think words and pictures fail to adequately describe the finished product–you have to feel it. This stuff is toddler-steal-worthy.
He was very upset when I explained to him that the stole needed a bath, and he had to take it off.
The pattern is a nice one, even if it stretches on a little bit in the middle. The construction, which I’ve written about before, is totally groovy. You begin with a border, put the stitches on a spare needle, cast on the other border, and knit until you’re done. Then graft the two pieces together. On the one hand, it does get all of the most fun knitting out of the way first, which might contribute to the sloggy feeling of the middle. On the other hand, you waste no yarn. I think I had all of 2g left. And the borders match!
I think there’s the slightest of errors in the pattern–when you’re knitting the first border, the instructions say to complete the first chart, thus ending with a WS row. You end on a RS row coming from the other direction, and this means two pure knit rows together between the last WS row worked on the first piece and the graft row itself. Especially given the placement of the graft, this isn’t really noticeable, but I think it would look better if both pieces had ended on a RS row.
Obviously, this minor mistake (which I didn’t really think about until the piece was blocked) isn’t enough to hamper my enjoyment of the stole, which I love to pieces. And I finished it just in time for the first installment of the next round of Seasons Club, which just happens to start with more silk lace.
(It’s damn hard, I’ve found, to take decent self-portraits when hugely pregnant, but there are many more shots including more detail in flickr and the FO gallery here.)
Amy Herzog Designs