Strikke-nirvana

Even the most superficial reader of this blog knows that I am a Really Enthusiastic Knitter. I knit all the time, and when I'm not knitting, I'm often thinking about it and most likely wishing I was doing it. There are many projects that I've sincerely enjoyed knitting, and also many that have been a source of frustration. Some I've abandoned, some I've conquered, but never, ever have I had so much pure, unadulterated fun as I have since starting on the Lanesplitter skirt yesterday! I mean, come on, look at this:

Pattern: Lanesplitter from Knitty issue 32 (2010)
Yarn: six skeins of Noro Kureyon, color 220
Needles: 6mm/US 10 bamboo straights (!)

The colors are crazy, and the bias stripe pattern is brilliantly easy to produce. I ended up with color number 220, not because that was my ideal choice, but because it was the only one of the three (!) color choices available at Tjorven that I even halfway liked. Apparently they're phasing out Noro yarns, which seem to have peaked in popularity here in Norway. I was really skeptical because this color has a cherry red in it that I hate. I sorted through the skeins and chose the ones where the cherry red was most limited. As I knit, I'm just taking it out when it comes along. Here's a picture of the whole project so far. You can see the clever shaping at work:

It turns out that 220 was the perfect color combination, once the red was removed. It's exactly what I had in mind for a warm fall/winter skirt to brighten up my otherwise basic black wardrobe. There are enough muddy colors in there to balance out the brights. It is fascinating (as everyone said about Brooklyntweed's Noro Scarf) to watch the contrasts develop as you knit along. You alternate knitting two rows from one skein and two rows from a second. You could do this with sold colors as well, which would create a much more regular effect (like Mustaa villaa's peppermint stripe Baktus scarf).

You start at the lower right corner with only 4 stitches and increase one stitch on each end of every other row until the piece is the length you want your skirt to be. Then you decrease at the upper right while increasing at the lower left every other row to maintain that length and start creating the width. Once it's wide enough to go (mostly) around your hips, you start decreasing one stitch on each end of every other row. That gives you a rectangular piece of fabric that you sew together and add a waistband to. Why didn't I think of this?