Arachnophobia

Yep I HATE SPIDERS. My Sister used to walk 5 blocks to my house to kill them for me when we lived in San Francisco. My Mom refuses to oblige so I have started vacuuming them up myself. Yuck - hate them. This all stems from a 1960's horror film with a giant spider living in a cave that the local teens decided to explore. Needless to say, they were eaten alive, kicking and screaming. Ron Weasley - I feel you.

BUT, I do love webs, since I read Charlotte's Web in elementary school. I have dusted off, photocopied and colored in my Charlotte's Web pattern and I am going to make a couple, or three shawls. I have two sets of 5 in the Koigu colorways. I bought the first set at the TKGA/CGOA Conference in 2006 from the Foxyknits booth. They helped me pick the colors and explained how to make the shawl larger. In 2008 I pulled it all out and looking at the colors I did not like them "at the time". So I went online and ordered a different 5 colorways from Patternworks. By the time my order came I was deep into the 52 pair plunge and set everything aside. As I mentioned in my previous post, Carin on Round the Twist with Carin, has peaked my interest in the pattern again. The Socks That Rock version in particular. I will never use this Koigu for anything else, so I am going to knit both of them and probably gift them to someone. I am going to make a STR version for myself. I started Stash diving last night looking for the medium weight I want to use. Mr. Greenjeans, County Clare, Lucky and Jade all look like they will transition well. But the Lapis is the ugly stepchild - I don't think it will work after all. There are several greens in it, that I really liked in the socks I just finished. But I don't think there is enough green in the lapis to transition well. I have already placed my BMFA order and will probably just use four colors, unless the skein I receive is heavy on green. I also pulled out 5 colorways in Heavy Weight that would make a gorgeous throw in the Charlotte's Web pattern stitch. I wonder if anyone has tried a square version, perhaps I will be the first.

Swatching - remember my pledge to swatch? There are several reasons I will be swatching for all of the above. The most important one is wrong color order. There are almost 500 finished CW Shawls on Ravelry and over half of them have at least one bad color choice in them. I don't want to go there - so I am going to swatch for color coordination. I will knit 5 or six rows of each color, 2 rows of the next color, 2 rows of the previous color then 5 or six rows of the next color. Mini-transition pieces of the finished version. I don't want to get into color 4 and regret having placed color 2 where I did. More on that later - with photos. For now I have lots of yarn to ball-wind. I think it's time to pull out the electric ball winder again. I did one set of Koigu by hand last night, because the skeins are relatively small. The the Socks That Rock will definitely be done with the electric winder. I like the bricks it makes, nice and flat on the bottom.