The Tie Project, and Getting Things Off My Chest

OK, for everyone out there, it's NEW-klee-er. Nuclear, that is. Please, please, PLEASE pronounce it correctly. It's easy once you try.

Whew. I feel better now.

Go Buy This Book!!

So I've started Kid #2's tie. He said he wanted something "the kids could poke fun at" because often new teachers get razzed about something and he figured a hand-knit tie was it. Thanks.... I found a great pattern in one of the One-Skein books, this one:

My LYS owner has a pattern in there, and while I haven't jumped into what she designed, I did choose the "Mojito Tie" pattern, which is a great seed stitch pattern tie. I bought Cascade's Lana D'Oro Paints yarn in a great colorway and I started off.

It was fairly straightforward, and I got nicely along in the pattern. I was on the decreases, actually.

But then I saw them. Two mistakes. OK, I thought. I can live with this.

Kept knitting. But I kept seeing those things. Glaring at me with the equivalent of the knitting "stink-eye" and I knew that if Kid #2 wore that tie daily for the rest of his working life, all I would ever see would be the two mistakes. So I frogged the whole thing and started over. It's still working up nicely. And he'll likely have it for May graduation.

Here's what the yarn looks like. The colorway is 9926 and the yarn is 50% superfine Alpaca and 50% wool. It works up at 5 stitches per inch, and I'm using size 7 straight needles.

You can tell that it's a really nice red, shading to navy blue, and there are hints of burgundy and grey in it. As I go forward with the pattern, it spreads the navy blue out nicely. No pooling or awkward shifts of color. I think that 90% of that is because of the seed stitch pattern. It pops nicely on this yarn and after I had done almost 10 inches on the tie (yeah, I was over a foot done and then I frogged it all out), you could see the overall tweediness of the yarn.

It looked quite sophisticated.

Tie and yarn

And now I've started over. And that's life. Some days you frog a lot. Some days you can live with your mistakes.

I even had Hubby ask if I would make one for him! I can see these becoming as addictive as socks, because they look gorgeous in the luxury yarns, the colorways fall out in a great pattern, and they're relatively mindless as long as you're not increasing or decreasing.

The pattern was so easy to start; and then at the decreases, it's at every 1.5" or so - giving you a ver nice taper.

I hope he likes it. And I hope he wears it to graduation. Which is 2 months away!