Let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him. (Oswalt Chambers)

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Start of Eris

Who is Eris?

Eris is a Greek goddess whose greatest joy is to make trouble with her Golden Apple of Discord. When she throws the apple among friends, their friendship comes to an end. When she throws the apple among enemies it results in war. In fact, she started the Trojan War with her apple.

This does not bode well for the Eris knitting project Dorothy and I both started last night. I almost wish I never had Googled the goddess Eris. Fortunately, I'm not superstitious about knitting projects named after evil goddesses, so I'm guessing we'll be OK.

Dusty Teal Peruvian Highland Wool from ElannFor me, Eris is a cool challenging sweater pattern designed and published by Girl from Auntie, twenty skeins of Elann's Peruvian Highland Wool in Dusty Teal, and a fun knit-a-long with Dorothy at Missouri Star.

If I have Dorothy pegged right, there won't be any discord. Not even if someone throws a golden apple at us.


Swatches knit for ErisI confess that my past has not been full of successful swatching. Whenever possible I pick up the needles that my judgment tells me will work and start knitting, adjusting later.

Occasionally, though, when I have a pattern I want to follow, I do swatch. Eris is in that category.

Eris is knit top down in one piece and requires three different gauges to make the construction work: the stockinette gauge for the cabled areas, the stockinette back and forth gauge, and the stockinette knit in the round gauge.

I wasted used three skeins of yarn knitting all these swatches. Some of them are the same needle, different gauges, helping me understand that I do subconsciously adjust my fabric tension to meet expectations in gauge.

One valuable reason for swatching is to get the unwashed and washed gauges of the yarn recorded. All calculations, like getting the right sleeve length, will be done measuring the unwashed fabric and converting it into the size of the washed fabric.


Eris Collar through the first page of Chart B RightHere is the beginning, the start of the right side of the collar.

What fun! Cables and short rows. Just perfect for a Friday night knitting party of one. (Actually it was a knitting party of two, separated by about 2,000 miles.)

I stayed up too late and made it though the first page of Chart B. It was slow going, especially at first, because I didn't find the Eris cable charts intuitive. Substantial time was spent looking at the chart key and taking to myself.

Perfectly enjoyable. Now I want to get this posted and go knit some more.

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