{"id":545,"date":"2015-04-29T09:22:44","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T16:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/?p=545"},"modified":"2015-04-29T09:22:44","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T16:22:44","slug":"inspiration-all-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/?p=545","title":{"rendered":"Inspiration all Around"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every so often I get inspired to drop everything and make up something new.\u00c2\u00a0 As in, really make stuff up.\u00c2\u00a0 And you know I always have a few<\/del> an overabundance of projects in progress.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t need<\/em> to start anything else.\u00c2\u00a0 But the inspiration bug was overwhelming.\u00c2\u00a0 So I sat down to sketch and plot and plan.\u00c2\u00a0 When the Muse speaks, we must listen.\u00c2\u00a0 Right?<\/p>\n

The design challenge this time is for a half-pi shawl with a Spring theme.\u00c2\u00a0 What is a half-pi, you ask?\u00c2\u00a0 A pi shawl is one that is knit in the round with regular increases based on the mathematical number pi so that the finished product is perfectly round.\u00c2\u00a0 A half-pi uses the same increase principle, but is only half of the circle and is knit back and forth in rows.\u00c2\u00a0 Typically, the diameter of a pi or half-pi shawl is equal to the wingspan (arms out, measured fingertip to fingertip across the shoulders) of the shawl’s owner.\u00c2\u00a0 To give you an idea of the amount of work involved with a project of this size: the last pi shawl I completed took 184 hours of knitting time.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully this one will be at least half that amount of time.<\/p>\n

I visited my stitch dictionaries once again.\u00c2\u00a0 (These poor books are so well-loved, with little flag markers sticking out all over.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d think I would have them memorized by now.)\u00c2\u00a0 Spring starts with rain, so little raindrops went in the first section.\u00c2\u00a0 Then there are the first tentative buds poking their heads from the soil, so that went in the second section.\u00c2\u00a0 The third section represents the smaller flowers seen in early spring, and the fourth section represents the larger, more confident flowers seen in late spring.\u00c2\u00a0 The border is still a work-in progress, but is planned to represent the transition to summer.<\/p>\n

I seem to be obsessed with seeing the patterns laid out as a whole so that I can visualize how the individual elements interact with each other before I cast on.\u00c2\u00a0 In this way I can see if an element needs to shift to one side a few stitches, or if I need to add or subtract ground stitches.\u00c2\u00a0 As knitters, we are used to seeing only a portion the overall pattern charted out – just enough to see one repeat of each individual stitch pattern.\u00c2\u00a0 This means that my spreadsheets are quite scary to most everyone else.\u00c2\u00a0 (I love a good, organized spreadsheet!)\u00c2\u00a0 That’s okay, I’ll just pare things down if I end up sharing the pattern with anyone else.<\/p>\n

I chose a bright periwinkle blue laceweight yarn and got started knitting the first rows.\u00c2\u00a0 The beginning is a simple stockinette, with increases according to the pi shawl principles, until the stitch count is large enough to start the patterning in the first section.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20150416_151532_sm\"<\/a>Can you see the rain running down the windows?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every so often I get inspired to drop everything and make up something new.\u00c2\u00a0 As in, really make stuff up.\u00c2\u00a0 And you know I always have a few an overabundance of projects in progress.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t need to start anything … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10,44,45,9,51,11,53,13],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knitting","tag-blue","tag-creativity","tag-design","tag-knitting-2","tag-lace","tag-shawl","tag-spring","tag-wool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}