According to ever-accurate Ravelry, I started knitting my Viajante in October 2013, and…..I finished it last week. Oops.
This is one of those projects that I had on my list to tackle for the #CleanSlateKAL, and while I missed my own original deadline (I had wanted to clean things off the needles by the end of 2015), I think finishing it up in January 2016 is still pretty good. Let’s be kind to ourselves, right? December is always a busy month, and even though it’s the same every year, I tend to forget.
Viajante is an extremely large cowl/shawl/cape pattern designed by Martina Behm. The nifty design element, as she describes on the pattern page, is that there is absolutely no purling required. The knitting itself is easy-peasy and relaxing, but I can’t say that I really understand the shape of the finished object all that much. No complaints about the pattern, but I think I’m starting to understand that I’m not entirely a process knitter, and the product knitter in me is asking, “but how do I WEAR this thing?” I think it’s just not my style, and that fact that it’s way out of my comfort zone in terms of color was making me wonder if I should just rip this back and reuse the yarn. A little voice in my head told me it would be crazy to rip back cobweb lace-weight yarn held double, so instead, here we have a finished cowl/shawl/cape.
I used two strands of Trendsetter Yarns Cash Woole in a cherry red, and a coral orange. The pattern is designed for lace-weight yarn, but this stuff is so light that one strand would have felt like delicate thread, and I was in no mood for that sort of thing. Even though I still haven’t figured out how to wear this color, I do love the marled effect I got, and the yarn itself is really lovely, soft, and cloud-like, even held double. I may have been converted to lace-weight projects (except for the snagging, which just comes with the territory, I think).
If memory serves, the original version calls for around 1700 yards, and according to the weight of my FO (124 grams, 62 grams of each color), I’m calculating that my version used about 1,023 yards of each color. So, yeah, that’s still a lot of yardage, and I’m feeling proud, despite the fact that this pattern is really designed to be much longer than my abbreviated version. You can tell from the first picture that I am wearing it more like a shawl, and not utilizing the cowl/cape features, and I think it will probably stay that way, so I’m fine with it being on the smaller side.
The border is a very simple mesh that I love the look of, but really disliked knitting. I’m glad I suffered through all eight repeats though, because that’s really the main design feature when it’s worn more like a scarf. As per usual, I overcompensated when doing the bind-off, which instructs you to go up a few needle sizes AND bind-off very loosely. As an already loose knitter, I often disregard these sorts of instructions, and I probably should have done so in this case as well. Knitters, know thyself.
Stitch Party 