Star(t)more

Awww, lookit this cute widdle baby Catherine Parr.

What's that you say? It doesn't look like Catherine Parr?

Well...yeah. In my usual damn-the-torpedoes fashion, I decided to skip the row of bobbles outlining the big fair isle section at the hem. It's not that I hate all bobbles. I just hate them on me. Curse of the cleavage and all -- why encourage anyone looking at me to think about nipples or any other part of the breast any more than they already will? I'm about as likely to knit bobbles as I am to wear a t-shirt with a picture of two side-by-side cantaloupes.

So I started playing around with other border options, things I could use in place of the bobbles that would preserve the fluency of the design. I tried a couple of checkerboard and lice designs, but none of them really had the look I was after. I wanted something fluid. Curved. Something that might mimic a few of the lines in the wide fair isle border at the hips and cuffs.

Out came the Ann Feitelson book and a few other books with plentiful charts. Catherine Parr's main fair isle chart at the hips is 24 stitches wide, so I was looking for something I could pattern in a 24-stitch repeat. It had to have some visual impact, but it had to avoid any eye-fights with the rest of the sweater. And I wanted something a little more gentle than all those colored bobbles.

I was beginning to lose hope when I hit on the curvy V scallops used above. The shape is actually part of a Feitelson chart -- I clipped a little section of one of her medallions and decided to flip it up and down as I go around the hem. Each piece is 12 stitches wide, so a pair is 24 stitches, just the size I needed.

Unfortunately, the hem is curling so much that it may never matter. Nobody may ever see the beautiful little shapes if I can't figure out how to flatten this section later. Current ideas include the use of crocheted edging, grosgrain ribbon, many four letter words, and a mallet. OK, so the mallet is more for show than for results....

This will probably be the last thing I cast on for a while. At the moment, this gives me three pairs of socks, three sweaters, one blouse and one bag on the needles. Oh, and the clapotis. I'm still not back up in double digits of projects OTN, and I want to keep it that way!

PS. Thanks for all the great tips, on and offsite, for computer stuff. My new computer was ordered today and should arrive the first week of December. Here's hoping the current one lasts that long!