The Frill's the Thrill

Try saying that 10 times fast!

I didn't get so much knitting done today. John and I headed off to SuperComm and spent a great deal of time looking at what is going to be the latest and greatest in networking and communications technology. It isn't my field per se, but I am always entertained by a good trade show. And when you have the Likes of Lucent, Intel, Cisco and IBM in a conference center, there are bound to be a few entertaining things. And a nice company by the name of Juniper Networks had some pretty decent canvas bags as conference trophies (I just love marketing swag), so I have a new, if geeky, knitting tote in addition to getting to explore wireless networking technology for my office and exploring the latest in cool cellular phones.

I had a little time before we took off today to finish up the last several rows of the frill on my Chai top. The original design for this frill was supposed to double the number of stitches at the base, knit some rows, and then double the stitch count again. I decided that the second increase would make for a little too much frill, and just opted to keep knitting straight. Here's the result:

Chai Frill

Yes, yes -- anything can look halfway decent when lying down. How does it look when gravity is exerting force on the ruffle?

Ruffles Have Ripples

Not too bad, but still a little stiffer than I think a flouncy ruffle should be. I kind of like the eyelet effect that resulted from the YF, K1 that was used to do the increasing. There'll be a whole lotta blocking going on once I get this little number ready to seam. ArtFibers recommends taking an iron to the Chai fabric to increase drape and shininess. I'll probably definitely be doing that, otherwise I think that ruffle is going to be a little stiff.

I'll probably be casting on for the front tonight. Since I've now entered yarn paranoia mode, I want to make sure that I get this knit up fast enough to get another ball in the same dye lot if I'm a little under what was anticipated. Probably I should just relax, but I can't think of anything worse (from a knitting perspective) than being just a little bit short of finishing a garment in an exotic yarn. Invisible cast-on number 2, here I come!