Unchained Melody

You'll have to pardon the bad pun. I couldn't resist given that the Melody shawl I have been working on (and working on, and working on, and working on) is knit in the round and cut open to create a fringed rectangle. Melody gets unchained both as she is bound off and as she is snipped open. Unchained my Melody now is.

Morehouse Merino Melody in the Breeze

This project is from a very simple Morehouse Merino pattern, the Melody Shawl. It's knit from a quad skein of Morehouse Merino Variagated Lace weigh yarn. The color I picked is called "Aquarius" -- eminently appropriate for me, since I am an Aquarian. I worked it on a US size 10 AddiTurbo needle, but size isn't all that important for this garment. It just needs to be open and lacy.

While the work on this shawl is so monotonous as to almost make it not even fun mindless television knitting, there's one clever trick in the pattern that helps create the fringe. This is also the part that involves both unravelling stitches and cutting. Which was entertaining enough to make most of the monotony worthwhile, as I know feel that I have another nifty knitting spell in my knitting spell book "Create Fringe For Scarf Knit in the Round" (pardon me again, my RPG side is showing).

My final measurements, after wet blocking (since I've discussed Morehouse yarn and how much it relaxes up on blocking before, I won't go into great detail with pictures to demonstrate this point this time), were 75" x 24.5". The pattern predicts 80" x 16" so I'm figuring that I got a few more rows in at the expense of a somewhat smaller stitch gauge relative to the original garment. No problem as far as I am concerned, it is still long enough to do what it is supposed to do, and when you're dealing with a shawl, a little extra width doesn't hurt anything.

I only have one word of advice to anyone who is going to do this project, when the pattern says "cast on very loosely" you should read that as "cast on VERY LOOSELY". I would recommend casting loosely onto a needle a couple sizes larger than the one you will use for the main project. I did not cast on quite loosely enough and as I was stretching out the cast on edge a bit I actually broke the edge yarn strand. This is NOT a good thing to do unless you really like fixing damaged cast on edges. So learn from my mistake and take the cast on loosely thing seriously.

Melody As Shawl

Melody can be worn in a couple of ways. The first way is just as a simple shawl/stole. Since the project is so lightweight (it's like a fluffy cloud) this could easily be something that you wear on a cool summer evening over a tank top or something to add a little bit of warmth in a cool house in the spring. This yarn is very "against the skin friendly" (you find occasional pieces of VM every now and again, but those are easily removed while knitting) so it makes a nice cover for bare shoulders or arms. (Not shown in this picture because last Saturday it was still pretty chilly here in Chicago, even if it was nice and sunny).

Melody As Scarf

Melody also works well in her scarf incarnation. This is likely how I will wear Melody most often as I find that shawls don't work very well for me in my work environment and the whole stole thing doesn't work very well if you are walking a mile up Damen Avenue on a cool summer evening in search of a hamburger and a beer. However, I love to wear scarves with jackets and cardigans, and long scarves are my favorite. When worn as a scarf, you get lots of nice airy layers which trap warmth, which is perfect for this time of year.

One final comment about the yarn in this project... it pools a bit, but not very much in this project. I do like the watercolor brush strokes of color that seem to dance across it.

So here's another FO I can cross off my WIP list. I feel like I'm beginning to make some progress