Evolution

We all know how one thing often leads to another.

well this particular chain starts with a simple little [ free ] headband pattern, that my friend Robyne-with-an-e found on the Drops website about a year ago. As is the way of such things, it quickly went viral within our Purl's Princesses knitting group with pretty much everyone - myself included - making at least a couple of them.

Now the thing that caught my fancy was the clever way that the increases and decreases were worked within the purled sections of the rib, but to be honest, I wanted to try the idea on something else.
So I trauled through my collection of stitch dictionaries and found a nice - and still simple - lacy rib.
The next step was to swatch a set of increases in an 8ply[dk] and to block it.

A little bit of maths and a fair bit of luck / intuition led to this beret [ modelled here by Tara ] with all the shaping within the purl sections a la the original drops headband

then a matching pair of wristwarmers

You'll just have to take my word for it that, after languishing in the bottom of a knitting basket for half a year, they did in fact get sewn up about 2 months ago, and have been worn a couple of times.
The reason that you'll have to take my word for it is that I appear to have lost the beggars.
Can't find them in any of the obvious places
or even in any of the totally ridiculous ones
bugger
so basically the only 'proof' I have that they ever existed, is this fairly c****y pic of one of them in its unsewn-up state, and the second one on the needles.


oh, and they're not pink either ... more a deep cherry red.
Moving on
I made a second and much longer pair for The Girl in BWM Allegro 8ply [DK].

You can see the way that the increases have been worked in.
Needless to say, the girl was rather happy with how these turned out ...

and before you could say 'Flashdance' this led somewhat inevitably to a pair of legwarmers, also in Allegro.



Was I finished with this lace yet ?
Na-uh!

It occurred to me that I could probably stretch the pattern a bit by introducing an extra row each of knit and purl to make it a little less lacy
and I did gave that one ball of a lovely soft sage green [ also from BWM ]
so

the sequence - currently - ends with this slouchy hat

Now if I could just find those blasted fingerless gloves!