Dueling Mermaids

Mermaid the First wooed me back once she saw Mermaid the Second getting all the attention. I sadly ripped back about four inches of her beautiful body and reconstructed her, this time with the correct decreases. Needles flying, I progressed to within a couple of ridges of the very last gusset keeping in mind, of course, that after the body is finished there are still two sleeves to be knit.

Mermaid the Second is born of Shetland Spindrift, in Port Wine, Purple Heather and Mulberry. Playing Autumn to the First's Spring, she is conservative and dark but beautiful.

I've received a few questions about this design, so here are a couple of tips on Mermaid:

1. It's easy to miss the fact that you should knit your beginning I-cord with a larger needle. Read the directions carefully. They are translated from Danish, and the word order is a little different than what we are used to.

2. Don't worry about the pickup along the I-cord showing on the right side of the fabric. Remember that this will be turned back on the finished garment to form a lapel and collar.

3. It may seem odd at first to be knitting an attached I-cord edge along the top of the shoulder, but it is right to do so. In the finished garment, this will provide a nice finish and definition to the shoulder line.

4. If you get confused by instructions to "reverse the shaping of the first half", try writing the instructions for the second half ridge-by-ridge and noting each increase or decrease and keeping track of total stitch counts. This will make your life easier.

Abrupt Change of Subject:

Over the next few days I will be moving the nwkniterati site to a different hosting provider. There are several reasons for doing this. More than once in the last couple of weeks the site has been unavailable for a while-- and so has the site of our host, which is a bit alarming. The new host is one which I've used before with good results, and they now have mySQL available, which is required by my installation of MovableType. They also provide ASP.Net support and a real Microsoft SQL Server database, which will provide me with the opportunity to reacquaint myself with my development skills.

Anyway, the move should be seamless to you, but should anything odd occur with your ability to see the blogs, blame it on the move! The most awful thing that could occur is that comments you might leave on the present hosting site might not make it onto the new hosting site if I had already done the data export and you are not yet pointed to the new host.

The addresses of all the blogs will remain the same.

I know-- yada yada yada. I'll shut up now.

Posted by Sheila at August 16, 2005 07:07 AM Posted to Mermaid | TrackBack