the sound of one hand

Clapotis - I absolutely had to get away from all of the venereal disease puns so mine will be called 'applause'. I can pretty much date my knitting career around this pattern. We moved from Sydney back to Melbourne at the very end of 2004 and I started knitting with Melbourne's Stitch 'n' Bitch group that next year in about June.

Clapotis was published in Knitty in the (northern) Fall of 2004 and Clapotis knitting was still going strong in mid-year 2005. A number of people had finished theirs, many were still knitting away, there was much discussion of the recommended yarn (Lorna's Laces Lion and Lamb - unavailable in Australia at the time and really expensive to purchase from overseas), discussion of substitute yarns, whether to knit or purl the stitches to be dropped ...

So, for me Clapotis remains the first, classic social knitting project. I think that it is also known as (one of) the first viral knit(s). For me at the time it was a bit beyond my knitting borders. I was still quite attached to the idea that you had to knit a project from the recommended yarn and did not yet have enough knowledge of what else was out there to make a substitution choice. So I perused the colour swatches for Lion and Lamb, and I dreamt. (Incidentally, I think that I would have chosen Black Pearl had I ever actually gone for the L&L.)

Anyway, five years later and I have since seen many lovely Clapotis knit from sock yarn. I bought this Handmaiden Fine Yarns Casbah sock yarn in the colourway 'Vintage' at Sock Summit last year and decided to cast on myself.

As I am using a different weight yarn I have done more increases (section 2 of the pattern) than the pattern states in order to approximate the original measurements. And now I am just going to knit - knit knit knit until I can knit no more. I weighed the amount of yarn that I used to do sections 1 and 2 and will need that amount to do the decreases. I have three skeins of the Handmaiden and am quite a way through the first skein. When I get to third one I'll be keeping an eye on the weight to know that I have enough left. Also, instead of placing markers to indicate which stitches are to be dropped, I am purling the stitch that will be dropped. That is what gives the fabric its current ribbed appearance.

And the yarn - it feels lovely, it is merino, cashmere and nylon and just slips through the stitches. But the variegation ... the variegation - what is it about variegated yarns? That will be a discussion for next time.