Dragon Scales

For the holidays this past season my mother, being the woman of phenomenal taste that she is, gifted me this voluptuous yarn that flaunted bold blues and oranges, intermingled with subtle and sweet deep blues, rusted reds, brooding greys, and touched with the smallest hints of lilac.  Seeing as I try my best to not be cruel to the wonderful palettes that people invest in yarn, I decided on something that would showcase these stellar colours.

I knew when I started looking for some sort of idea that I wanted to do a crop top.  Despite having thought for many years that they made me look like I was cut off in the worst way possible, I've grown to love them and feel very comfortable in them, and if for no other purpose- it keeps me a little bit more cool when it is unearthly hot outside.

My decision was made when I found a concept for twisted stitch pattern, and by pattern I mean the look was posted on Pinterest and when I tried to click the link the website was entirely in Russian (which I do not speak) and showed nothing that even resembled the knitting pattern.  Determined to look like I could rock dragon scales though, I hopped onto youtube and through process of elimination discovered twisted stitch and figured out the rest of the pattern from there.

This is my warning if you decide to pick up twisted stitch:

Mistakes can and will ruin hours of work.  Mistakes are inevitable, and it does your soul good to fix them, but oh how it will hurt.  I would get focused on a conversation, lost in thought, or be knitting during an especially engaging part of lecture and then suddenly 4 rows ago I made a catastrophic error that was plain as day.  However, I did find a nifty trick on my millionth mistake, and will make a blogpost explaining said trick within the next two weeks!

The other problem I ran into with this lovely creation was that I ran out of yarn.  I tried ordering the same thing from the creator, but being a different dye lot made an enormous difference.  It was so bad, that I ripped it all out, and found a grey that promised to make my stomach churn less.

It kept that promise splendidly, and gave me the motivation to follow through and finish this project that had taken me three months to complete.

Now I can happily wear my dragon scales, and enjoy the radiant colours they hold.  

And despite what I thought, the grey actually ended up being even more neutral and fitting than I thought.

I look forward to explaining my fewer-swears-fix for my twisted stitch pattern in the next two weeks or so, and until then-

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.