Lavori 07/30 progress report and a Brioche circular-knit cowl pattern (Brioche all the things!)

No photos, but I've finished round 52 of Lavori 07/30.  That's almost a quarter of the rounds, but, sigh, barely 5% of the doily. (1/4 of the rounds is 1/16 of the area.)  The first sections of hex mesh are closing up and the first set of leaves are growing.  There won't be any yarnovers at all from round 54 through round 70, though after that, I believe there will be yarnovers in all of the rest of the rounds.

With the hex mesh area closing up quickly, and the leaves growing quickly, the lace fabric is bending and distorting.  What fun!  It won't be fully visible until blocking.

These leaves are growing by making increases along the center line -- m1, k1, m1.  The chart uses the V symbol to indicate the increase where one picks up the running thread between two stitches and knits into the back of it.  I'm making these symmetric -- m1L, k1, m1R.  Will it matter?  I don't know.  At some point, after the leaves have reached their final width and the increases are finished, the center line will be denoted by 2 crossed stitches.

The edges of the leaves are outlined in twisted stitches.  I am not twisting them on the intermediate rounds.  They seem to be there to indicate a separation between each leaf, in this area where the leaves abut each other.  I decided to leave this as a fairly soft separation by only twisting on the pattern rounds.  Was that the right choice?  I don't know.  Later, at the base of the flower, there is a big block of twisted knits.  I will probably twist those to create a stronger rib-like line.

As the area of hex mesh shrinks, I'm using directional double-decreases -- the indicated SK2P for a left-leaning decrease and K3T for a right-leaning decrease.

Even without yarnovers for the next dozen or so rounds, I'll be kept busy with more make-1 increases, twisted knits, crossed stitches, and a big decrease (K5T) when the hex mesh area finally closes up for good.  When the yarnovers start up again, it'll be time to watch for pattern repeats that begin and end with yarnovers, which will happen off and on until round 200 or so

There are more stitches than strictly necessary, but it's not too ridiculous yet.  I suppose the extra stitches are needed in order to give the lace fabric enough stitches to be able to stretch and compress around the stacked increases and decreases.

I'm on my second partial ball of vintage Big Ball #30.  Hopefully they'll all be similar enough to look reasonable in one project, and hopefully I have enough to complete the project.  I will no doubt keep saying that until the doily is finished and blocked.

I think that's all I wanted to write down.  The knitting is not going particularly quickly, probably because there aren't long stretches of plain stockinette.  I keep messing up parts of the pattern repeats, but so far, I've noticed and fixed them pretty quickly.  There's one spot that I think is still there that is too much of a pain to completely fix, but it won't be noticeable as long as I don't mess up the rest of that motif. 

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Brioche all the things!

That was my knitting group's unofficial motto for a while.  My friends were all doing brioche and I was inspired to join in on the fun.  Not only do I easily succumb to temptation, I knew that brioche can break up the weird striping, stacking, and pooling that can happen with variegated yarns.  Sometimes that's what one wants, but other times, it's not.  I had some small batches of variegated yarn that weren't quite fitting with any of my ideas and I wanted them out of my stash.  So, I knit a brioche scarf and then a few circular-knit cowls.  Then I dithered about what to do next and got distracted by something else.  Luckily for me, I wrote down how I did the cowls.

Brioche knitted cowl

Cast on a likely number of stitches.  Cast on loosely since the brioche is going to be very stretchy!  For the cowl in the photo, I think it was 74 stitches because I used a long-tail cast-on and that's how many stitches I got before the yarn tail ran out.

Set-up rnd: k1, sl1yo

Rnd 1: sl1yo, brp

Rnd 2: brk, sl1yo

Notice the 2 yos that occur next to each other at the end of rnd 2 and the beginning of rnd 1.

sl1yo = slip1 as if to purl, yarnover (can be done as a single maneuver)

brp = purl the slipped stitch from the previous round together with its yarnover.

brk = knit the slipped stitch from the previous round together with its yarnover.

When ready to cast-off:

Final round: k1, p1 (doing the brp or brk as necessary)

Then cast off in pattern.  Again, keep the cast-off very loose to match the elasticity of the brioche.

Hmm, maybe I should go fishing in the stash for suitable yarn and make a few more brioche things, whether cowls or scarves or something else entirely.  I still have some fun variegated yarn that I haven't quite figured out what to do with.  Brioche is a possible answer.