A while back, I found a pattern for The Harry Potter Dark Mark Bag. I'm not huge on most knit bags, however. If you don't line them with fabric (a procedure which I suspect would suck) or felt them, they tend to stretch badly when used.
So, I thought maybe I'd make a sweater for myself with that design instead. Maybe a tank or at least a shell.
The problem: I couldn't find a pattern I liked to put it on. I want wide straps, a fairly high neck (for room for the emblem), and minimal waist shaping, and haven't had luck finding one. Furthermore, the time the search took got me wondering, do I really want to do this?
1) As is typical for me, I'm a much bigger fan of the series' potential than I am of the actual execution. In fact, I think the actual series taken as a whole is made of botch -- it is beyond made of fail.
2) Let's not forget what that thing actually stands for. It's basically a magical swastika.
So, I was about to put the idea aside, and it hit me. I can make it for him:
One of my dolls, Lord Mandali, whose character is a child vampire, one of the vampire lords of New Orleans, and a bit of an HP geek. (The snake's name is Nagini.) With any luck, I can find some fingering or lace weight yarn in black and green, and knit him up a sweater. A pattern is no problem: I've got both Knitting from the Top and Knitting in the Old Way. And believe it or not, a plain stockinette stitch sweater is really easy. I've done it (doll size) before.
That's one of the things I love about knitting. It can be so logical and mathematical if you want it to be. Sewing requires careful, in the cloth tweaking. Knitting you can map out on paper and get good results.
So I took the measurements, and... Oh, this isn't quite going to work. The Dark Mark motif is 40 stitches across, and I only have about 2 inches of room in which to work. 20 stitches per inch, that's beyond lace weight and into miniature territory. Out of curiosity, I pulled out a commercial sweater of far finer yarn than I would ever use singly for stockinette stitch and measured it, and it was 16 stitches per inch. No, not going to happen as is, so I can either find a different Dark Mark to chart smaller, or reduce this one, or abandon the project.
Long story short, I reduced the graph by hand so that it was half sized, 20 stitches wide instead of 40, and it ended up not looking too bad. That should be doable. I'm thinking of getting some Knitpicks Shadow Lace yarn in Midnight and Juniper, and at that price maybe a ball of Lost Lake just in case the Juniper doesn't have enough contrast. I'd like to smack someone for that gauge, though. "Gauge: Laceweight." Thanks so much! That can be anything under 8 stitches an inch, from my needed 10 down to 50, or even more insanity-tempting numbers. Judging from the weight compared to Baby Ull, which Lord Mandali already has a Slytherin scarf of, I'm afraid it may be too thin. But I KNOW the fingering weights are too large, and either doubling the yarn or knitting looser will look better than trying to cram too many stitches on. Although since it'll be a while before I place an order, I may try to do a swatch with the Baby Ull to see if I can get where I need to be without ending up with something like cardboard. That was nice stuff to work with.
What I'd like to do, at least academically, is make out a list of projects I plan to do, go through the stash to see what can be done with yarn I already have, and then for the rest of it do a big yarn order somewhere with swatching balls for each project. Then after I've swatched stuff, I can do another order for the actual project, and no risk of having a huge project's worth of yarn that turned out to be inappropriate.
I'd prefer to buy yarn from a local yarn store, of course. Unfortunately, we don't exactly have one. The nearest is a 20 minute drive away by major highway, and it's a bit on the small and limited side -- although I will grant that the staff is very friendly. I went there during my last knitting go to get yarn for the Fiber Trends Felted Clog pattern, and ended up having to settle because I just couldn't find a feltable color combination I liked. One of the yarns is now being used to make a pair of psuedo-ballet slippers, because I absolutely could NOT make the gauge on those. I just couldn't get big enough.
I'd like to try again, only this time get plenty of extra yarn, enough that I could work with an extra strand if I needed to.
You know, I need to get over my fear of felting. Maybe I'll whip up a mouse for the kitties and felt that. I'd like to try this handdone method, because I am REALLY iffy about felting in our washing machine. It's rather old, and I don't want the risk of wrecking it with wool fluff. And I'd feel bad about using so much water for a small item.
So, that sounds like a plan. I'll nit up a kitty toy with the feltable wool I'm not using for the ballet slippers, pop down to Lowe's for a 5-gallon bucket and an unused plunger, give hand felting a try, get incredibly frustrated, and then using a pillowcase in the washing machine will look MUCH more reasonable. :) [And frankly, I've wanted a 5-gallon bucket around the house, and an extra plunger won't hurt.]
Next time we're at a department store, I ought to see if I can find a zippered pillowcase, or a very fine mesh lingerie bag -- the one we already have is too widely spaced for safe machine felting. They're cheap; it wouldn't hurt to have one around.
OK, I've babbled enough. I think I'm actually going to go do something now.
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