Beach Skirt

So, in honor of the fact that I have been at the beach all weekend, I am going to talk about my beachy project.

The beach

I have been working on making a skirt for a bit over a year as my "don't have to think about" project. It is great to have one of these. A simple pattern that can be done in the dark, in class, or in 5 minute chunks.

I am often ambitious. I want to make something interesting. Interesting is good. But those beautiful lace shawls with 24 stitch repeats don't lend themselves to being worked on in class, which is when I have the most time to knit.

This skirt, however, is so easy that I had to spice it up a little bit.

First of all, I am using Brooks Farm Willow yarn, a blend of wool and bamboo. I thought it would be a stiff yarn, so I am using a pattern written for linen. Except that it is not: it is some of the bounciest, stretchiest yarn I have ever used. Hopefully the skirt will hug my curves, there is no way to know how it fits until I finish it.

Most of the yarn for the project

The other problem with the yarn is that it seems to have faded. i have no idea how this happened, since it was not put in the sun. I guess we will see if it continues to fade. I might end up with a pale blue skirt instead of a bright blue one!

The pattern for the project is from DROPS design. Of course I found this pattern on Ravelry, and of course I modified it heavily.

First of all, the skirt was all off-white. That is great, but I had two colors of yarn, both of which are blue. I decided to make the flounce in light blue, and the rest of the skirt in dark blue.

Second, the pattern calls for hundreds of rows of stockinette. That was just too simple for my tastes. So, I looked in my stitch dictionaries, and found a nice diagonal herringbone pattern that would give the skirt a bit of a twist.

Current state of the skirt on the needles

The pattern is very simple:
R1: Knit 3, pull yarn to front, slip 3, repeat around
R2: Knit (since this is in the round)
Repeat rows 1 and 2, advancing one stitch.

Here is a close-up:

I haven't decided how I am going to do the waist yet, whether just an elastic or with a drawstring, but I don't need to decide that in advance. I am more worried about the fact that the yarn seems to be going very quickly, and I might not have enough to make it a good length. I may need to add another color on top of the darker blue.

I do think that I will embroider some fluffy white yarn to some of the edge, to make it look more like breaking waves, but not until I know how long it is.

More to come, I will keep you all posted.