Ten Years Later, My First Clapotis

I have two FOs to share today! First, my Purple Clapotis. Now, I have mentioned that well over twenty thousand other projects have paved the way for me on this one, right? I took the advice many people offered and made a couple of modifications. Otherwise, pretty straightforward. On to the details!

The rundown

Pattern: Clapotis by Kate Gilbert, as published in knitty.com’s Fall ’04 issue

Yarn: Plymouth Yarn DK Merino Superwash, 7 skeins/910 yards. I had 2gm left over. Winning!

Size made: A little bigger than the pattern calls for. I did one extra repeat of section 2 (made it a little wider) and one extra repeat of section 3 (made it a little longer). I used guidelines I found on the forums on ravelry for yarn usage for this pattern. Specifically, use 20% of your yarn on the setup and increase rows, 60% on the body and 20% on decreasing.

Needles: US8

Techniques used: Nothing too special–just Russian joins.

Modifications: Beyond fiddling with the size a little, I made two modifications. First, the columns of stitches to be dropped are set up by knitting the stitch on either side tbl on the RS. In addition, I purled those same sts tbl on the WS. Second, I purled the stitches to be dropped on the RS and knitted them on the WS so that I didn’t need a stitch marker to mark each one. Both of these were recommended by countless other knitters.

Ravelled: Here.

The pretty

I was worried while I was making this that it wouldn’t be large enough. When I blocked it, I realized I needn’t have been concerned:

Please excuse the messy guest room!

The finished measurements ended up being roughly 70″ x 20″. I think it turned out really nicely! I gifted it to my MIL yesterday and I think she really liked it. My hope was that it would be a nice light layer that would help keep off the draft without being too warm and I think the dropped stitch columns help achieve that.

Overall I like the pattern a lot, and could see myself making it again without too many changes. The only thing I didn’t really love was the way the stitches knit and purled tbl pulled away from the neighboring stockinette stitches a little. The best way to fix that, probably, would be to just purl them normally on the WS. However, I think the added stabilization they get from being purled tbl is probably necessary, depending on how slippery the yarn is.

Speaking of the yarn, I probably wouldn’t buy this one again unless it was on sale (again). It was all right and all, but it’s pretty splitty and has a low twist. The color was nice and it was fairly soft, so it would probably be fine for a different project. It just seemed to lose all its twist on the dropped stitch columns so I wouldn’t use it for another Clapotis.

I think I will save my other FO for a second post. See you soon!

Advertisement