Now that the birthday gift has been received (only a week late, oops…) I can now reveal my first Clapotis!
I have to confess that I’ve been avoiding making a Clapotis for several years. There are more than ten thousand finished Clapotii listed on Ravelry, and another five thousand people with this project in their to-do queue. I didn’t see what all the fuss was about, and I didn’t want to jump on a giant knitting bandwagon just for the sake of it. So I didn’t knit one. Until now.
The reason this gift was a week late is that I spent many, many evenings knitting swatches for scarves and then unravelling them again. I wanted to make a companion gift to go with these Slither gloves, so I was originally thinking of something stripy, or perhaps an intarsia or fairisle design that would make the most of the three colours. In the end I couldn’t come up with anything that looked nice on both sides (I’m fussy about that in a scarf), so I started looking for any kind of scarf or wrap that could be made with the amount of wool that I had.
Clapotis turned out to fit the bill perfectly, and I’m glad it did!
I couldn’t have done it though, without the help of Stricklady‘s handy Clapotis Chart. She breaks down each section of the scarf and charts exactly where to place your markers, and how many repeats you need to make. Using this, I could keep track of which row I was working on, and figure out exactly where to change the colours so that I could be sure I’d have enough yarn to reach the other end. Thank you, Stricklady!
While I was out walking at the weekend, chasing geese with the camera, I could have done with a Clapotis of my very own. It’s perfect for this in-between weather – not quite warm enough to go without a coat, but not quite cold enough to want to be completely bundled up. I might have to have a little hunt through my wool stash, and see what I can find…