All I Wanna Do is Knit Leaves

I’ve had a maple leaf prototype motif for a while, but I haven’t used it in a project yet.  I haven’t either fixed the short row bulges, or found a place where the arches are an asset.  But it’s October here in New England, and all I want to do is knit leaves!

It occurred to me that I could make a circular leaf motif eventually into a hexagon, (circles have less area, that hexagons for the same radius, so I used circles to sketch/swatch.)

This let me grow the long stems at the same time as the leaf, and not have to work the wrong side every other row, the less to think about the better for me in development!

I used Mary Thomas’ row count for circular modules, and fiddled with this and that in leaves.

I got more intentional with this version, pulling out my protractor and making an acetate model from the leaf. The extra fabric confused me, so I made a plain round to see if Mary Thomas’ numbers were good.

Um, yes and no.  I changed my numbers to a spreadsheet with just the stitches in the  circumference = radius (in rounds) x pi x 2 X 5/7, to take into account the difference in stitch width and row depth.

So, here is the same leaf in a circle with my numbers.

It’s OK – ish.

So I have more leaves to knit, which is what I want to do now anyway.

In other news, I got to go to Rhinebeck with Dan, who found us a cute retro cabin to stay on by a lake.  I came in 4th in chopstick knitting, 3rd in speed crochet, and sat next to a judge while I did it.

A federal judge, not a contest one.  She would have placed too if her chopsticks hadn’t split in the middle of the game.

I’ve been writing one section of my upcoming sweater pattern for men a day, the charts are all making sense now, fitting on the page and flowing from one to another!  I may have this thing out to tech editing by November if I can keep this up.  I have a set of crochet mitts and a complex short row slide shawl in TEing too, and there is a secret project I got to do with friends that came out wonderfully beyond my expectations, it’s just awaiting translation into Spanish, and just the right romance prose.

What are you up to?