Rose Again

I haven't been making rose brooches since my elbow started playing up. I had a skein of variegated yarn which I'd dyed especially, though. It's been talking to me and I've been resisting. This morning I decided to try a knitted rose.  

I like the range of colours. So much so that I'm tempted to risk a bout of crochet to see how it looks in my favourite pattern. Of course the dyed variegations can never really reproduce the beauty of the real thing.

Another Way

I rang my friend Knitspin Girl last night to talk about knitted roses--what else! I told her I'd been knitting my roses by increasing every stitch in every second row, then arranging the resulting curly strip into a spiral flower shape. She said, "the only one I know is where you cast on a gazillion stitches and then decrease". My immediate thought was that would be more work than the method I'd been using, but you know how it is--I had to try it.




















I cast on 130 stitches and decreased every stitch in every second row. It's a much looser result than I'd expected. I guess that's because of the way the ruffles form as stitches are decreased. I guess I could rearrange the petals a bit with the yarn ends.

Meanwhile, I've been tackling the weed invasion in the sunny breaks in the weather. I took another bootload of green waste to the tip yesterday. And I really should get out there again this morning.