Posted by: Nysssa
Many of us have at least one clap under our belts, and decided that another one, plus some friendly peer pressure for those of us who hadn’t made one yet, would be in order.
The Clap – or Clapotis – is a scarf/shawl that is knit on the bias with dropped stitches that make for perfect Twitter updates as progress reports.
I’ll update more later, or someone else will. I’m going to go eat dinner, watch Lost and knit some more!
**Enter Joanna**
This is my third Clap. The first, I knit for my mom and I nearly didn’t give it to her, I loved it so much. The second, I wear as a scarf nearly all the time in cold weather or in my chilly office. As a matter of fact, I wear my blue Clap so often, I decided a few months ago that I needed a second one in a different color. When the idea of a Social Knitworking Clapotis Knit-Along came up, I was all in.
I’m using fingering weight yarn for a lighter scarf than the pattern suggests. In the photo at the left you can see I’ve completed 8 drop stitches. Isn’t it pretty?
Modifying the Clapotis pattern for different yarn weights and amounts is very easy since some genius discovered The Rule of Fifths. Here’s how the rule works: Weigh the yarn you’re using. Take that weight and divide it by 5. That number, 1/5 the total amount of your yarn, is the amount you’ll use to knit the Set-up and Increase Rows of the Clapotis pattern (Sections 1 and 2). Section 3 of the pattern, the Straight Rows, will take 3/5 the total amount of yarn, and Sections 4 and 5, the Decrease and Final Rows, will take the last 1/5 of your yarn.
In my case, I’m using three skeins of Knitpicks Stroll Multi in the Hearth colorway. This yarn comes in 50g skeins, so I have 150g in total. 1/5 of my total weight is 30g. So I used aproximately 30g of yarn in the Set-up and Increase sections of my Clap. Since that took less than a full skein of yarn, I’m using the last of that first skein and a full second skein in the Straight Rows. I’ll also start the last skein in the Straight Rows, but I’ll start weighing my skein as I knit. When I knit down to the 40g point I’ll get ready to start the Decrease Rows.
If our knit-along were a race, Nysssa would be winning. If you follow her tweets, you know she’s already started the decrease rows. I think that’s crazy awesome. And here she is, Evil Genius Nysssa, wearing her mostly finished Clapotis.
She’s using Halcyon Yarn, Victorian 2-Ply in black. Since she has a ridiculous amount of this yarn in her stash (5 skeins), she’s not using her total amount of yarn for her Clap. Rather, she worked the increase rows as written and knit the straight sections until she got to a length she liked.
#1 written by ConsterMonster January 25th, 2010 at 05:59
I’m wearing the blue clap Joanna mentions in this post. She left it at my house accidentally on Saturday. It’s so nice. I really need to get the clap!
#2 written by springviolet January 26th, 2010 at 11:31
@ConsterMonster
Last night you were wearing my blue clap and said, “Remind me to give this back to you.”
Of course I forgot. D’oh!