Our Headstart: Capes of Good Hope

We see some pretty amazing projects while participating in the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup. One such project is idoicaniam's modifications to Celestarium, making it a hooded cape as can be seen here. Amazing, right?  Well lucky for us, she was looking for some test knitters.  And so it was decided we would test knit versions of her hooded cape for our NEWTs this term (NEWT is a fancy word for a project that takes four months to complete).

Honeyspoon's Hooded Cape
My plan is to use Celestarium's sister pattern, Southern Skies, as the base. For the border along the front of the hood and the sides of the cape, I'm using this cable pattern:

For yarn I'm using madelinetosh merino light in the color, ink, and the beads I will be using for the star charts are glow-in-the-dark beads I bought at a yarn convention type event a year or two ago. It's going to be epic. My complete NEWT proposal can be found here.

According to the NEWT schedule, we were allowed to cast on at the start of December. I did in fact cast on and knit several inches however I ran into a hiccup with the flow of the cabling along the front edge of the hood. To do this right, I'm going to have to frog it and start over. I'm bummed but it will be worth it. This project as a NEWT was already a bit of a stretch for me. Now I'm really going to have to knit like the wind. Can I do it? We shall see.

Cyprienne's Hooded Cape
Just thinking about a hooded cape makes me want to write some free-verse poetry for children...
Capes are for superheroes!  Capes are for the opera!
Capes are for witches and vampires and magic!
I'll wear my cape to the grocery store!
Okay, I'll stop now.

Beads, beads, beads, bacon eggs and beads... hasn't got much beads in it...

170 beads down, something like 2000 to go!  Rather than cable on the front edge, I've been incorporating beads into the per-pattern seed stitch.  There will be a crazily-beaded knitted-on lower border, because anything that's worth doing is worth overdoing, amirite?

I'm using seven skeins of KnitPicks Gloss Fingering yarn in colorway Bordeaux and some 6/0 Czech glass beads in a mix of reds.  My complete NEWT proposal can be found here.

 

Knitting along together over webcam -- Happy New Year!