Stash Diving and Swatching

so today I went stash diving for Orangina (click on link for more detail on swatches)

and Swatched:

• Bouton D'or Mango in deep violet - a 50/50 blend modal and cotton on 3's
• Jaeger Aqua in violet on 3's
• Zitron Samoa in sapphire blue on 3's
• Jaeger Siena in meadow and a blue - have leftovers from other projects, thinking a Missoni-like stripe here, on 3's
• and an old shiny Marguerite, on 2's

cast on 22 stitches and did 4 repeats on each. Took pics before blocking. Didn't get close to 4" on any of them, witness the various sizes here. The Sienna, which is the only true 4ply cotton measures 3 1/4" across 22 st after steam blocking. the other cottons are all closer to a sport weight, and where it shows up isnt' so much in the dimension across but in the heft of the swatch. It's not objectionable necessarily, but it will make for a bulkier Orangina than a true 4 ply. And the Lanas Margarita Yucatan - wow I love it! PITA knitting those K2tog's but such a pretty fabric. The camera lighting really makes it shiny in the pic, but it is a truly pretty lace fabric. Just barely measures 3", but I think I'm going to make an Orangina out of it anyway - I'll just re-figure the # of stitches.

So, my final choices for the cotton Orangina are the two Jaeger yarns. Maybe both! I love the Zitron yarn, but this isnt' the stitch for it. It is 10 very fine yarns plied together, and it just doesnt' look pretty in this stitch. and the Bouton D'or is just heavy and flat. If I hadn't knit up 4 other samples I might think it was fine, but ...

BTW, I tried the ssk instead of the skp on one of the swatches (someone on the crafters KAL suggested it) and didn't like it nearly as well as the way the pattern is written. For my money, I'll stick with the skp.

One other note though regarding the way the pattern is written. (If you've never knit lace or followed a chart, ignore this, you'll be FINE) but, If you are an experienced lace knitter or are used to following charts, you may want to renumber the rows for the lace chart. I had the hardest time wrapping my mind around what row I was on because she has the knit (RS rows) on even #'s and the purl (WS rows) as odd numbers. I didn't know I was so entrenched in my thinking that RS rows are always odd # rows until I couldn't mentally keep what row I was on. As soon as I rewrote it, so that the first purl row was a foundation row, then started my lace repeats as rows 1 and 3 - I was fine. It is a really really easy lace to knit, and I think it'll go fast and be a lot of fun.