Hitchhiking on the Bandwagon

Last year, I was able to purchase an amazing skein of Bugga! from the Sanguine Gryphon booth at Maryland Sheep & Wool.  The colorway was called Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, and it's a beautiful blue-green-grey variegated.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz (the yarn version)

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My immediate thought was that it needed to be involved in some kind of Douglas Adams-related pattern, of course.  Careful searching revealed that 6,000 people enjoyed a beautiful shawlette pattern called Hitchhiker, which (when knitted with the correct amount of yarn) has 42 points along the edge.  It was fate! Kismet! The perfect match of squishy soft yarn, squishy soft garter stitch, Douglas Adams -themed yarn and Douglas Adams - themed pattern.

I started the shawlette, but tried to get all fancy by adding a stripe of stockinette every now and then, to show off the amazing colors of the yarn.
This resulted in so much frustration I eventually frogged the whole thing.


But I kept obsessing.  The pattern just kept calling to me - calling for THIS YARN.  So today I started again, without getting fancy, but of course with some modifications.  This is me we're talking about, here.

Since the pattern calls for 150g of Wollmeise (575 yards) to get 42 teeth, and Bugga! has only 412, I knew I'd have to get creative to get the magic number.

So, I've gone up a couple of needle sizes (to a US 4, 3.50mm) to create a less dense fabric.  And, more importantly, I've shortened the pattern repeat by two rows.  Given my larger needle size, this is actually resulting in teeth that are about the same length as their height.

This pattern starts so quickly at first!  It's the first day, and already I've knit 20 teeth.  I think that counts as 50% done, don't you?  Yep, definitely.