Lace updates

A couple of days ago I showed a pic of a triangular shawl on the blocking board.  I took it off and finally got outside for natural light for a picture, so here it is.

I'm glad you can see the hearts.  Otherwise all that work was for naught.

I also got another lace shawl blocked.  This one is PurlBee Wedding Shawl by Purl Soho.  Not having access to 20/12 bamboo, and not really wanting to fork out the $ for it, I obtained 2 balls of Ella Rae Lace Merino at my LYS (on sale at her Super Bowl sale.)  When that was not enough, I went to Ravelry and begged 2 more balls from a wonderful person (who sold me her 2 balls for less than the LYS on sale.)  And the finished product measures 96" x 30" and looks like this:

I put this shawl on the blocking board Tuesday morning about 10:30 a.m., and got a call at 2:30 from a realtor who wanted to show the house at 6:00 p.m. (our house here in Cheyenne is for sale.)  I wavered about taking it up and re-blocking it again the next day, but decided that if someone would let a shawl on blocking squares in the guest bedroom be a deciding factor on the house, they really didn't want it anyway!  So I left it, and when we came home after the realtor and clients left, there was a note on the shawl reading, "Nicely done.  I am a knitter and spinner too."  I felt better, because I figured another knitter would understand why I had left it.

So I am planning to wear this shawl with a blush-colored mother-of-the-bride dress in August when our youngest daughter gets married in Kansas City, assuming the bride doesn't have other dress code ideas.

Odds and ends, bits and pieces

Another experiment in knitting for me : double knitting

I had wanted to try this for quite some time, and when I found the chart for the Tardis (a la Dr. Who) I decided to try it.  It is really fairly simple, except that my color changes kept getting twisted around each other, so my double-knitting was not a tube, it was just 2-sided.  But I will keep trying.  I was intending this to be a Kindle cover, as it is just about e-reader size, but it is a wall decoration for my friend Nancy (a Who newbie) to put in her office.

My youngest daughter caught me at Thanksgiving and showed me something on her Pinterest board and asked if I could knit if for her.  It was a big bulky infinity cowl, so I showed her the GAP-tastic cowl pattern on Ravelry.  She gave it the thumbs up, so I bought the yarn and got busy.  I had this cowl, plus a matching hat in a mock cable twist pattern, when I came back to Missouri at Christmas.  With the weather in KC this week, she could probably use a big bulky scarf.

Comfort knitting -- socks and lace

I don't know if anyone else is like this, but I find that there are types of knitting that have a rhythm or ease that make me feel good inside .... like comfort food, only comfort knitting.  I have two basic types of comfort knits: socks and lace.  3x1 rib socks that are stable and predictable.  Lace that emerges from the needles and forms patterns.

I always have socks on needles.  I shrunk the last pair of boot socks that I made for John, so these are a superwash wool/nylon blend to replace those.  (The shrunken socks are now my felted house socks, and boy do they keep my feet warm!)  I always love knitting the foot portion, and then it takes forever to do the leg and I think I will never get done with them.  These are full-calf legs, and I was ready to kill something before it was over!  So now, I need to get some nylon yarn to carry with some alpaca, and make myself some nice warm socks.

I love knitting shawls.  I have a dresser drawer full of them, and still can't stop myself from starting another, so I always have lace on my needles.  (BTW, multiple projects is why I will always have fixed circulars, as well as an interchangeable set.  If you only have one project at a time, just the interchangeables would be fine, but that will never happen in my lifetime!)

This shawl is Little Valentine, done with the additional rows after the shawlette size, and is knit in Brown Sheep hand-dyed sock yarn.  If I had stopped at the shawlette size, I could have done it with one hank.  It measures 6 feet in wingspan, and 3 feet in depth.  I love blocking lace and seeing the design!  I couldn't wait for it to come off needles to take a picture.

New year, new skills

I am feeling like such a lemming when I say this but  ...... I have started my New Years knitting resolutions.  I shouldn't call them resolutions, because I am not usually very resolved to do them! So let's say "good idea list."  However, I am resolved to learn some new fiber skills.  At the top of my list is brioche knitting, also called fisherman's rib.  "It's ribbing, how hard can it be," I thought to myself.  And actually, back-and-forth brioche is fantastically easy.  I mastered it in about 5 minutes.  It has taken a little bit longer to catch onto brioche in the round.  However, I think I just about have the knack of it.  The real trick for me is "reading" the stitches so that when I put it down, I can figure out what to do when I pick it back up again.

I decided I needed a project to see if I could actually do brioche, so I put together a pair of boot cuffs over the weekend.  They were done back-and-forth and sewn up, and took practically no time.  I think they look pretty cool.

Then I said, "Hey, if it was this easy, let's try another set of boot cuffs in the round.  Saves the sewing."  So I got out some remnant yarn, and have started a pair in variegated Red Heart.  The hardest part was finding small enough needles to do the project.  I don't think I am experienced enough in brioche yet to Magic Loop the round.  I was not sure how I would like the variegated, but I think it picks up the rib and sets it off, because the"V" stitch in the middle is slipped and the stitches on each side of it are purled or wrapped.  The slip stitch being in a different color actually helped the effect, I think.

Fibering heaven

Last year for Christmas I asked Santa John for a drum carder.  He told me to order what I wanted, and I started looking around at different models.  The one I really wanted was an Ashford carder, but they are about $700 new and it's next to impossible to find them used.  I was getting ready to bite the bullet and buy one new when my mom fell, and all plans for anything fell to the bottom of my attention span.  Fast forward to last Friday night.  As I lay in bed, unable to sleep, I decided to get onto craigslist and see if any drum carders came up.  And as luck would have it, someone had just posted a drum carder on Thursday.  However, it was part of a complete setup, and the seller was not splitting the lot.  So, for $775, I walked away with the drum carder (Ashford, as I had wanted); an Ashford Traditional spinning wheel with spinning stool, jumbo and standard flyer and bobbins; carding combs, niddy-noddy, drop spindle, yarn winder, spinning books and magazines, and 3 garbage bags of wool.  I'm like a kid in a candy store.  I now have a spinning wheel for each of my two permanent houses.  And with the drum carder, I hope to bring some wool here to Missouri (where I have a top-loading washer) and start prepping some roving.

The seller lives outside Springfield and was going to be gone for Thanksgiving, but she was traveling to St. Louis today, so we met in Lebanon and traded.  She got a whole lot more room in her car, and and envelope with cash, and I got a lot of fiber dreams to get started on.

More shawls

I have discovered I love knitting shawls.  I don't know why, but I do.  I have a lace shawl on the needles right now, and recently finished these two.

I find self-fringing a fascinating (and frightening) adventure.  This is a pattern called Fringed Benefits, which I adapted by using 3 stitches at the edge for self-fringing instead of the 5 the pattern called for.  The reason I say this frightening is because you bind off all but the end stitches on each end, then unravel and tie off each row of un-bound stitches.  I worried a great deal as I began this.  And believe me, I tried it on a test-knit before I attempted it with the finished project!  This shawl was made with 3 balls of Bambool (I guess you got that is a bamboo-wool blend!)  Since 3 balls made a shawl that is 48" tip-to-tip, I think I will try again with the one ball I have left, and make a shawlette with it.

I absolutely love knitting with bamboo.  I love the softness, the drape, everything.  So I made another shawl, this one with Caron Spa yarn that I got on clearance for $2/ball.  Since it took 3 balls to make this shawl, I think the $6 was money well spent!

This pattern is the Firefly yarn Dayflower Shawl.  I made the end and short row shaping with one ball for each end, and used the third ball to add shoulder-to-shoulder width in the full depth of the pattern.  It is 72" long, which provides plenty of length to tie in front or drape long.

My own designs, start to finish

I finally got it together and have begun to knit with my handspun yarn.  The earwarmers below are from my early efforts at handspinning, and are knit with a pattern of my own creation that is listed in earlier blogs.  The earlier pattern is for worsted weight, and I adapted it for the chunky weight that these yarns turned out to be.  The yarn was spun from 4 oz each of Mountain Meadow roving.