Juneberry Triangle

I've been busy...

I finished a Juneberry Triangle for J's mom. She has spent quite a while hinting--not subtly, either--that she would love it if I were to knit her something. When I gave her the finished shawl, she looked at it and asked, "Is this something you made?" I told her it was, and the reaction was priceless: "ALL RIGHT!" She was pretty jazzed about it. She's keeping proudly displayed on the back of her favorite living room chair.

All the different lace patterns kept this project very interesting and challenging. Paying attention to the pattern was key. No working on Juneberry during Game of Thrones!

The yarn is some Elsebeth Lavold Cotton Patine that has been in my stash pretty much forever. I was thrilled to finally find a use for it.

And look, I even did all of the bobbles:

 

The ones on the edging too:

I may have to make one for myself one of these days!

Starfish shawl

My new shawl. Let me show you it:


I've had the Starfish Shawl pattern from Knitting Nature in my Ravelry queue for almost 2 years. Every time I looked at it, I'd see the words "CO 730 sts", and just couldn't bring myself to start it. I eventually figured out that I didn't want mine to be as large as the original, since anything that's too over-sized just looks ridiculous on me. I ended up downsizing it by about 6" in diameter, and only had to cast on 625 sts. ("Only" 625 sts.).

It was an easy knit, though. Once I figured out which row on the chart matched my number of cast-on stitches, the knitting went on auto-pilot. The yarn is Wool in the Woods Frizee, which has sadly been discontinued. It's a rayon yarn that's mostly smooth, but has little frizzy spots every so often. I'm so glad I finally found a pattern to show off these colors. The constant decreases in the pattern broke up any pooling quickly, and the drape of the yarn is just wonderful with this pattern.


The shawl has armholes to make it easier for those of us with narrow shoulders to actually keep it on. It can be worn with the longer end on the bottom:


Or with the longer end on top as an over-sized collar (which is probably how I'll wear it):


And if I don't feel like wearing it, it makes a great lap blanket. Or cat bed, if I ever let Cleo get a hold of it.

Old Man of Storr shawlette

I don't know about anyone else, but when I know I have a stash enhancement experience coming up--for example, the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival--I start to feel a little bit bad about my existing stash. "Why am I buying more when I haven't used what I already have?"

In order to assuage this feeling a bit, I decided to do a little bit of stash knitting. Out came a couple of hanks of "Sky Blue" Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, as well as a free shawlette pattern that I stumbled across on Ravelry. A few nights' worth of evening TV knitting, and...


The pattern is the Old Man of Storr shawlette (pdf) by Carie Kottman at knitcrush. It's a mostly-garter stitch triangle shawl, with a 5-stitch repeat lace edging. The pattern calls for fingering weight, but since I was using DK weight, I played around with the pattern a little bit. I added one repeat of the lace pattern in the middle of the garter stitch section, and then only did 28 rows of lace edging. It blocked out to 42" wide, which is just about perfect for me for wearing it with the point in front.



Even though it's a heavier yarn, the shawl is very light. And since we're expecting temperatures in the 80s this weekend, it'll be a good handknit to wear to Sheep and Wool!

Ridiculously easy stockinette cowl

I got an orphaned ball of SWTC Pure a couple of weeks ago from Jimmy Beans Wool. It's a fingering weight soy silk yarn, and given the softness and the weight and the drape it had, I decided to make a quick cowl. I tried a couple of stitch patterns, but the stockinette won out because it showed off the color the best. The yarn is actually 4 different shades of purple plied together, and the end result is a really nice depth of color effect.







I cast on 90 stitches on size 7 needles, and just worked in stockinette stitch until I was happy with the length. And now I have a purple cowl to go with my purple winter coat and my purple purse.

Wool Kerchief

My first FO of 2010! I finished this and pinned it out for blocking on New Year's Day.



It's about as simple as a pattern gets. Garter stitch in 2 alternating yarns to create stripes, with 4 increases every RS row.



The color changes on the Kauni were surprising. The blue-to-lavender one was very slow, but then the lavender-to-green one was KABLAM. There was a 4th color that I never even got to, which is a deep mauve-y pink. Even with the crocheted border, I was still nowhere near getting to the pink section in the yarn.



I liked the borders that several Ravelry members had added to theirs, so I decided to crochet on a scalloped border. I used a new-to-me technique (relief crochet) to give the scallops a little more depth and structure:


Raised stitches! On purpose!

Pattern: Silk Kerchief (pdf) by Kate Gagnon Osborn at Zeitgeist Yarns
Yarns used: Kauni Effektgarn 8/2, EF colorway and Knitpicks Bare fingering weight.

Wool Kerchief in progress

I've been waiting to post about this until the Kauni changed colors:


The pattern for this is "Silk Kerchief", by Kate Gagnon Osborn. The Kauni is lovely, albeit a bit scratchy; the Knitpicks Bare merino is softer, but has had 3 broken plies so far! Anyway, this is great mindless knitting, with the changing colors being the main point of interest. I loved seeing the green appear! It's currently about 13" tall/26" wide, so I have another 4.5-5" left to go.

Ariann

22 months was definitely long enough... I decided to finally finish my Ariann cardigan!

This picture best shows the actual color, which is this wonderful rosy pale pink. This is as close to a neutral color as I get.


I'm hoping that the yarn will stop shedding at some point. It's Ella Rae Shibu (color 25, "Mauve"), which is raw silk plied with a thick-thin single of viscose. The yarn feels a lot like cotton, but isn't as stiff. It has a lovely drape to it, and if I have to deal with little pink silk fuzzies, that's fine. Shibu has been discontinued, but there are still places online that have some.



I envisioned this going into my rotating collection of cardigans for the library, where the indoor temperature can be anywhere from 60 degrees to 90 degrees. We all have sweaters or shawls at our desks. This will be a great addition to my cardigan line-up, which currently consists of a blue cotton cardigan that my mom got me for Christmas 10 years ago. Yeah, definitely time to switch up my work sweater.

I LOVE this sweater. It's so comfy, and was an easy enough knit that I could work on it while watching TV or while waiting for raid ready checks in World of Warcraft. My only complaint is that the pattern (or at least, the version of the pattern that I have) does not include any instruction about how to work the lace pattern into the raglan decreases. Perhaps this was corrected in later versions of the pattern, but there's absolutely nothing to warn you that, oh yeah, STOP INCREASING or you'll have shoulders that go up to your ears. I remembered both Jody and Sarah mentioning this when they were working on their Arianns, so I was slightly less confused about what was going on. I just kept track of the lace increases and decreases adjacent to the raglan markers, and whenever the raglan decrease "ate" something from the lace pattern, I'd start working its corresponding stitch in stockinette.

Other mods: I worked the sleeves flat and then seamed them. I wanted to have a little extra structure to hopefully prevent gorilla arms when the silk yarn starts to stretch out. I stopped my sleeves at 18" for the same reason, and also because a lot of notes on Ravelry said that the sleeves as written were very long. I made my collar 3" instead of 4" because I wanted a smaller collar.



I originally wanted dark wooden buttons, but these metal ones caught my eye instead. I got them at Hancock Fabrics, and lucked out that I happened to be there while all notions were 50% off.



Comfy comfy comfy:


Pattern: Ariann by Bonne Marie Burns
Yarn: Ella Rae "Shibu", color 25 "Mauve". 8 balls = 840 yards.
Needles: US 7

Pooling Stripes

I ended up putting ties on two diagonal corners. Tie those together, play with the fabric in front, and you get a nice illusion that there's more fabric than there actually is (this came out to be 14" by 8"). The second picture shows it with the short sides pinned together in the back, which is a snug fit! If I had sewn those sides together, I wouldn't have been able to get it over my head.

Of course, the unfortunate thing was that I finished this before the midnight release of Harry Potter on Tuesday night, so I no longer had purse knitting... but had finished it too close to the release to be able to wear it, since it was still blocking. A bunch of us went up to Arundel Mills for the release and had a blast. The theater did a great job handling the throngs, which were substantial due to the 10 (!) sold-out screens. They were very nice about switching around one of our tickets so we could all be in the same theater, and we were comfortably in our seats by 10:45. The movie was great, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again on Friday with a bunch of my coworkers.

Pooling can be good

I've been playing around with this "pooling stripes" project for a while. I love how the color sequence of the yarn takes center stage!







This was done with the leftover "Desert Flower" Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock from my Calorimetry, so I only had enough for something cowl-sized.

The stitch pattern was a very simple YO-k2tog done on both sides to make the fabric reversible. It gave me a lot of play in terms of being able to align the color changes. Some variation was inevitable because the color lengths in the yarn didn't stay consistent. The beige in particular would run anywhere from 0.5" to 2.5", so being able to play with the tension and the size of the YOs made a world of difference.

More pictures when it's dry!

Miss Dashwood

For a coworker's first grandchild:


I probably don't even need to say this: the baby is a girl. And as Lynn has been telling everyone, she has two sons, a husband, and two boy dogs, so she's been due for a girl in the family for a while. Ah, a perfect excuse to haul out Miss Dashwood, the girliest, ruffliest baby hat pattern I know of. For good measure, I used this fantastic color of Lily Sugar 'n' Cream, "Rosewood", which has the distinction of looking exactly like Neapolitan ice cream.

My only mod to the design was to leave off the earflaps and just attach a couple of yarn braids to the back of two of the bobbles. It makes it a little more summery. Other than that, I knit it as written, bobbles and all. Normally, I hate bobbles. I love them on this hat, though.

Here's Terttu!

My saucy new Finnish friend wants to say hi:










I loved this pattern so very much. Lankakomero's site is mostly in Finnish, but the pattern does have clear English instructions on how to follow the charts. The big graphic pattern means it actually works with variegated yarn, which doesn't happen with too many lace patterns. This was one 475-yard skein of Ellen's Half-Pint Farm merino/tencel sock yarn; it yielded a shawl 44" wide. It's a nice over-the-shoulder shawl.

Guess what's blocking?

Terttu is done and in the final stages of prep!

Here's my blocking board, also known as "a towel on my bed":


I had a surprise trip to the emergency room yesterday after I fainted in the apartment rental office, and was KICKING MYSELF for not having my purse with me. This would have been some prime knitting time. (No, there's nothing wrong; according to the many many tests they ran, I'm in very good health).

Anyway, I finished up the last few rows today, wove in ends, and am properly wet-blocking this. A good once-over spritz from my iron's spray feature did the trick.

I'll get some good pictures when it's dry. It came out to a very respectable size of 44" wide; not bad for a skein of sock yarn!

Whee!

I'm back from a 2-week trip to see J! We had a wonderful time together. Lots of movies (Star Trek, Wolverine, and Terminator, plus tons more on video), bike rides together, me using him as a guinea pig for recipes... and the cat was happy to see me as well. Last time, she completely ignored the knitting. This time, yarn meant playtime.

I started a new project to take with me the night before I left. Want to see?





It's Terttu from lankakomero. LOVE. The lace isn't too complicated, so I figured this would be a safe project for airport and plane knitting. Turns out that it's addictive, and pretty easy to memorize... I'll keep going until I'm in danger of running out of yarn (which is Ellen's Half-Pint Farm merino-tencel sock yarn in an unknown colorway of green and brown).

Laceweight alpaca, yum

It occurred to me that I have a WIP that I haven't shown here yet:


The day I got my Fall 08 IK, I grabbed some Misti Alpaca laceweight from my stash and cast on for Eunny's Biased Eyelet Stole. I figured this would be a good anti-project for the Kilt Hose That Won't Just Knit Themselves. Something soft and lacy and lightweight for the time when I need something other than heavy black wool. Alpaca makes me swoon. :)

Anyway, about a week in I got a message from someone on Ravelry asking where I'm weaving in all the ends. See, the lace rows are done with one strand, but those garter ridges are done with three strands. Carrying them along the edge presumably gives too much bulk there, as the pattern specifically instructs to join two strands for the garter rows and then cut off two strands. That's 4 ends to weave in every 16 rows.

My solution:


The two ends from joining are knit along with the first 3-strand garter row. The two ends when I'm cutting off the extra yarn are being woven into the second 3-strand row (the one that I've just finished knitting). Short of leaving all of the ends as-is and declaring it all to be fringe, that's the best solution I can come up with. You can see the ends on the most recently-worked garter ridge in the picture here.

Anyway, send good vibes to me and my extended network of coworkers over the next couple of days. They're deploying a big software upgrade today which goes live tomorrow. We said our goodbyes to our old circ software last night; one coworker took pictures of a couple of the icons (we all agree that we'll miss the Angry Claims Returned Guy icon, who is being replaced by Even Angrier Claims Returned Guy)

The socks that never end

Well, I guess if I talk about the unending kilt hose, I should show where we are:





I am about, oh, halfway done the leg. I have another few repeats of the calf decrease rounds, then another 8" of leg ribbing, then turn the heel, then approximately a size 12 foot.

I'm having pretty severe motivation problems. They're not for me, so I can't just put them in a time-out basket for a few weeks. And if I don't want to be working on them for the next 6 months, I have to find a way to work on them MORE, not less.

They will be gorgeous when they're finished. That's my mantra for this project: They will be gorgeous when they're finished.

Ariann update

I'm steadily plugging along on Ariann:





I love this pattern. Jody convinced Sarah to cast on for one, so that's a third Ariann that Jody's responsible for (I think she deserves a commission). I don't think I can have it done for MDS&W, although 3 of us in matching sweaters would be too funny.

Speaking of MDS&W, several of my friends (including the aforementioned Jody and Sarah) are running/vendoring at the Cloverhill booth this year, which is just going to be nifty. Go check out what's being planned!

2008's first FO!

I can't believe this is my first FO this year, but I had to start a new Flickr set for it and everything.

A hat for the BF:




He doesn't know yet that he's getting this hat, but he's well aware of the fact that I knit, and I think it's a good introduction to the world of random knitted gifts.

Anyway, the pattern is the Ski Beanie from Son of Stitch and Bitch, and the yarn is Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed, which was lovely to work with and awful to seam with (nubby + easy to pull apart + mattress stitch = "Crap, I broke the yarn again"). If I were to do this pattern again, I'd knit it in the round. The garter rib is plenty stretchy, so it will hopefully fit J just fine.

Allergy season hit for me last week, although it was so bad that I thought I had a cold at first... stayed home from knit night, drank lots of tea, went to bed early. It wasn't helping at all, and then my sinuses kicked in and I realized that it was just my allergies going absolutely crazy because of the mild winter we had here. I got to escape up to NJ for Easter, and things are getting a little bit better now that we've had some rain, but I have to say, last week was as miserable as my allergies have ever been. Ugh.

Long time no blog, eh?

Ok, I've gone a little bit AWOL, but it's been for good stuff. I *have* actually been working on some knitting...



That's Ariann by Bonne Marie Burns. She sashayed on to the needles on New Years Day; what better way to kick off 2008? I'm using Ella Rae Shibu, which is a 90% silk, 10% viscose yarn. The drape on the stuff is gorgeous, and the viscose thread makes it look almost tweedy. The only drawback is that the yarn sheds a little bit because the silk is a little bit nubby... I stand up after working on it and have little pink fuzzies on my lap. All in all, I'll take it.



The color is better in the first picture... these are courtesy of my new camera, and I'm just excited to have a camera that adjusts for different light conditions. The old camera, which is a bare bones point-and-shoot, gets testy if you're shooting in anything other than direct sunlight. Even bright indirect sunlight requires either a flash or a tripod... and if do you take a picture in direct sunlight, it ends up overexposed and washed out. The above pictures were taken with the new camera using ambient light from a floor lamp; no flash, no tripod. I'm hoping better camera = better pictures = prettier blog. :)

One last FO for 2007

Well, I got a version of the Clapotis done for my grandmother. It became evident in the week leading up to Christmas that I wasn't going to be able to finish a full-length scarf in time, so I switched gears and made it into a neckwarmer/cowl.



It's about 2.5 feet long when laid out flat, so there's plenty of fabric to play around with. I added two buttons and buttonholes, so it can either be fastened with the ends crossed like how I have them in the picture, or fastened so it meets end to end, or not buttoned at all and held closed with a pin or brooch. It's loaded with options. I was really happy with it, and may even make a version for myself down the road. :)

Happy New Year!

A little bit of Christmas knitting

Think I can have this done by Christmas?



It's the start of a Clapotis scarf for my grandmother, which I started over the weekend. I'm into the straight row repeats now, so this is the part that can just go on cruise control. It's narrow enough that I can get a row done whenever I have a spare minute. I even had it with me at 'Legal Issues for Supervisors' training and worked on it during our "Go get water or go to the restroom" break (today, volunteer supervision; tomorrow, world conquest. One step at a time, people.) I think I can get this scarf done if I make a conscious push to do so.



The yarn is nice stuff. It's RYC Luxury Cotton, which is 2 plies of cotton and 2 plies of viscose/silk. It's a little splitty, but show me a cotton that isn't. The viscose/silk plies give it some sheen without being gaudy, and it feels like it will have a good drape once it's finished and blocked. Hopefully in 13 days. :)