Jumping on the Annis bandwagon

I absolutely fell in love with the Annis shawl pattern when it was first released on Knitty a couple of months ago. Judging by the number of Annises (Annii?) on Ravelry, I was far from alone in that sentiment.

And how could you not love it? It's a simple, gorgeous pattern, but has enough there to make it interesting. Lace, nupps, short rows... I'm into the short rows now, but the lace was a joy. Yes, even the nupps. There was a great tip in mwhite's Annis project notes to do the nupps not as p7tog, but as slip 4, p3tog, pass 4 sts over, which is what I opted to do. I don't think the shortcut detracted from the nuppulosity at all.




The pattern uses lace weight, but I'm using Tess Super Socks and Baby sock yarn. It worked out to be the same gauge even with the thicker yarn.

I hope the short rows go quickly!

Impasto: Finito!

I almost went with "Impasto Was Fast-o", but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I finished up Impasto and got it blocked this past Sunday:


Blocking worked magic on this. The fabric is so light and has such a nice drape to it. The AC in our staff area at work has been on the fritz again, but I've been able to wear this shawl without overheating. And it's a wool blend, so that's saying something.



It looks so complicated, and was so easy. I love projects like that.



I'm loving all the brightly colored projects that are popping up on Ravelry, but I bet this pattern would also look gorgeous in shades of natural wool.

Pattern: Impasto Shawlette by Susanna IC, in Interweave Knits Summer 2010 issue.
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, in Flax, Sky Blue, and Woad
Needles: Size 10

Impasto!

Last weekend was the annual Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I was VERY well-behaved; it's possible I've hit stash saturation.

Brooks Farm always breaks me. I got a skein of Mas Acero:


And a skein of Willow:


More pictures from MDSW 2010 in my Flickr set.

-----

I cast on a new project last Saturday with my blue/cream Silky Wool stash. When I first bought the yarn, the store didn't have enough of any one color to really do anything with, so I got 3 skeins of an off-white, 3 skeins of sky blue (you saw about a skein of that in the last post), and one skein of a darker blue. I figured I'd someday make a colorwork sweater.

Well, it's not a sweater, and it's sort of colorwork...


I cast on for the Impasto Shawlette out of the Summer 2010 Interweave Knits. For one thing, I loved it in the magazine. For another, saying the word "IMPASTO" with a thick Italian accent is really fun.

The "colorwork" is a 4 row slip-stitch pattern; the picture shows one repeat with all three colors that I have. My colorwork section is shorter than the one in the magazine. I have fewer colors, and while I could have added more rows to match the colorwork length of the model in the magazine, I really liked how it looked with 2 repeats. So, instead of having a shawl that's 16" high in the middle, mine will be 12". I'm using the off-white for the short row section that will make up the bulk of the shawl (which I'm already well into). I can't wait to get this off the needles and blocked!

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!

Spring is here!

After the grey, snowy, slushy, icy, snowy, blah, did-I-mention-snowy winter we had here, I couldn't resist these hyacinths at Trader Joe's.


The lavender and green put me in the mood for SPRING! I decided to finally get a start on the Kitchen Cure Spring 2010, and have spent most of the day today weeding things out of my freezer and refrigerator. There were some historic finds in there. Historic, and also fuzzy. Eww. Things are much better now.



Back to work -- the pantry is next!