September and August Finished Objects

Finished Objects!

Scollay Cardigan by Karie Westermann

Love love love love this cardigan! I knit it in the suggested wool, New Lanark Mill DK which is wool tweed with silk slubs, in the colour Milano (I keep forgetting if it's Milano or Verona - both are lovely, I got the pinker one). I knit the XL size, my gauge was a tiny bit larger than the pattern recommends which I accounted for in the length but not the width as I wanted a smidge more room than the XL but not as much as the XXL. I also knit the sleeves flat, rather than have to figure out if my gauge was different in the round (hint, it almost always is). I bought several sets of buttons trying to find the right ones for the cardigan. One set was the right colour but the wrong size and the others were all the right size but the shade of pink. I picked coconut flowers that had been glazed pink on the front and attached them wrong side up so the pink is against the wool. It works surprisingly well.

Full Hap by Gudrun Johnston

I finished this back in July before the end of the Hapalong (hap knit-a-long) but it was a gift so I couldn't share a picture. I bought the pattern along with the craftsy class and I loved everything about it. I loved participating in the Hapalong, I loved watching the craftsy class and listening to Ms Johnston - it was very soothing and interesting if that makes sense, and I loved knitting the pattern and seeing all the different colour combinations people came up with. Three of my colours are from Judith Glue a little tourist tat shop in town except instead of tat they largely stock things made in Orkney. The yellow, green, and light blue were each £10 and described only as "100g 100% lambswool". The blue is mystery wool from my stash, described only as "£4.00" on what looks like a charity shop tag. The bright blue was heavier than the others, but worked well enough and, I think, largely made the shawl. I'm sad to say that I don't have a great feeling that the woman I gifted the shawl to will love it in the way we hope any knitted gift will be loved, but such is the nature of life, right?

I'm using the three Orkney colours to knit a half hap in between other projects (it started as my travel project to Amsterdam but despite the four hour delay leaving, I only got about 20 sts knit the whole trip). The half-hap is so much faster to knit than the full size one that I'm ready to accuse everyone who knit one in the KAL of cheating or witch craft or something. I'm on the edging now and I've decided to knit back and forth, rather than turn it around every 8-15 stitches. It's not really fast yet, but it may get there as my left to right knitting improves. I may have enough wool left over to knit another half hap with the third colour as the centre.

Brainless by Yarnissima

These are "brainless" socks, one of my two default toe-up sock patterns, in a cotton-blend Opal sock yarn. I started them before Easter and finished them in time for Autumn. That's how long it takes me to knit a pair of socks, for a value of knitting that mostly involves knitting while following Little Djinn around the floral hall. I'm proud of myself for getting the stripes to match up, though I seem to have done the heels differently and the second way doesn't fit as well. Also, the stripes somehow got off on the second cuff. I don't care enough to redo them. I wore them yesterday when it was really hot (20C/70F) and my feet were too hot even with the cotton, so I doubt I'll bother with cotton blend wool socks again, especially as I didn't really like any of the colours, these are just the ones I disliked the least.

The good news is that, while I was knitting these, I found out that my favourite yarn dyer uses Opal's regular sock yarn as the base of one of her sock yarns so I can get the wool I like in colours I love instead of just being okay with!

Fudge by Barbara Prime

Fudge the Dog was a kit from Knit Now magazine and as soon as it arrived in late May Little Djinn insisted I knit it. I mentioned her a few months ago, but I don't think I ever posted a picture, so here she is in all her glory. The kit included the yarn and eyes and Little Djinn loves her. The current issue of Knit Now magazine has a kit for Puss in Boots by the same designer so if you think she's cute you can knit something very similar and get a very nice magazine not very much. I knit everything but Fudge's body in the round instead of flat to save seaming up, and as Puss doesn't have the spots I'll probably knit her entirely in the round.

Mithral Hat by Carol Feller

In preparation for her next pullover KAL, Carol Feller released a hat pattern using the same stitch pattern which was a bonus pattern for buying the pullover pattern in advance and can be used as a swatch for the sweater. High from the yarn fumes after finishing my Scollay, I bought the pattern and ordered the yarn (also discounted in September from Purlescence) and quickly knit it up. Then I blocked it and realized it's a disaster, so I frogged it (the knitters out there all gasped in shared pain at frogging a brushed yarn) and re-knit it on larger needles. I just cast off the second attempt today, blocked it over a balloon in front of the space heater, and took a picture. I still need to measure to get my gauge so I'll be ready when the first part of instructions (it's not really a "clue" when we know what the finished garment will look like) are released tomorrow. And, yes, Mithral is a LotR reference.

Beanies and their longer cousin slouchies don't do anything for me, but the hat has already been claimed by my little knitwear model (protip: don't hire a model who wants to do a photo-shoot whilst bouncing on the bed unless you have a much better camera than the one in my phone).

A Hat, a Headband, and Another Hat

At the Edinburgh Yarn Festival, one of my only yarn purchases was a skein of Old Maiden Aunt's beautiful Superwash BFL DK in the colour Midnight, which is a lovely tonal dark purple with hints of violet and navy. It's the recommended yarn for Karie Bookish's Baskerville which I've admired since it was released in the OMA accessories yarn club in 2012. I've ordered OMA yarn online (sock yarn back in March of that year and while the colours are lovely they're perhaps not ones I would have picked out in person. Taking pictures of colours is an art, not a science (for example, looking at the website, I would have thought Midnight was a dark blue with purple undertones - it's very much a purple), so I put OMA on the list of "squish in person". I'm so glad I finally got a chance! I cannot say enough nice things about the wool or the colour.

I'm really happy with the hat, too. Tams/berets frame my face and suit me more than beanies, and it was a pleasure to knit. I particularly like how neatly the crown decreases fit with the lace pattern. Little Djinn really likes my hat, too.

Too much. Every time I turn around she's pulling it out of the pram and wandered off with it. This from a child who won't otherwise wear a hat. I should probably accept the inevitable and just knit a second one. The colour on her is the accurate one.

My Baskerville only used about half of the skein so I knit another pattern I had queued for years, Knitted Bliss' Strada Headband. I made mine a little shorter, used a provisional CO, and grafted the ends together to make a loop rather than a button closure. It is perfect for keeping my ears warm around the house or a little bit of warmth (and hair control!) on a warmish spring day. We had a bunch of those back in March when I knit it and not so many since. I still have around 10g of wool left so I added it to my DK toys stash.

Continuing my Karie Bookish love-fest, she released a free hat pattern around Easter, Seaforth. I knit it with some mystery yarn I was given when a friend of a friend decided knitting wasn't the hobby for her and destashed everything. I used just under half the wool and I'm thinking of maybe doing a cowl in the same stitch pattern with the remainders. The hat itself was a fun knit, the ribbing in particularly reminding me of dancing a zweifacher. Alas it's slightly too big for me (a risk when doing a yarn sub, particularly with mystery wool) but I figured if it didn't fit me I would pass it on to someone else,, in this case, Chris who appreciates a warm hat that covers his ears and likes bright colours and patterns.

Little Djinn likes this one, too.

Things are Starting to Come Together

We got a lot done on Saturday. We wandered around looking for a dresser for Little Djinn, both in charity shops and furniture stores, but didn't find anything we agreed on. I liked a squat one we saw in a charity shop but Chris thought it was meh and he liked an almost £400 one in a furniture store, but I'm not willing to spend that kind of money on something that will get treated the way children treat their furniture. So we're still looking. We then went to the curtain place that did the curtains in our bedroom and my FiL's place and made an appointment to get fitted for blackout blinds, both in our room and the nursery. He came around on Monday to take measurements but wasn't able to bring the book of blinds with him as they were being viewed by another customer, so we still need to pick those and curtains for the nursery.

We went to the post office in Tesco's Inshes to pick up the package we missed Friday, which turned out to be from Miss Laura and full of gifts for Little Djinn, including a blanket knit by her mother. Laura also sent us a little stuffed lamb which was on our baby registry which was particularly impressive given that the posting date was before we created the registry. I've always know that Miss Laura has impeccable taste.

We also swung by the new mega craft store in Inshes, though "mega" is a relative term. Certainly larger than anything comparable in the area, though it would be a bit small for a Michael's. I got some sock yarn for Christmas-gift socks (not for anyone who reads this, but one never knows) and some cotton yarn to try and crochet some snowflakes. The secret to happiness here is going to have to be low expectations as the only thing I am less confident in than my crochet abilities is my ability to follow a pattern using UK, and thus different from US, crochet terminology. If only it wasn't the same terms for different "stitches"....

On Sunday we cleaned the house a bit before going to my FiL's for tea (the beverage). He tried to call to tell us not to come as he had a cold, but we'd already left when he rang as I needed to be at work after the shop closed to help prep the shop for a corporate visit which should have happened this morning. My manager was freaking out about getting ready and the only real comfort I could offer was that, given the number of shops they planned to visit in one day, they couldn't possibly stay long. Their plan was to come up Wednesday, visit our shop from 8-10, and be in Aberdeen by lunchtime. Everyone who lives in, and probably most people who have visited, the highlands hears this and blinks. They clearly have no idea the actual distances and travel times involved. Hopefully they'll consider shipping product based on distance it has to travel weighed as a slightly higher factor against volume of the destination store. Promotional material that arrives the day before or day of an event is slightly less useful than one might imagine. Hopefully it went well and my manager can enjoy a highly-deserved virgin cocktail or five (like me, though for different reasons, the poor woman isn't allowed a drink) when she gets home.

On Monday, Chris and I had our first ante-natal class which was mildly irritating in a "why are we using all these silly euphemisms for a straightforward biological event?" kind of way. I'm going to take it on faith that the midwife leading the class (she's not a "community midwife", eg one who might actually be assisting in my labour) did pass courses on anatomy and physiology and is merely operating under the impression that we all failed basic biology. But we got a tour of the post-natal ward where we'll be after Little Djinn arrives, until we're ready to go home. The midwife assured as that being discharged 6 hours after delivery is not SOP here, and that three days is much more common at which I blanched. Three days stuck in a hospital, twiddling my thumbs? Fortunately the recovery ward's own material suggests one day before discharge which seems perfect for learning to nurse and a few supervised diaper changes before returning to the solace of one's own bed and partner.

One of the ladies in my Tuesday night knitting group is also pregnant, a few weeks further along than I am, and her ante-natal class started on Wednesday. The classes normally start around 32 weeks, but they're trying to squeeze us all in before Christmas, so I'm getting an early start.

Speaking of early, they called to cancel my ultra-sound appointment for next week, the one I was so excited about (and impressed to have gotten an appointment notification a month in advance). Apparently it was scheduled in error and they'll send me another letter to reschedule for the week before Christmas. Sadness. Chris suggested we could make private appointment to have an ultrasound anyway, but as much as I love getting to see Little Djinn, I'm not convinced it would be worth it. I'm a lot more used to being poor than he is.

That's the life of a pregnant woman. I'll be 31 weeks tomorrow, with 9 weeks left to go. I didn't take a picture this week, so you'll just have to take my word for it that I continue to look rotund. I'm starting to be exhausted all the time: yesterday I was ready to crawl back in bed half an hour after I got up and I'd actually slept through the night for once. I finished the center panel for the baby blanket I'm knitting for Little Djinn, picked up one of the side panels, and am working my way through the first lace chart (though it's so tiny, I'm using the written directions instead. My kingdom for a photocopier). I also took a picture of the purple blanket I knit way back whenever, blocked and displayed on the bassinet (Moses basket) in the nursery.

This is turning into a weekly update

First things first, Princess is doing much better. She's being anointed twice a day - a process she really doesn't like though it validates my daily corporate cuddling (I hold her like a baby and give her skritches until she purrs (and only then will I let her go if she wiggles)). In some ways, Princess is a lot easier with things like this than Ginger Kitty - he's a big scaredy cat and struggles desperately to escape from anything he perceives as threatening, which is pretty much everything*. Princess, otoh, will lie there passively until she thinks you've been lolled into complacency or are distracted and then she'll try and slink off. The ointment we were given (which is to say purchased at no small expense) is marketed for dogs and suggests application before feeding or going for a walk so the pup in question will be distracted from trying to scrape or lick it off. Eating holds very little appeal for our Princess but she's a huge fan of the Magic Red Dot so her evening applications happen immediately proceeding Red Dot Time. Her morning anointing is supposed to come before Treat Time but she's wise to us and has stopped showing up. Ginger Kitty thinks with his tummy and would fall for it every time and twice on Sundays.

~ * ~

My Jamesion & Smith Superior Jumper Weight Yarn finally arrived (though I still haven't received a reply to yesterday's, "You haven't fogotten my order, have you?" email), so I'm finally good to start on my Sheep Heid hat. In the meantime I'd cast on a Peruvian style Fair Isle cap for my Dear Husband but, even though I'm trying to keep the carrying strand loose, it's pulling too tight. Bugger. Mind you, if it's too loose than the stitches will sag and stretch and that's possibly worse. There's a golden tension - I just have to find it.

My Purple Peace socks are growing. I spent most of yesterday redoing the first heel only to rip it back to the gusset before bed. Each time I frog something and redo it I gain a greater understanding of what success - in this case defined as "things being the way I want them to be" - looks like, right?

My yarn swift arrived last week and I had to take it out and play with it right away, winding a skein of Malabrigo Sock Yarn. It works like a dream, though perhaps not a happy one for Ginger Kitty. He paced the perimeter of the room, unable to decide if he should flee or pounce. When I finished, he jumped up on my roll-top to investigate:

~ * ~

Our dishwasher broke on Sunday and the earliest the repair man can make it out is Monday. We've been having a left-overs and take-away week and we're still doing at least two rounds of dishes-washing a day. Chris washes, I dry and put away. There was a small disaster yesterday as Chris, in his over-zealousness, dumped his half-drunk Gin & Tonic down the sink and washed the glass. The ice had melted and he thought it was an abandoned glass of water (forgetting that he'd set it there, on the other counter/worktop moments before). This overly-zealous approach to cleaning up while I'm cooking has often resulted in me exclaiming, "But I was still using that!" Now he knows how it feels.

In other news, Chris got both the new Steve Jobs' biography and his (Chris') new MacBook on Monday. I have a very happy husband - though he keeps the biography face down as the front cover picture is "Scary Steve" and the back cover picture is "Nice Steve". I can't make these things up. Chris has even read a (singular) chapter.

I stalled out on my aSoFaI reread (because I was watching telly while knitting, not because I wasn't interested) but I was able to get into a partial Hollows (by Kim Harrison) reread. I saw that book 9, Pale Demon, had come out in paperback and the kindle price dropped accordingly, so I reread books 5 through 8 and then read book 9 in its entirety on Tuesday. I started Pratchett's latest, Snuff (an ebook I'd pay HC prices for) that evening but decided I'm not yet ready to let go of Rachel Morgan so I've switched back to telly for the time being.

I'm catching up on (A Town Called) Eureka and am halfway through season 4. I didn't recognize Balthazar, from Battlestar Galactica, until he made the crack about hallucinating a "tall blonde in a slinky red dress" and then I could've believe I'd missed it. All I can really say in my defence is that it's been some time since I've seen BSG. I still haven't seen the second half of the fourth (and final) season of that series! I also acquired Castle with Nathan Fillian. I had seen an episode or two before I moved to the UK and have heard nothing but good things about it since. I tried showing an episode to Chris but he didn't seem interested, so I guess that's a "watch while he's at work" series, too.**

~ * ~

* he's actually getting better. Now, instead of bolting for a hiding place in a cupboard, he'll often bolt a few feet and then circle around to see if it was actually threatening or just startling. His orange coat is a Red Herring - this is the real reason he's known as Ginger Kitty.

** Our watch-together series are, currently, Hawaii 5-0, Star Trek TNG (we ran out of ripped Voyager and DS9 so those are paused, as is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, House and Numbers), Stargate:SG1, and The Big Bang Theory. We just watched the NYE and my husband is very sad that the Aquaman costume with sea horse steed doesn't actually exist. Someone get on that!

FO: Beaded Swallowtail Shawl

Swallowtail Shawl - Evelyn A Clark
2-ply lambswool "Sea spray" from Judith Glue
E Beads - 4mm purple from the Craft Factory
4.5mm needles for the CO; 3.5mm for the body; 0.75mm crochet hook to strand the beads
Blocked: 62"x32"

I followed the pattern as written with a few modifications: beads instead of nupps, attached with a crochet hook while knitting; 19 repeats of the blossom lace chart; I was running out of yarn and left off the border lace chart.

I really enjoyed knitting this, as I did her Flower Basket Shawl before. I find the way she charts her lace to be a little odd: I get that it's the simplest way to write out the chart but, for me, it's not charted in a way that visually imparts the lace. Looking at the chart, I don't see how the finished lace will look. Her lace repeats are so elegantly simple that I can knit each row based on how the previous row looked, pausing periodically to count the blossoms up the center, but I have to get a couple repeats in to see how the chart relates to the lace.

Is this a criticism? No. Rather it is a statement of preference based on how charts work for me, and the way I see charts. As another preference, with lace that is "RS: work pattern, WR: k2, p across, k2", I am frustrated if the purl rows are shown in the chart. It breaks the pattern up in a way that makes it more difficult for me to read. For other people, I'm sure it's very helpful. Other people may find that my ideal, having the chart written out with a few repeats show and a red box around the basic repeat, would be needlessly confusing. So no, it's not a criticism, just an observation on my experience reading this particular chart to knit this particular chart.

I also tend to dislike instructions for increasing the size by using a yarn and needles that give a different gauge. Yes, obviously I can do that, but what I really want to know is the multiples needed to get from one chart to the next smoothly. An advantage of knitting a popular shawl like this one (over 9000 projects on Ravelry!) is that for most simple modifications like the ones I've done, someone has already worked out the details. I got the "19 repeats" figure from the hive-mind, without having to work it out myself - a particular bonus as, as I mentioned, the chart isn't visually ideal for me.

A bonus picture of Oliver who, when I spread the unblocked shawl on the duvet, ran over, jumped up on the bed, and lay down right where you see him.

Blue Period (shawls and socks)

I've been going through a Blue Period - buying a lot of things that are blue. It started with the wedding: Chris and I settled on a bluey tartan for his kilt so I had my dress detailed in blue and my bridesmaids picked navy for their dresses and lo, we were well and truly settled on blue for our "colours". Somehow this idea of matching colours spilled out into the rest of my life. I realized I'd lost weight* and needed to buy an almost entirely new (to me) wardrobe and anything that was a wedding-coordinated shade of blue got bonus points as something I could wear in the days leader up to and following the wedding. I also spent a fairly substantial amount of time looking for the perfect blue yarn with which to knit myself a wedding shawl. Chris even bought a blue coffee machine. It also helps that blue is one of the few colours for which I love almost every shade. I'd be hard-pressed to name a shade of blue I'd be just as happy to never see again, which is not something that can be said of green or red - though purple fairs better. It is perhaps, then, unsurprising that a lot of things in my life, right now, are blue.

A while back, in Judith Glue (a "tourist" shop that sells things made locally rather than China) I picked up an 100g cake of two-ply lambswool in a dark teal described as "ocean spray". That's everything I know about it. It's more of a sock weight than fingering but I have no idea how much yardage I'll get out of 100g! I kept picking it up to make something and then set it back down again, worried I wouldn't have enough yarn. It's not really something I want to snuggle against my skin, so no scarves, hats, or mittens. The best "knit until you run out of yarn" idea that I could think of was a top-down shawl and I finally settled on Evelyn C. Clark's popular Swallowtail Shawl. I made her "Flower Basket Shawl" for Miss Krissy and really enjoyed knitting it, so it seemed perfect. Also if almost 9000** other knitters have cast it on, it must be a great shawl, right?

The only real downside is that part of me would rather be knitting socks. I love shawls - I've knit 7 of them so far this year and this shawl will make 8. Three of those I gave away and one I plan to frog, but I'm still going to be four shawls richer this year. My first "real" project was the Tri-Aran-Angle Shawl from Knitty back in 2003 (but only blocked this May) and I have a couple pashminas that I wear regularly. Eventually a girl has to ask - do I need more shawls? Is there a shawl-niche I haven't filled? For a while this spring there was, when I had a small dark rose shawl and a small red shawl and the wedding shawl I couldn't wear yet and, unless I was wearing something that went well with red or rose, I couldn't drape on a shawl. So yes, I probably have room for a black shawl and maybe a few stoles/scarves, but I can't just sit around knitting shawls that I'll never or rarely wear. If nothing else, where will I store all these shawls?

But I can use an unlimited variation of socks. Socks in different colours, weights, patterns, lengths... I wear socks most ever day (more than one pair in the winter) and need a selection to rotate through. I can also knit socks for my husband who has, as of yet, expressed no desire for a lacy shawl. Socks are about the same investment as a small shawl - most sock and shawl patterns seem to call for one skein of sock-weight yarn. Socks should be the perfect answer to enjoyable, productive knitting. I am starting to buy sock yarn and patterns, to read about knitting socks and construction techniques and am completely hooked on socks.

The only problem, of course, is that I've yet to knit my first pair of socks. They'll be blue though.


* I'd known I was losing weight but it wasn't until I stopped wearing 3 or 4 layers under my jeans that it became, um, obvious that all my clothes were falling off.

** I occasionally hear people say they won't knit something if the pattern is really popular. I can understand not wanting to show up at a party and have everyone else sporting the same knitwear, but I tend to figure if that many people have previously knit it then all mistakes in the pattern have been sussed out and corrected. Also, I like having a wide selection of "yarn suggestions", looking at the pictures of other people's finished projects, and reading their notes. And, quite frankly, the odds of me running into another knitter who has knit the same thing as me and we're both wearing it, living here in urban-rural Scotland are remote.

Eleanor Cowl

After a month of knitting socks on tiny needles (with only one finished sock to show for it) I decided to give my poor aching hands a rest and cast on the Eleanor Cowl from knitty. This is when I realized that my (metric-based) interchangeable needles don't have a US5 (3.75mm) as they're half and whole metric sizes. Oops. I have one 3.75mm circ which I guess I will be leaning on for all US5/3.75mm projects. I used a US6/4.0mm circ for this project for the ease of switching needles while leaving the project on the same cables, but I screwed up the transfer so that wasn't exactly brilliant.

I had been looking for something to do with a pretty teal/sea green/aqua yarn cake I bought at a locally-produced gift shop in town, but while I know it's 100g of 2ply lambswool, the yardage (meterage? is that a word? Is it the right word?) is anyone's guess. I looked at making mittens, but the thought of having to do two to complete a project seems too much like what I want to take a break from (though mostly it's the aching fingers as I just bloody well want to have knit a pair of socks already). So I'm using the last of the (lovely, lovely, lovely) yarn I bought for my wedding shawl to knit a small cowl. I should have enough yarn - it could wind up a few rows short, depending on my gauge.

The Other Bridesmaid Shawls

Flower Basket Shawl - Evelyn A. Clark
King Cole "Riot" - Magic 404 - 100g/296m - 70% Acrylic, 30% wool
I wasn't sure when Miss Krissy was going to find my blog, what with it being linked to hers*, so I didn't want to post pictures before I gave it to her, but now I can! The pattern knit up fairly quickly. I wasn't able to memorize the pattern until chart B, but once I got there I could "see" the lace and how each row followed the proceeding row and it went very quickly from there. I added a few extra repeats (11 in total) to make it an actual shawl, not just a shoulder-warmer and used most of two rows in doing so. The second skein of yarn had some knots in it, always frustrating, and split when I was trying to untwist it which was even more frustrating. The colours were similar to the ones Krissy wanted to dye her hair for the wedding, and worked out better than planned as she didn't put any green in her hair but some of the colours in her hair took a greenish tinge as they faded and bleed. Her youngest doesn't like to wear warm clothes but gets cold, and Miss Krissy found the shawl useful to tie around herself and the baby when she's wearing her.

I understand why people advise against knitting lace in variegated yarn as, as the rows got longer and the colour-pools shallower, the pattern got a bit lost. I enjoyed the pattern and may knit another one, in solid or semi-solid for myself. For Miss Krissy, I think the colours are more important than the lace.



Annis - Susanna IC
Patton's Grace, Artessano 100% Alpaca 4-ply
And this is Miss Laura's shawl. I actually knit it twice as the first one didn't look right after I blocked it - the needles were too large for the yarn, which created a nice drape but made it impossible to weave in the ends in the middle of the fabric. Since it's mostly knit in short rows, I couldn't change skeins of yarn at the edge. I bought two skeins of Alpaca in a colour-way that I felt would be even more appropriate for Miss Laura and knit it on smaller needles and the pile of the yarn and smaller stitches worked better for hiding the ends I had to weave in. I wanted to make it bigger than the pattern but was worried about running out of yarn again so I didn't, and it turned out a bit on the small side - definitely a scarf and not a shawl, and the top rolls, but it is very suited to Miss Laura's personality. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of Miss Laura's shawl before I gave it to her and I have no specific pictures of any of the shawls after gifting them.

* she didn't find it until I specifically gave her the link today. Hi, Miss Krissy!

The Socks Progress Apace

Sunday Swing Socks - Kristel Nyberg
Fortissima Colori, Socka Colori - 100g/420m - 75% superwash wool, 25% polyamide

I don't know how long I'll have to write this as I'm expecting Miss Krissy and her family in the next span of time. The Socks got immeasurably less interminable once past the 1x1 rib and the first two repeats of the pattern flew by. I kept making Fiancé (in six days, Husband) try the cuff on and he kept insisting it was a good fit but I eventually convinced him that, no really, they were too big.

So I frogged them and started over, one size down (CO 72 stitches, no 80). He hates it when I frog things, it makes him very sad to think of the wasted time and effort, but he's getting used to it as ripping things back is at least a weekly occurrence around here. So I ripped it out and loosened my tension for the ribbing, which helped and knowing that after the ribbing things would get fun again helped, and I'm once again two repeats through the pattern and it's a significantly better fit.

I am really excited about this whole "knitting socks" thing. I can't wait to have a drawer full of cute socks in different styles, yarns, and colours.

Ginko Leaf Shawl for Miss Rachel

Ginko Shoulderette Shawl - Maggie Magali
Artesano 4 ply 100% superfine alpaca - 50g/187m - 100% alpaca

I am making shawls for each of my bridesmaids (though not as their thank you presents) and this is the one for Miss Rachel. The knitting itself was easy, though I ocassionally had to tink back half a row when I forgot the pattern mirrors from the centre, unlike the geometric shawls I've been knitting where you just repeat the same pattern again. Not a difficult concept, just one I seemed to have trouble keeping in my head.

I added one extra repeat of the pattern to make it a smidge larger and, of course, ran out of yarn one row before the bind off. Fortunately the shop where I bought it still had the same dye-lot in stock, but I had to set it aside for a few days while waiting for that, and then when I went to block it I realized that I would need at least 3 times as many t-pins as I own (I mentioned I'm new to this whole "blocking" thing, right?) as I can't use my wires to shape the leaves, so I had to wait another almost week for those to arrive.

It took an hour to pin it out and I still could have used another 25 pins to good effect but it's good enough to government work. Hopefully this will dry quickly as the first of my wedding guests are showing up tonight - 3 days before originally planned because they decided Paris is not the place for them - and I told Noah (who can't afford to take all the time off so he's telecommuting) that he could use my office. My itty-bitty, little office, one third of which is taken up by Wedding Stuff and now another third is this shawl.

It is a beautiful pattern and the yarn is soft a lovely but I think, for me, I'll stick to easier-to-block geometric patterns for the time being.

FO: Summer Mystery Shawl

Summer Mystery Shawl 2011 - Wendy D.
Supreme Possum Merino 4ply - 50g/210m - 40% possum, 50% merino wool, 10% silk
60"x32" - 380m

I finished this shawl last night, washed it this morning, and it's blocking as I type. Forgive the particularly bad picture - my office is the only room I can keep the kittens out of where I can block the shawl and also the room where we're keeping all the wedding stuff - mostly in boxes stacked in corners. Then there's my desk and chair and did I mention it's the smallest room in the house?

I love this shawl. I was worried it would be too small, even though I added an extra repeat. I'd originally cast on two extra repeats (on each side of the center) but unblocked that had almost as large as this is blocked and I'd thought that too big, and then I worried it was too small, but I think this will be nice. I do think, in the future, that I will try to block shawls to be a little longer across the wingspan and a little less deep.

It's nice to have knit something I can actually use and show off. Between my wedding shawl and things I'm knitting for other people, I keep wanting to throw on something recently-knit and coming up short.

CO: Socks

Sunday Swing Socks - Kristel Nyberg
Fortissima Colori, Socka Colori - 100g/420m - 75% superwash wool, 25% polyamide

I have recently been jonesing to knit a pair of socks. I've been intimidated by them before, fearing I'd suffer from Second Sock Syndrome - obviously something I'm prone too with my knitting ADD - and a worry that I'd put all the time, effort, and money (yarn and needles) into making a pair of socks and then just walk through the toe and heel like I do with all my cotton, store-bought socks. I am a great one for walking through the heels of socks, so this isn't a small concern. But this last winter I knit several pairs of mitts, almost a pair of gloves (which sounds like Second Sock Syndrome but I figured out what I didn't like about them and have plans to finish), and a pair of baby booties, so there's evidence that I can concentrate long enough to knit a pattern twice. And, having mentioned my sock fears to friends, I've been assured that hand-knit socks, done right, are superior to store-bought socks in every way - more comfortable and less likely to wear-through.

As my successfully-completed pile of knitting has increased, I've found myself increasingly attracted to sock patterns. I have a thing for socks in general and my fiancé has a specific thing for socks (on me - he's never attacked an in-store display) but I live in a small, remote city without access to things like stores that specialize in hosiery and while I know that I can order things online, I have a great reluctance to do so. I'm great at the "add to cart" part but somehow stall out at the "pay" part of the transaction. Who gets buyers remorse before they actually purchase something? So I see these nifty sock patterns and I started thinking "I want those! I need them!" and when we were in Edinburgh over my birthday, I bought two skeins of sock yarn - a variegated blue for my Fiancé and a variegated purple for me.

My Fiancé is my guinnea pig (he doesn't mind) so the first pair is for him and he picked Sunday Swing from the "mello" section on Knitty. I'm 8 rows in to an inch of 1x1 rib (0.75") and so far my sock related thoughts are, "save me from 1x1 ribbing on 2.5mm needles!" The pattern calls for 2.25mm (US 1) needles, but half mm sizes are easier to get here in the UK. If I were the type to knit a gauge I'd say I've adjusted accordingly but, confession time, I don't. The nice thing about socks is that you can make your Fiancé try them on and adjust thusly.

Speaking of needles, I CO using the magic loop method but decided my longest cable isn't quite comfortable so I'm using two pairs of addi premiums, originally purchased to do a Turkish CO for the baby booties.

On the Needles

I have two projects I'm working on atm, a red shawl for me and a yellow baby sweater for Baby O'Connor:


Summer Mystery Shawl 2011 - Wendy D.
Supreme Possum Merino 4ply - 50g/210m - 40% possum, 50% merino wool, 10% silk
This is my first Mystery Shawl - a pattern where you don't know what the finished object will be (other than, in this case, a "shawlette") and you get the instructions ("clues") over a span of weeks, rather than all at once. The idea is to finish each set of instructions before the next one is issued. I joined this one later, before the third clue had been released and then accidentally knit the second clue first so I had to frog everything and start over. When the third clue came out, I only had time to knit the 24-row repeat once before setting the project aside to work on shawls for my bridesmaids so the fourth and final clue came out and I was nowhere near ready. I've since done two more repeats of the third clue and, because I added an extra repeat to the shawl, probably only have two more. It's bottom up so with each row there are less stitches to knit and it's going, ahem, increasingly quickly.


Basket-Weave Baby Sweater - Frances Hughes - Creative Knitting Sept. 2004
Baby Classic DK - 50g/151m - 50% acrylic, 50% nylon
Back when I started working for Barnes and Nobles, when magazines didn't sell, the covers were "stripped" and returned to the publishers and the rest of the magazine was recycled or thrown away (depending on the facilities available to that particular store) or, and this is the relevant part, employees could take them home. During this time, I acquired a lot of issues of a variety of knitting magazines (which I eventually tore apart and sorted the patterns I liked into plastic sleeves and binders - yeah, I'm that person). When I moved to Inverness I pared this collection down to bare bones and, even though I wasn't at the time knitting any fitted garments, I kept this pattern for a baby sweater, hat, and booties. I don't think it'll be a favourite pattern, but it's a nice project for when I'm lying (sitting up) in bed and have caught up on my RSS feeds and Twitter.

I learned to knit at a Renaissance Faire and loaned yarn and needles from one friend and taught to knit by another. This second friend is allergic to the wool I was using and taught me without touching anything and as a consequence my technique wound up a little...unique. For a while I was twisting my stitches and when I realized that, I changed my technique to prevent twisting and somehow wound up getting everything backwards. This was fine for most things, but both my k2tog and ssk leaned the same way and I only just recently realized why (I was wrapping my yarn around the needle the wrong way) and decided to fix it. A few projects ago I corrected my purl stitches so my stockinette lace would be correct and on this project I'm practising wrapping the yarn under the needle on the knit stitches.

This sweater set will be for Baby O'Connor, who is due later this summer. His mother is having a really rough time of it and they're hoping to induce as soon as the foetus is viable, so if I have time, I hope to knit some premie-sized stuff as well.