Frothy Knitting

The Echo Flower Shawl is coming along well so far.  I've been knitting like a mad woman, but I'm only getting about 1 repeat per day now, where at the beginning I was averaging two repeats.   I've finished nine of the thirteen repeats before the border and edging are applied.  It's growing exponentially now, but it's difficult to see it when you lay it out.  See?

It has a bubbly, frothy milk kind of look to it.  What's cool is when you spread out a few of the bubbles and see what they turn into:

 

Can you see the flowers now?  It's very difficult to stretch the knitting out and still take a picture.  My thumb distorted one of the flowers quite badly, didn't it?  

The magic of blocking will show off those flowers nicely.  However, I'm kind of scared to block it.  I'm having some major "What IF?" doubts.  What if I've screwed something up royally and just can't see it now?  What if I finish the shawl, block it and find HUGE unforgivable mistakes?  What if the Bride hates it?  

You know, those kind of What Ifs.  I'm not sure why I'm worried about it.  It's not like it has to be finished in about 2.5 weeks.  It's not like there's going to be time to fix any mistakes.  It's not like it's for an important occasion or anything, you know, like a WEDDING!  Jeez, why do I put myself into stressful situations?   

Can't You See I'm Counting?

I know for a fact that there's a mistake in here, but for the life of me I can't find it and to top it off, the stitch count on either side is correct.  Go figure.   No time to find it, moving on.

Everyone in my life is now forbidden to talk to me for the next three weeks.  Shush, Mommy's counting.  I said, hush, I'm counting.  For the love of Pete, SHUT UP, CAN'T YOU SEE I'M COUNTING HERE?  Unless you've knit lace, you can never really understand the humor in the above counting statements. 

Winding On

I'm exhausted.  I'm not exaggerating either.  I'm plum tuckered out.  This past week has been filled with clothes, toys, infant crap, etc.  I've been spending all my time co-chairing a huge children's consignment sale.  So if you've wondered (yet again) I'd wandered off to, there's your answer.

In knitting news, I finally started my cousin's wedding shawl.  I now have three weeks to get it finished.  Starting on Sunday, that's all I'll be doing for the foreseeable future.  I might take time out to eat and sleep, but we'll have to see about that.

When I start a new project, I always like take the hank and wind it into a nice tight little ball.  None of those fancy center pull balls for me, they always eventually collapse and turn into yarn barf.  So I started winding away while watching Top Gear the other night (the British version) while sitting in my favorite chair.  You really don't want to know how long it took me to wind that thousand yards of yarn.  You just don't.  I'll tell you anyway:  1.5 hours.  HOURS.  My hand was aching from holding that stupid ball. 

On the other hand, it was pure pleasure.  This may be the softest yarn I've ever worked with.  It's going to be incredible when all knit up.  Notice my confidence that I'm going to get this project finished in three weeks.  :)

Have a great weekend!

My Upcoming Silk Project

There's a wedding in my future, not mine (been there, done that) but my cousin's.  It's in April, like next month.  A few years ago I made her sister a wedding shawl.  Guess what?  Now she needs one too.

So, her Mom and I picked out one that we thought would suit her and it's the Echo Flower Shawl by Jenny Johnson Johnen.  I'm making the shawl size and the yarn that I've picked out is this one:

 

It's from Woodland Woolworks and is a 20/2 silk lace weight and absolutely gorgeous and soft.  

My problem with making this shawl in less than a month is that next week I'm going to be up to my eyeballs in a children's consignment sale that I'm co-chairing.  There won't be any knitting time for me next week or this weekend for that matter as I'm starting to prepare for it.  God help me. 

Mystere Progress

I have finally completed the other side of the Mystere sweater:

I have already made a mod to the sleeves.  The way the pattern is currently written has the panel in the middle with no cable pattern.  I decided to add the cable pattern back into it so that it echos the panel that is on the main body.  On the main body, the pattern calls for you to K7, do the cable, K7.  On the sleeves, I have done K4, do the cable, K4.  Other than that, so far I'm doing the pattern as written.

Multi Tasking at the Fine Arts Show

Last night we were required to attend the school fine arts show.   It was awesome knitting time.  I got a lot of odd looks, but it was so worth it.  I will say that it's a good thing that I need very little light to knit though.  The biggest problem was being able to see to mark my pattern in order to keep up with which row I was on.

I was fussed at a little by one person and that was the five year old that I brought with me.  "Mom, you're supposed to be watching!"  Well, I was watching and listening.  I'm multi-talented that way.  After all, God made Moms to be multi-taskers and that's what I was doing.  I watched my Eldest sing and then had to sit through the rest of the grades do their thing while clicking away with my needles.

This is the progress that I made on the second side:

It's gotten so that I can't sit down and not be doing something these days.  I get all fidgety and feel like I'm not being productive.   Knitting fulfills a very valuable niche in my life that way.  It's a portable, practical hobby that's relaxing and productive.  What's not to like about that? 

Anyway, I feel like I'm making good progress on this sweater.  Just a little more time and I'll be finished with the body and will be able to get cracking on the sleeves.   I do wish that I had converted this to be done in the round though so that I could try it on as I go, but oh well.

First Piece of Mystere

Mystere is now 40% complete.  That's fancy talk for the front (or the back since they're both the same) is done.

It's also been blocked within an inch of it's life.  I don't know if it was the yarn or what, but my confidence in this piece was less than great.  So, I decided to get out the schematics of the pattern and block this to make sure everything was like it should be.   I should have trusted myself more I guess.  The piece was dead on with the schematics.  Yay! 

This has been fairly fun to knit.  I love how subtle the cable is in the front and the texture that surrounds it.  There's garter stitch at the bottom edge, reverse stockinette at the sides and the cable panel in the middle.  I also like the waist shaping that is happening in the piece as well.  This has been great for moving watching due to it's simplicity.

The one thing that I'm not liking is the yarn.  The yarn (Nashua Hand Knits Creative Focus Worsted) is a lofty, single ply mix of alpaca and wool. The ball band says it's a 10 ply, but if that's a 10 ply yarn, then I'm a jack rabbit.  It's looks like it is softer than it really is and it's very fuzzy.  I don't mind that part, but what I do mind is the splittiness of the yarn.

It's very easy to only grab part of the loop your working with and not notice until the next row.  When this happens it's very noticeable.  I've just been grabbing the stray loops and pulling them up onto the needle with the loop above it and working them together and that seems to be doing fine, but it's still a bit messy looking.  However, I'm not ripping back every time I find one.  I'd never get this sweater finished if I did that!  It happens pretty much every two rows.  Yuck.  I won't be purchasing this yarn again.

Much Happier Yarn

Before I get into all things yarny today, I just wanted to say thank you.  Thank you for the support and encouragement that you've given me over the last two horrible months.  I can't tell you how much all your comments have meant to me.  Even though I responded to very few, please know that they were a very welcome part of my days.

Okay, on to all things yarny.  Remember the snobby yarn from yesterday?  It's gotten over it's hoity-toity ways and has now settled into a much happier lifestyle.

 

I chose to make Mystere by Cecily Glowik Macdonald.   There are still cables in this pattern, but they are incredibly subtle ones.  You can just see one in the center of the project above.  These aren't the tight kind of cables, but loose and flowing.  The little you see above is the beginning of the back of the sweater that I did this morning while re-watching the movie Twilight.  Doesn't look like much yet, does it?

There is also lots and lots of reverse stockinette, but instead of making this a dreary pattern, it's keeping it fairly lively.  It's very simple (which this yarn was craving) and full of lots of texture.  I'm pretty stoked about it and I think it's just what the doctor ordered this time around.  Something simple, quick and still has cables.  Yes! 

Merry Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas Eve everyone!

I managed to finish my project, get it blocked and photographed!  Yippee!  I'm pretty sure it's safe to share it with you.  The recipient is off from work and that's where she usually checks the blog.  Plus, she'll have it in two hours anyway, so I'm going to show you how it turned out.

From the front:

 

From the back:

 

And hey look!   It's the Millennium Falcon!

This is the Kathy Kelly Cabled Capelet by Renate Haeckler and it can be found for free here.  (Ravelry Link)


Mods:

Instead of doing the 3 in 1K (I didn’t like the way mine was turning out), I changed it to M1, K, M1. I like the division between the panels much better this way and it adds the feel of lace in between the pretty cables.


So, the big project is done and now I can enjoy my Christmas.  Hope you have a wonderful one! 

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Nutty When Shopping

Am I the only nut out there that goes shopping, sees an item, and says "I can make that!"    It doesn't matter if it's knitted, sewn, glued or duct taped.  If I see something that I like and it looks doable, it becomes a challenge.  I must now go forth, find or purchase the materials, and craft it.  This is not necessarily a frugal habit by the way.

Case in point - This weekend I went shopping with my Mom.  I found a shop that had two sweaters that I found intriguing.  Simple construction, fingering weight yarn and a decent price.  Now instead of buying them like a sane person, I took them to the dressing room and took about a thousand pics of it.  If I had had my measuring tape with me, I would have spent even more time in there taking measurements. 

I really liked this stitch pattern that I found on one of them:

 

Does anyone know what this stitch pattern is anyway?

So there I was snapping pics like a nut.  It would have cost maybe $20 bucks to buy the whole thing then and there.  Did I?  Nope.

Here's where the extra nutty part comes in.  Yarn ain't cheap.  Let's say I went into my local yarn shop and started grabbing skeins of yarn.  If I purchased enough yarn to make the particular item that I was photographing, I'd probably spend upwards of $60 bucks.  Worth it?  Only for the crafty challenge satisfaction.  

Will I do it anyway?  Probably, since I'm crazy like that, but I'll make some major modifications first.  I'm also one of those types that can't leave well enough alone.

Peacock Shawlette

On September 29th I started a test knit for Kitman Figueroa called the Peacock Shawlette (Ravelry Link).  After a few minor glitches and one huge one, I finally finished this project.  I've been up to my eyeballs busy and haven't been able to get it blocked until now.  I think the recipient will be very pleased with her new shawlette.  Just look how gorgeous this project turned out: 

Yarn used:  Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic, fingering weight.    Don't you just love all the greens in this?

Tips:  If you make this shawl, you are far better off using less stitch markers than more.  One on each end between the garter and lace stitches and one on each side of the center stitch will be sufficient.  When I tried to use the stitch markers between each of the lace repeats, it just caused major confusion. 

This is such a lovely pattern.  The lace charts are awesomely easy to follow and it just gets more and more fun to knit as you go along.  You go from more stitches to less and the project just gets faster and faster.

Spinning My Wheels

Which wheels?  The Mommy van kind? no.   The spinning wheel kind?  again, no.  The lace project kind?  Why, how did you guess?

On Sunday I received the pattern for a lovely test knit.  The designer requested that the item be completed in one week and asked for fast knitters.  Now, I pride myself on being a quick knitter, and you can probably guess that this was where things started to go wrong.  The whole pride goeth before a fall kinda thing, you know.  I totally jinxed myself. 

The next thing to go wrong (because this is me we're talking about here and there's always another thing to go wrong) was getting confused about the pattern, three times.  This is not the fault of the pattern or designer, I will completely own up to that.  I messed up.  Short and simple. 

I recovered and moved along.  I actually caught up to where the other knitters were in the charts. Woohoo!  But wait, congratulations are not in order here and this time, it's not my fault.  I'm fully aware that this is going to sound immature and like I'm making up excuses, but it's true, I swear. 

The dog did it.

The almost completely blind and almost completely deaf 18 year old dog walked between my project and my ball of yarn.  I was in another part of the house making a cup of tea.  Said dog was clueless as to the fact that she had done this, so she continued on her plodding little way, pulling the yarn.  Could it have pulled from the ball?  Yes.  Did it?  Oh no. 

Stitch, by small stitch, the yarn came away from the needles.  Drop, drop, drop.  Approximately 10 stitches fell off the needle and began running in many different directions.  Have you ever been working on a lace project and have this happen?  For me, there was no recovery.  Too much of the lace became unraveled for me to even consider getting out the crochet needle and patching it up.  Meanwhile, the dog walked on, with me yelling all the while.  She never heard a thing. 

I caught up with her eventually and untangled her and then sat down and stared at what was left of my pretty lace.  Believe it or not, I was very calm at this point for a couple of reasons:  One, the dog didn't know she was doing this and is so pitiful already that it's difficult to yell at the little geriatric.  Two, I didn't do it.  If I had done this, the yarn would probably be lying in the bottom of a very deep, dark hole from the stress of it all.

The stretchy crocheted cast-on, with which I have already become intimately familiar due to previous mistakes, have become acquainted once again.  I'm on row three now for the fifth time.

Now how am I ever going to explain this to the poor designer who needs it in just a couple of days?

Lovin' Knit Yarn Shop

Saturday, on a hunt for some fingering weight yarn (I'm test knitting a new shawlette pattern), I went to a local yarn store for the first time.  It's called Lovin' Knit Yarn Shop and Studio.

I can't say enough good things about this shop.  The owner and (Pat) and one of her employees (Cindy) were wonderfully helpful and incredibly welcoming.  They had a great selection of yarns and their shop is very well laid out.  They even encourage crocheters and aren't a bit biased against them.  That's such a nice thing to see in a lys.  Most of the lys' that I've seen tend to cater only to the knitter and ignore those that crochet. 

Plus, to make this visit even better, they were having a sale on Noro (buy one, get one half off) and I just couldn't pass it up.  I snagged some Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic sock yarn in the most beautiful greens ever and two skeins of Noro Silk Garden at the sale price. 

With all this shop has going for it, I'll definitely be going back soon!

More Sickness and A Good Knitting Mistake

Yet more sickness has struck at our house.  Now the Eldest has come down with a cold and has coughed himself silly all day long.  I loaded him up with cough syrup and cough drops and sent him off to school.  It's a catch-22 situation.  If he doesn't have a fever, you send him to school.  So then, he's coughing in class, infecting the other kids and disrupting the class.  Yet if he's kept home, the school police will fuss at you for him not attending.

Evidently at one point the coughing was so bad (he had run out of cough drops) that she sent him to beg for more cough drops at the office.  Which of course sent the ladies in the office scrambling for their purses to find the poor kid something to control the coughing.  Not once did I get a call by the way for more of the drops.  I'm sending a whole bag tomorrow.  Poor kid.

In knitting news, I have been knitting and got a lot done on my secret project sweater, about six inches worth during the Auburn/Clemson game (my team won).  I hate that I can't show the progress on this and how cool it's turning out, but if I want to publish it somewhere, it can't be shown.   At one point, I caught myself making a mistake in my cable chart.  It was a big uh oh moment, but then I decided that I liked it the way the cable had turned out even better and I've now changed the directions to match.  Don't you just love (in an oxymoronic kind of way) the good mistakes that knitting brings you?  For myself, I'm just thrilled to not be ripping the darn thing out again.

RIP, RIP, RIP

RIP, RIP, RIPPING along and not the rest in peace kind of ripping either.  I'm talking the ripping of stitches, many, many stitches.   Over and over again. 

Problem the First:  I decided to make my first officially designed sweater as complicated as frigging possible.   Cable panel, check.  Waist shaping, check.  Square neck, check.  Six sizes so far, check.  

Problem the Second:  Math are hard!  Ya know, maybe, just maybe, if someone (oh, I don't know say, a teacher maybe) had told me that there were real world practical applications for algebra, I just might have paid some freakin' attention the first time around!  Who knew that I would be using algebra in designing sweaters 24 years later?  If you do the math, you'll find out when I was in tenth grade.  I'm not just going to tell you the year though dammit. If I have to have a math headache, then the more the merrier.  I say that with love of course.

Problem the Third:  Gauge hates me.  It bit me.  Twice.  The second time resulted in six freakin' inches extra.  I put it on the dress makers dummy to look at my knitted sample and the damn thing fell off!  See, the gauge wasn't 4 stitches per inch, it was really 4.25 per inch.  That tiny quarter of a stitch makes a really big difference and don't let anybody tell you it doesn't.

Problem the Fourth:  I'm making every design blunder in the book.  It's annoying, but by God, I guess I'll learn this stuff the hard way huh?  The hard way always makes this stuff stick in my brain easier anyway.

Problem the Fifth:  Relates to Problem the Second.  I found a place online that could figure this whole algebra thing out.  However, not wanting the easy way out, I decided to reverse engineer their results (so that I could build my excel spreadsheet properly) in order to figure out how to really do this math.  My brain hurts now, thank you.  I did figure it out though.

Now, Go back and after each of these Five Problems, place the the words:  Great, just great, now I have to rip it back again.

Yeah, I might have miss-titled the name of this post.  It should read: RIP, RIP, RIP, RIP, RIP.  At this rate, my yarn will fall apart and I'll have nothing to knit my sweater with.

The Magic of Blocking

Want to see an example of the Magic of Blocking?

Here's a before pic while Summerflies (Ravelry link) was on the needles:

Now check it out after it's been blocked:

Now do you believe in the Magic of Blocking?  Yep, thought so.


This was such a lovely little knit.  It's quick, never boring and turned out just right.  Just think, some dude decided that he didn't really like the dark green sweater that his Aunty gave him and donated it to Goodwill as soon as her back was turned.  A few months later and it now looks like this:

I love recycling!  And you know what?  This lovely shawl cost me about $1.00 total, maybe.  I still have a mountain of this yarn left over.   How cool is that?

The only modification that I made was due to the size of the yarn.  I went up to a size 10 in order to get gauge.  That's it, no other mods to see here folks, move along.

By the way, I will not be home much this week due to working the children's consignment sale so there may not be a lot of posts.  Please be patient with me, I'm trying to help a lot of needy children get set up for the winter!

In Hindsight

So there I was, knitting happily away on my new shawl, Summer Flies (Ravelry link) by Donna Griffin, without a care in the world.  I had finished Section 5 already, the shawl was really flying off the needles and guess what?  I looked down at my creation and thought, "It's looking kinda small."  Uh-Oh.

Guess what jumped up and bit me on the behind again?  GAUGE.  Darnit.

Most of the time when I'm making a lace project, I don't do a gauge swatch and didn't do it this time either.  But this time, I really screwed up by not making that swatch.  Here's why:

1.  I'm not using standard yarn for this project.  I'm using recycled yarn from a Lands End, Men's XXL sweater that I unraveled a while back.  Therefore, my gauge will probably (and is) way off.  But it's pretty isn't it?  A dark heathered green.

2.  This is supposed to fit around my shoulders.  It's a shawlette, pretty small one too.  So it should have been treated more as a sweater.  Yeah. Should.

Hindsight is 20/20 isn't it?  I have to go unravel this yarn a second time now.  I'm getting good at that.

3/4 Skein Stole

The One Skein, A Stole! (Ravelry link) is finally finished and blocked! 

This is a super easy project and works up pretty quick thanks to all the dropped stitches (mostly intentional) in the piece.  Isn't it pretty?  Not only is it perfect for Spring/Summer as a stole, but you can make it into a really thin scarf for Fall/Winter too. 

This was made using three quarters of a skein of Noro sock yarn.  Yep, not even a whole skein was used.

Here's another view of it:

I've already started another lace project, but I'll have to show you that a little later.  I've been ordered to go play with the Youngest who's feeling needy at the moment.  Have a great day!

I Can See The Finish Line

It's getting so close now.  I can see the finish line.  10 more rows of the center section need to be completed and then the end section to be done.   I can't tell you how glad I will be to finally finish this project.  If it wasn't for all the gorgeous Noro color, I would have abandoned this stole long ago.

But I think my photographs of it are getting better! 

Knittin' At The Yard Sale

Saturday, my Sis-In-Law and I had a combined yard sale over at her place.  This may have been the most comfortable yard sale that I've ever been involved in.  If they were all like that, I'd have them way more often.

First off, we set up a big tailgating tent.  A tailgating tent is open on all sides, just a roof over your head basically.  Then, I brought in some fabric drop cloths to be our floor.  Grass is too itchy to have your feet in on a hot summer day and there are too many crawly things that would like to take a bite out of me.  The floor helped.  We also set up a great big box fan and a smaller camping fan.  We clipped the camping fan to the tent.  We also had one really long table to put some of our wares on.  Oh, and we also had two camp chairs to sit and relax in.

With all that and the overcast morning, we were cool, comfy and sunburn free!

I made about $85 dollars in the sale.  Which was pretty good considering I only sold five things.  But, even more importantly, I made progress!  On this:

I'm right at the halfway point on this stole.