KnitMe

Up to our ears in meow

(Emmy had naming rights to this one, she's Lily-Blue.)

(Mommy has naming rights to this one and hasn't made up her mind yet.)

(Beanie Babies included for purposes of scale. I'd forgotten how little 8-week-old kittens are!)

Big brother Toby and big sister Bonnie are rather pissed off, but showing signs of a long-term detente.

To avoid unnecessary angst, WIPs now reside here:

A second empty box waits for me to start the afghan from the fall issue of Interweave Knits. These are terrific little bins, purchased from The Evil Empire for less than $5 each.

What's in the bin? Emmy's shawl is still in there and growing. I think it'll be done in a couple of weeks.

I had enough yarn left from Cats' Day to make myself a lace scarf. This is the wide border of the blue scarf on page 90 of Victorian Lace Today.

It will have a total of 4 points across, because I decided to follow the directions in the book instead of the directions in the errata for making a scarf that matches the pictures. I was not born yesterday. I can tell that there are 3 points in the scarf in the photos. Luckily there are already 3 pages of corrections for Victorian Lace Today (this opens as a PDF).

The Cable Down raglan is growing, I will be done with the body in a day or two.

I started a pair of socks with the Crystal Palace 'Panda' yarn (bamboo, cotton, and nylon).

I'm making them toe-up because I want to use up all the yarn. I love the fabric it's making, it's cool to the touch which will be a great thing in a warm-season sock. It's also showing the stitches well. The pattern is from Evelyn Clark's "Retro Rib" sock pattern in the new Interweave favorite socks book - I started off to knit that pattern, but 64 stitches was just too big around for me in this yarn so I'm making a 56 stitch sock toe-up but using the same 8-stitch pattern repeat. I hope this yarn wears well as I'm prepared to love it and buy more. It's a tad splitty but not terribly so, and the result is worth it.

Last but not least, remember this photo, which Rebecca alertly pointed out contained - horrors - a dropped and running stitch? (operative location circled)

Well it now looks like this. Phew!

Cats' 87 Days

Cats' Day is finished. It is not at all ghostly like Melanie's Hyrna, it is very substantial indeed. It blocked out to nearly 6 feet square and I didn't even stretch it viciously (it's merino, what would be the point?).

Here's a detail where you can see the pairs of cats in the center sleeping under fir trees, then in the border the cats grooming in groups of 4, the cats trapped in the mesh of the nets, then the cats in a group, and then all around the border a single cat in each triangle along the seaside. (A 'cat' is represented by the little flower motif.)

The mesh was my favorite part. I love this lace pattern.

Did I mention it was big?

I totally love it although I don't really need it. I just wanted it. I have no idea yet when I will actually wear it. I just like looking at it.

It took me 87 days to knit it, I started January 31st and blocked it on Saturday. I used laceweight merino in the 'Seaglass' color by Lisa Souza, and size 5 needles. This yarn was stashed for a couple of years and I had always intended to knit this pattern with it.

The pattern was pretty easy knitting, with the exception of a couple of bumps in the road due to either pattern errors or just instructions that are open to interpretation. In order for the border to go on right-side-out, you have to sort of ignore her directions for picking up stitches all the way around the square, and use your common sense to get what you know you need. She throws you a loop at the top of the border chart, where suddenly both right side and wrong side rows are charted for a couple of rows, and if you get into a rhythm of thinking you know what you are doing then you will get caught by surprise there. And I think there are a couple of errors in the instructions for knitting the corners. I have sent them to Blackberry Ridge and they are looking into them, so it's still not clear whether it was my mistake somehow or the instructions - but I had the same result on all 4 corners so I am figuring it is the pattern.

I have enough yarn left to make myself a scarf from Victorian Lace Today, all I need is more time...

Last weekend I finished a little Victorian Shoulderette out of handspun bluefaced leicester left over from an old project.

My yarn was a little fatter than the pattern calls for, so it came out just a little bigger, but I think it is an ideal size.

The pattern is by Sivia Harding and I got mine at Knitting Zone.

I'm continuing to work on the Cable Down pattern, I am to the waistline on the body.

This yarn (Colrain from WEBS, merino/tencel) is showing the cables beautifully and making a nice fabric. The photos wash out the color a little, it really is a lovely wine shade. By the time I finish this it will probably be too hot to try it on...

Ghost Shawl

I can't seem to get a decent picture of this shawl because it just melts into the background like a ghost. This is Hyrna Hergobar from the Three Corner and Long Shawls book knit with Kidsilk Haze in shade 601, a dusty, greyed-out green. I love the design and will probably knit it again with a darker or brighter colour.

And what's this? Mmmm, Brooks Farm Harmony, a sensuous blend of kid mohair, silk and fine wool that I got at last year's Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. It's very soft and scrumptious. I don't know what the colourway is called, but at night it looks like shades of beige/tan/pewter and by day it looks more like beige/khaki/slate blue.

It has become the Wool Peddler's shawl from the Folk Shawls book by Cheryl Oberle. The shawl was a gift for my MIL, who turned 79 this week. She absolutely loves it, so I'm very happy. I wanted something warm and big enough for her to snuggle into. It took about one and one-half skeins of Harmony to knit the shawl with three extra repeats of the horseshoe lace border. One skein would not have been quite enough to finish the shawl without the extra repeats.

These are the Waterlily Socks designed by Sivia Harding done in Koigu. I love this design; it's so elegant with its subtle use of beads as the waterlily stem.

And now I'm knitting this ...

With this ...

How do you know you're knitting with really sticky yarn? When the ball doesn't collapse until there are only about two yards left. This is the start of the Faux Russian stole from Gathering of Lace using the Shetland jumperweight yarn called for in the pattern. Knitting with Shetland yarn after the Koigu and Harmony feels like knitting with barbed wire. This shawl, however, will still be around when the others have turned to dust. Shetland yarn is very durable stuff.

I'm test driving one of the new Addi Lace circular needles. I've been leery of the pointy tips. Can an old dog learn new tricks? The jury is still out. I'm developing rough patches on the sides of both index fingers where the points slide against them, and I keep jabbing my right index finger because of my habit of pressing on the point to provide resistance as I slide the stitches forward with my left hand. Ouch! On the plus side, those tips are great for working K3 tog or P2 tbl or for tinking, not that any of that ever happens around here. ;-)

If sleeve is an island...

then what is edging? An archipelago? I am just about all edging all the time these days.

I am still working my way around the edging of Cats' Day, having done 2 1/2 sides and 2 corners.

I think there are a couple of errors in the corner directions, I've sent off my questions to Blackberry Ridge and we will see if the problem is the pattern or me.

Now that this is half off the needle I'm beginning to get an idea of how big it is...

Meanwhile I started last weekend to knit a Victorian Shoulderette (Sivia Harding design) - Sam's version from a couple of entries ago inspired me to haul out the remains of the green bluefaced leicester I spun a year or two ago.

This picture does not at all do justice to how nice it's coming out. My yarn is fatter than what the pattern calls for, so it is very cushy. It just needs... edging. This edging goes much more quickly than the other, and I ought to be able to finish it in short order. I'd have been done by now if I hadn't omitted about 6 rows between the lace border and the edging, and had to tear off all the edging I'd knitted so I could go back and put in those 6 rows.

In non-edging news, I am still working on Cable Down and am past the underarms. It goes faster when the rows are shorter and just include body stitches.

This is the first raglan sweater like this that I've knit that doesn't have you cast on a few stitches at the underarm once you remove the sleeve stitches. I don't know whether I should be worried about that, or not...

Emily's shawl is technically the right size for her now.

However, I am going to keep knitting, I want it to be big enough that she doesn't outgrow it.

No spinning for the past couple of weeks. I'm not sure why, exactly, as I have tons of lovely stuff to spin...

A Grand Fiber Day in the PNWetandsnowy, and Home at Last

On our way home from Hawaii last month we stopped in Seattle for a meet-up with FT friends. Sam was our gracious host and chauffeur. Our first stop was at the Seattle Weaving Works. Worried that I was quickly getting into a rut of spinning nothing heavier than lace weight and fingering, I asked Sam to help me pick out some easy-to-draft roving that would be nice for practicing spinning worsted weight yarn.
We headed straight for the fiber room. I was too dazzled to focus on anything, but Sam's keen eye zeroed in on the bins of BFL and Falklands. The rest of the morning we spent weighing and packing big balls of fluffy roving to send back to North Dakota.

Clockwise: dark BFL, white Falklands, white BFL, and in the center a dollop of merino/silk that I couldn't resist.

Then just to play with, some squiggly silk rods (reeling waste) and Bombyx cocoons.

After lunch at a nearby Greek restaurant, with much good food and talk of wheels and spinning, we headed out to Village Yarn and Tea, where Ellen was our hostess. Jen slid down the snowy hills to join our little knit-in. What timing...a big shipment of Fleece Artist sock yarn had come in the day before! We made a beeline for the sock yarn wall. After admiring every skein in the bins, I narrowed the choices down to two, a conservative brown skein and another of bright berry colors. A pair of charming shawl pins rounded out the shopping day.

For the rest of the afternoon we sat around the bright, comfortable table, knitting and chatting and drinking hot tea. Ellen introduced me to white tea, delicately aromatic and brewed to perfection. It made a delicious cup to end a memorable day!

Back home at last, I spun up samples of my Seattle treasures just as soon as the box arrived on my doorstep. I dove into the spindle basket and pulled out a group of Bossies in a variety of weights, and spun my new rovings into a range of singles.

A 1.02oz. Tasmanian tiger myrtle (left) and a 1.06oz. oak (right) with BFL for worsted.

A .7oz. Red Cedar (left) and .77oz. Cherry with Falklands for DK.

And for the merino/silk?
I give you the prettiest spindle that has ever graced a spinner's hand.

Little Dancer is a .42oz. Kauri featherweight from the hand of Jonathan Bosworth.
Kauri is a wood of incredible antiquity and great beauty. The changing color you see in the photo is not a shadow, nor is it due to pigment variation in the grain. Rather it is a shifting flash of gold - a cat's eye chatoyance - that comes from the play of light within the structure of the wood itself as the spindle twirls and tilts in the spinner's hand.
My Dancer is a very special and treasured spindle indeed.

Two months working in Hawaii, a fiber adventure in the PNW, and home to North Dakota for some pleasant spinning. It was a good winter.

Me Myself I

I want to clarify something for you, People frequently comment here as if they think there is one person doing all this work. There are in fact FOUR of us. I'm Prudence (not my real name but it might as well be...) and I live in Baltimore and I am the regularly scheduled Monday programming. Then we have Sam who posted about blue stuff last week and lives in Seattle. Sam doesn't post very often, the naughty person. Then we have Jan who posts from Hawaii in the winter and is raising silk worms in North Dakota and spins a lot of silk. Then we have Melanie who lives in British Columbia and posts all those ever-so-perfect photos of spun and knit items arranged just so. Really, there are four of us.

OK now that's cleared up...

I don't have much this week. Saturday I finished the border on Cats Day at last.

A warning for anyone who is working on this pattern: she throws a loop at you and I spent all day Saturday straightening myself out because of it. The border chart only shows odd-numbered (right side) rows UNTIL YOU GET TO ROW 69. After row 69, every row is charted. I did NOT catch this until I had already knitted rows 70 and 71, so I had to spend hours going around the shawl and taking 7 stitches down two rows and reknitting them and moving on to the next spot and taking down 7 stitches... It took a long time and once or twice I lost something and had to rebuild... but I think I got everything right because the knitting itself was not difficult. So beware.

Last night I started the edging. It took me about half an hour to get it going in the right direction. I could NOT figure out how to cast on for the edging using a provisional caston and also end up going in the right direction. Once I threw that idea out and went back to Legends of the Shetlalnd Seas to read the directions there, I did better. The edging definitely has a right side, so assuming you didn't get messed up beginning the border and attach that whole thing wrong side out, you need to keep going counterclockwise around to attach the edging - you want your even numbered inbound rows to be the right side, not the wrong side. Sigh.

Once I sorted that out I knitted 4 edging points in about an hour. I think I have about 50 do to but I am not positive. The thing is about 800 stitches around, and each edging point repeat takes up about 15 stitches. Unfortunately on this pattern the corner is not charted, it's just written out, so I foresee some hair pulling when I get to the first corner...

Last weekend I began working on the Cable Down Raglan from the spring Interweave Knits, in WEBS 'Colrain'. I have been obsessed with getting the shawl up to the edging, so this has languished. But it is really attractive. I love the neck edge.

The color was washed out a little bit by the camera, it is called 'Grape Jelly' but it is a lovely wine color. They should have called it 'Shiraz'. It's nice yarn, soft and smooth.

I was bemused by something in the chart for this center front cable you can see in the photo. The cable begins with a 3x3 cross, then each 3-stitch outer leg begins to split until you have a lattice in the center framed by a single outside stitch. What puzzled me was that just above and below the places where the lattice crosses happen, the traveling knit stitches are surrounded not by purls but by knits. It's just the single row above and below the cross. Why would you do that? I can't tell from the magazine photo but I can't see any interruption to the single well-raised knit stitches traveling. So I ignored that, and kept the traveling knit stitches on a constant background of purls. If anyone knows anything about this, please comment. I always hesitate to believe there are errors in patterns because I have been known to see errors where there are none....

I continue working on Emily's shawl. It looks the same only bigger.

This is a great pattern to use when you want to just make a garter triangle but would prefer to dress it up a wee bit.