Sad Anniversaries

It will be my mother's birthday on the 24th, the second since she died. Somehow this anniversary makes me sadder than the anniversary of her death. In reaction to this, I find myself swamped in creativity or, maybe, in shopping to support creativity. I've been buying lace weight yarn like crazy. I bought three partial cones of Jaggerspun Zephyr and another three colors of cashmere-silk blend on eBay, four different colorways from Black Bunny Yarn, and two colorways of kettle-dyed yarn from Knit Picks. Then today I got a skein of Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace for the 2009 Year of Lace Spring offering.

The funny thing is, I don't know why I'm suddenly accumulating lace weight yarn. It's not in honor of my mother. I never knit a lace shawl for my mother and she wouldn't have worn it if I had. She rarely wore sweaters or jackets or coats and a lace shawl just wasn't her style at all. An afghan would have suited her, but I'm just now starting to think about knitting afghans, mostly for the new house.

There's some miscellaneous news. We're having a heat wave here. It's been in the '90s, which is unusual in April. Today we're having a lot of convective activity and there's an actual thunderstorm just north of us that has really dropped the temperature. I doubt if we'll see any precipitation, though.

Gordo went to the vet last week and he weighs 75 lbs now. He'll be one year old on May Day. He's doing very well, although he has trouble sleeping in the warm evenings. We've started leaving the slider in the bedroom open and he's doing better. His crate is right by the door and the cool air washes over him, making him more comfortable. He also seems to be eating a little better. I think he's not wild about the lamb and rice kibble, so I'm going to look for a different brand next time. Maybe I'll pick up a small bag of Canidae. My previous pair of collies liked it very much, so I can hope Gordo will, too, and that it won't make him itch.

Some time ago I got a new vacuum cleaner, a Eureka, that claims to pick up dog hair. It does and I'm really pleased. I hadn't realized how much hair Gordo had shed in the bedroom (or how much we'd tracked in) until I saw it whirling around in the vacuum cup. His hair is pretty much invisible on the silver plush, which helped conceal the quantity. The vacuum can also be used on hard floors, having a switch to turn the beater brushes off, which is really nice. My halls and bathrooms are tiled and regular vacuums just spread stuff around on them, rather than sucking it up. This vacuum came from Overstock.com and was quite reasonably priced. I looked at Dysans but couldn't find one with the hard-floor option and thought they were kind of expensive. I've had Eurekas before and liked them, so that's what I got.

At the same time I also picked up a Bissell carpet cleaner from Overstock.com. It's refurbished and has a minimal complement of accessories, but I'ver never found that I use the accessories. I probably should, now that I actually think about it, since the chair I regularly sit in is a bit grubby and could stand to have the arms cleaned, at the very least. We have the carpet cleaners come in about once a year and do everything, but with a dog it's nice to be able to tackle spots when they appear, without doing the entire house. All of my dogs have been very good about not making organic messes, being well-trained, but I swear that they would sometimes clench an entire pawful of mud to track onto the carpet on rainy days. Add in my propensity to spill Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and spot-cleaning gets important.

The third thing in my order was a pressure cooker. I've never had one, but my mom loved hers. She was a working woman for as long as I can remember and the pressure cooker let her put dinner on the table in no time. I'm more interested in keeping the kitchen cool during the summer. I'm trying to add some balance and variety to my diet and I know I'm more likely to eat food I've prepared. For example, I despise cooked bell peppers, yet a lot of companies sneak them into frozen meals, where they taint the entire dish. This is particularly true of baked pasta dishes and Mexican foods, like enchiladas. I also think the pressure cooker will let me cook smaller quantities. There's really no reason to make two big pans of cheese enchiladas or lasagna just because you're going to all that work anyway. The cooker is also touted as making excellent rice and, with special pans, steamed desserts. I'll let you know how this works out.

Busy Week This Week

Well, my week started on Sunday, getting a new toilet installed. It's a Kohler toilet that only uses 1.6 gallons, compared to the original toilet that used 6 or 7 gallons. As it was being installed, I was doing laundry and I noticed water running down the side of the water heater. We looked and the pipes were so corroded that it was a wonder that any water was going the right way. I spent the afternoon doing as much laundry as I could and going to the supermarket.

Monday I went over and had the first crown prep done and then came home to meet the plumber. He agreed immediately that we needed a new water heater and we scheduled it for Tuesday afternoon. He cut the insulation jacket off to be sure we had the right size (50 gallons) and that set the water hiding in the fiberglass free. By this morning it was really wet and messy in the garage.

So this morning I had to take my husband by the blood lab for a test first thing (fasting test, you know how that works). The guy is installing the new water heater as I write. The corner of the garage is sodden. There's no other word for it but that. Fortunately the wallboard around the water heater base is purely for looks and the 2x4 frame provided the real structural strength.

It turns out that the old water heater was installed in 1980, making it 28 years old. Apparently this is beyond geriatric for water heaters, which have a normal lifetime of about a dozen years. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't really think much about my water heater. It just sits there in the corner of the garage, working away. I try to drain it once a year, but I suspect I really only manage about once every three years.

So we're about to have hot water again and I'm going to get the laundry finished, hopefully today. You see, I have an appointment for my third crown prep tomorrow (Wednesday). I'm hoping it goes as well as yesterday's did and I can get the laundry put away, etc.

Then on Thursday I have another dentist's appointment, to fill some cavities. The crowns won't be back from the lab for another couple-three weeks, so I'll have some time off until it's time to glue them on. A year or two back, I got a crown replaced and when we tried the new crown on, it was such a perfect fit it wouldn't come off after the trial fitting. Of course the dentist didn't want to do anything extreme to it so it took some time before it finally popped of. Then I nearly swallowed it. What a farce that was. Funny now, but not so funny at the time.

I'm almost done with the central section of the dramatic stole I'm knitting for a friend. I've taken so long to get even this far that I'm going to give her the Forget-Me-Not Shawl just to tide her over. The shawl has been finished except for blocking for literally months, so I've got to get myself in gear right now. I got a new blocking set, with wires and pins, etc, from Overstock.com for about $20 (I'm a member of their club and get an additional 5% discount and free postage). This shawl is vastly oversized compared to the original pattern, because I read it wrong.

Abut five minutes ago I got my copy of It Itches by Franklin Habit. Wonderful book. So much truth in it, too. I recommend it highly. I've only read the cartoons, not the essays, because I want to get this published before I get distracted by something else.

Shawls, Gordo, and Dog Food

I met a bunch of knitters and crocheters at the Lancaster Panera today and managed to get the ends sewn in for two shawls and one scarf. One of the shawls was made with only two skeins, though, so I can't take much credit on that one. I have two more shawls to go, one with four joins and one with seven. The first is black and I didn't think the light was good enough there to mess with and I just couldn't face doing the second.

Gordo went over on Monday for neutering and repair of his umbilical hernia. Because they had to do two separate tasks, they anesthetized him fairly deeply. We went over and picked him up at 5:00 pm and he was pretty groggy. He came home and wobbled around a bit before lying down. He looked so miserable and was whimpering so pitifully that I picked him up and put him on my lap. He promptly went to sleep, with nary a peep, and slept the sleep of the just for almost four hours. I just held my poor 35.5-lb baby, shifting him occasionally so that my various body parts wouldn't go to sleep.

He perked up a bit when he could finally have water and a light dinner, but went to sleep fairly easily. Now, a week later, he's quite back to normal. He hasn't really needed the awkward Elizabethan collar at all, as he's shown no inclination to lick the incisions. The prickly metal stitched might have something to do with that.

Speaking of dogs and just having fed mine dinner, it's interesting what the current trends in dog food are. I feed what's called superpremium food, because it greatly reduces the amount of waste that the dog produces and I have to pick up. The latest thing is no-grain foods. The position of those who formulate these foods is that dogs didn't evolve eating grain, which is pretty hard to argue with, except that they've lived with people for over 10,000 years and they have to have had the occasional bread crust during all those millennia. The foods do have carbohydrates, like sweet potatoes, fruit, and other vegetables. They also seem to have a variety of meats and meat meals, not just one kind.

Gordo definitely prefers one brand, Evo, over the other, BG, that he's tried. This kind of ruined my idea of puppies being willing to eat everything they can get in their mouth. However, he has, in the last ten minutes, proven that he'll eat aluminum foil and Stouffer's boxes, so I don't think he's all that picky.

So I, being so insensitive to my puppy's tastes (he's only a dog, what's wrong with the stuff they sell at the supermarket), just went by the feed store and picked up a big bag of chicken etc EVO. I only got a few coins back from the $50 I tendered. Fortunately, the superpremium foods are of such high quality that the dog actually eats less for the same number of calories, making this bag last longer than a similarly sized bag of the more common foods. I have checked this out myself, reading feeding tables on every bag of food I've seen. One of the things I discovered doing this was that IAMS cut its serving sizes when they started selling in supermarkets. There was no reformulation of the food to go with the smaller sizes, though.

Forget-Me-Not Shawl

Forget-Me-Not Shawl
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

Here's the latest photo of my Forget-Me-Not Shawl. The pattern, like the yarn, is from Elann. The yarn is a fingering weight yarn made from soybeans. They use what's left from making tofu, which is, based on the recommended acid dyes, protein. This yarn only comes in the cream color you see here. It's intended as a base yarn for hand dyeing. I really like this yarn and I've ordered a bag (ten skeins) of it for another lace project.

I've finished 114 rows, comprising the setup and three repeats of the first pattern. I'm going to add another repeat of this pattern before going on to the three repeats of the second pattern. I'm adding the repeat because the shawl is 66" wide when made with six repeats and I'm making it for someone who is taller than average and would look better in a larger version. The original six-repeat version calls for five skeins of yarn. I bought six and I think that's exactly how much I'll need for the seven-repeat version. However, if I'm wrong it'll be OK, since I bought the additional bag.

Edited to add: According to the triangular shawl progress calculator, I'm about 30% done. The person I was making this for expressed a burning passion for brighter colors, so this shawl has a new recipient. She's shorter and more slender than is the original recipient, so I'm knitting it to the pattern, not larger.

Gordo helps me by grabbing any piece of the shawl or yarn he can reach and pulling on it. His long puppy canines are very good at snagging the yarn. Fortunately, I'm fairly quick and he doesn't get very far with it. So far all the snags have smoothed out very nicely. I'm glad it's resilient yarn in fingering weight and not a more delicate fiber in lace weight.

More Lace Yarn

This is all Knit Picks lace weight yarn. It's very inexpensive compared to a lot of others. This is heathery yarn and the colors are a bit light. The skein in the middle is actually very greeny-gray and the other two skeins are darker. I have twelve skeins of this, or at least twenty-four shawls.


This is Knit Pick merino lace weight. It's hand dyed (but not hand-painted, which is an important distinction). It's a very nice yarn and I like some of the colors very much. For some reason, totally unknown to me, I have thirty-eight skeins of this. I had forty, but I knitted the Angel Lace Shawl from two of them.


This is the Knit Picks 70% alpaca, 30% silk lace weight yarn. It's finer than the all-merino yarn above it. It makes a very pretty scarf, like the Forest Canopy Scarf I knitted from two skeins of this in turquoises. I currently have eighteen skeins of this.

I also have four skeins of a beautiful teal alpaca heather lace weight from Knit Picks. And I have four skeins (100 g, 880 yd) of their lace weight merino Bare, in natural.

I probably have more Knit Picks lace weight yarn than I really need.

Here's the lace weight yarn bin. It's a twelve-gallon bin from Costco and except for the apricot cotton at the back, the tangerine skein center front, the alpaca in the left corner, and the hand-painted Morehouse Farms merino in the bag and to its right, this entire bin is filled with Knit Picks lace-weight yarn.


I'm considering making about half of it available for trade or purchase on Ravelry. I've already sold about twenty skeins of yarn there. If anyone sees anything they'd like here, let me know.

Down In The Low Desert

We got back to Palm Desert a week ago and it's been unseasonably warm here. It was 85° today. The lemon and the clementine are absolutely covered with buds and blossoms and that whole corner of the back yard smells heavenly. The clementine is also covered with orange fruit, but they've been on the tree too long and they're kind of dry. The lemon, which did poorly after the hard freeze, has exactly two lemons on it. I expect a lot more this year.

I've got three shawls and a scarf to block and about a dozen boxes of books to put away and I've been buying lace yarn and fingering weight yarn and Aran weight yarn. I don't know quite how it happened, but I bought four skeins of five different Elann Baby Lace colors. That's at least ten shawls. That wouldn't be so bad, except that the twenty new skeins are sitting on a twelve-gallon bin full of lace yarn and there's six skeins of Zephyr Wool-Silk (three shawls) on the way. I also bought three shawl patterns to go with the Zephyr. All I have to do is hold off from starting another shawl before I get the blocking and unpacking undone. That may be very difficult as knitting shawls is sort of addictive.

I got a copy holder from Office Depot to hold the lace charts. I've been fiddling around with markers and correction tape and magnets. Right now I think I like the copy holder best for knitting here, particularly on long repeats. I think I prefer highlighter pens and multiple copies (a lace book, to use the proper name) for shorter repeats.

The repeat on the Dramatic Shawl is 80 rows, for example, and the copy holder really works well. I've just finished the half-way row in the third repeat. Photos will follow as soon as I find my camera. I know it's here someplace and I think it's in a knitting bag. I'll also take photos of all the lace weight yarn on hand.

Another Finished Lace Shawl

Here it is, the beautiful Angel Lace Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark. It's knitted from two skeins of KnitPicks Gossamer in Caribbean. This yarn is 100% merino wool, 440 yd (a quarter of a mile) per 50-gram skein. This shawl used almost exactly two skeins, half a mile; I don't think there's more than two yards left over. As I was binding off, I was starting to wonder if I'd make it. Not that it would have been the end of the world or anything, since I have another half a mile in the same dye lot. It just would have been a nuisance.


In this photo the texture of the lace is a lot easier to see. Of course, that will all vanish with blocking, but it's pretty. It's just that to retain it, I'd have to make the shawl about twice as large and never wash it. That's not practical.



I'll get it blocked in the next couple of weeks, along with the two other shawls that are waiting to be blocked, and put up photos of all three of them in their final glory. Two of them are for me, the only ones I've kept of the eight lace shawls I've knitted so far. I hadn't realized I'd given so many away until I just counted them up right now.

Here are two close-up photos, showing the angels and their wings. They also show the colors of the yarn.



I've had the pattern and the yarn for a while, although they weren't intended for each other. What inspired me to get both out and start knitting was seeing a beautiful version, knitted in variegated blues, on Wendy's site. You can see it here, just as I did. In other words, it's all Wendy's fault.

I looked at that and said to myself, "Self, you've got that pattern and you've got an entire bin of lace-weight yarn, so what's stopping you?" My self replied "Nothing, but it won't look just like that because there's no yarn just like that in the bin." (My self is fond of pointing out the obvious.) So I picked out an interesting yarn and started knitting. I pulled the first version back because I had the wrong size needles, but it still went very quickly. I was going to give it to a friend, but decided to keep it for myself instead. I'm not sure how fond the friend is of chartreuse, which is a color about which most people have strong opinions

The Dramatic Stole Is On My Mind

It's kept me awake a couple of nights, fretting about it. My friend J. picked up some Lion Brand Incredible yarn in the Rainbow colorway when our local Hancock Fabrics closed up. She wanted a Dramatic Stole and she's exactly the right person to wear one. She's tall and carries herself beautifully. Drama becomes her.


I, being a knitter who is always looking for projects, said I knit a dramatic stole for her and we went to the new LYS and picked out some Blue Heron Rayon Loop in Blueberry, which is a very nice boucle. I haven't knitted much boucle, so this promised to be an interesting experience. And the colors are so luscious. Boucle knits up into a unique fabric in garter stitch. It's too loopy to knit into fancy stitches, as they won't show.


For a textural contrast, we chose Yarn Place Vivace (bamboo) in Purple Rain. Believe the promise of the yarn in the skein, as you pick it up and feel its soft slinkiness. It truly is soft and it has that wonderful heavy drape of rayon and silk. It also holds a stitch nicely.


So here's the total collection.


My first thought was symmetric stripes in random widths starting at the center back, sort of like the spreading zone in the middle of the Atlantic. I tried that, starting with the Vivace and following with the Rayon Loop, but it really didn't work. The Vivace needed more of a pattern and the gauges were just too different.

Even that little bit of knitting with bamboo yarn had kind of hooked me, so I'd gone back to my LYS and picked up three balls of SWTC Bamboo, which is DK weight, and restarted Faina's Scarf[1]. I got about halfway though it and had an idea for the Dramatic Stole. I decided to make lace panels in the Faina's Scarf pattern in Vivace and join them with garter-stitch panels in the Rayon Loop. I've knitted two lace panels. The panels are about 11" by 22", although I can change the size a fair amount.


Here's a close-up of one of the panels. I should point out that this pattern is copyright Fibertrends, so I won't be showing the whole thing in loving detail or anything.


And here's a close-up of the other.

Chevrons and diamonds, to summarize. You can probably just see that there's a chain selvedge on the side of the panel. I'm going to knit a Rayon Loop panel, picking up the selvedge stitches, to join these panels. There will be five lace panels and six boucle panels. Then I'll edge the whole thing with Incredible, in a knitted-on i-cord, and add the Incredible fringe. That should be dramatic enough, even for her.

[1] More about the Faina's Scarf soon. I need to take photos in good light because the yarn is all blues and lavender, which doesn't photograph well in poor light. The colors are beautiful and I want them to show up in all their glory.

Progress

Here's the latest picture of my Angel Lace Shawl. I've added one more pattern motif repeat (ten rows) since I snapped this. Just for orientation, the center top of the shawl is at the center top of the photo. In this photo I had about a quarter of the first ball of yarn left, meaning I was about 3/8ths done.


Another photo of the shawl, from slightly further back. In this photo the center of the top of the shawl is slightly left of the bottom of the photo. The tip of the triangle is at the upper right of the photo. I need a longer cable on my circular needle to lay the shawl out in its proper shape.


Now it may seem that I haven't made much progress on my shawl since I last reported and I really haven't. I had something else to do. My dear niece, The Best Niece In The World or TBNITW (not that I'm biased or anything), sent me some beautiful hand-painted rayon chenille yarn. This part of it hadn't traveled well and I hadn't treated it carefully enough when I took it out of the box and looked at it. Chenille has so much twist in it that this yarn had really snarled itself up, with only a little help. So I found an end and untangled. And untangled. And untangled.

Isn't this beautiful hand-painted yarn? The colors remind me very much of turquoise and amethyst. I have no idea what I'm going to knit from it, except that it needs to be knit fairly firmly in a pattern stitch to prevent worming. Here's a closer look.

And here it is, untangled and wound into a nice firm ball slightly bigger than a baseball.

TBNITW sent more than just one kind of hand-painted chenille, so I'll share more photos as soon as I take them. She has wonderful taste, but what else would you expect from TBNITW?

A Finished Lace Shawl, A Re-Started Lace Shawl

I finished my Flower Lace Shawl two days ago. That is to say, I finished knitting it. I haven't woven in the ends yet. Once I do, I'll wash and block it. I'm thinking of taking it down to Palm Desert to block because I have a big, out of the way casita bedroom that's just perfect for blocking. It has a ceiling fan to speed drying, too.


Here's a close-up of the rolling border. The points, which will be pinned out flat in the blocking, are quite visible. Since the bind off is completely rolled up and invisible, I'll just say that I did a very even, uniform bind off that I'm very proud of. I did it all in one sitting, beginning to end, which contributed to the evenness. The bind off I use on almost everything (not scarves in bulky yarn, though) is the Flexible Bind Off that Cat Bordhi and Evelyn Clark recommend. It's very easy (k1, *k1, slip the left needle into the front of the two stitches and knit together, repeat from * to the end of the row). It's flexible, as the name promises, and attractive.


And here's a close-up showing the Flower Motif.


This is the Angel Lace Shawl. I'd started it on US4 needles (the first version was the subject of a posting here, with photos). However, I felt that the fabric was just too tight at that gauge, so I switched to US 6 needles. Here's where I've gotten back to. The stitch marker shows where the body motifs start. These triangular shawls are typically knit with the pattern set-up, multiple repeats of the body motifs, and an edging. In this pattern, the first twenty rows are the set-up, the body motifs are ten stitches by ten rows, and the edging is sixteen rows deep.


Here's a close-up, showing the angel with wings. The head is just left of center.


When I picked this yarn out, I didn't realize that it had quite so much chartreuse or that the chartreuse was so vivid. It looks quite different in the skein. I've gotten used to it now and I like it, but when I was knitting the first version I was a little worried about it.

Edited to add that my new dishwasher gets installed tomorrow morning (Tuesday, 9 Jan). I'm ready for it to be here. Amazing how nice it is to put dirty dishes into the machine and get clean dishes out.

Rejoice, For That Which Was Lost Is Found

My lace shawl book was shipped from Elann, so the inevitable happened. I found my copy.

This came at a good time, as I decided that my Angel Wings Shawl needs to be frogged and re-knit on larger needles. Right now I'm used US 4s, but I think I'll try 5s or 6s. I'll finish up the Floral Lace Shawl and then start over on the Angel Wings Shawl.

In The Absence Of The Pattern

Since I can't finish my Floral Lace Shawl until the new copy of the pattern arrives, I decided to start another. I know I've got other projects I should be working on, but lace shawls are just plain addictive.

Here it is, Evelyn Clark's Angel Lace Shawl, knit in Knit Picks Gossamer in Caribbean, from my stash. It's the first time I've used this 100% merino lace weight yarn. I like it much more than I liked the KP Shimmer, probably because it's about twice the diameter. The Shimmer makes a beautiful sheer shawl but drives me crazy. The Gossamer is a lot easier for me to knit with.




In this photo I've finished the first chart (center back, twenty rows) and four repeats of the second chart (body pattern, ten rows). It may be that the colors in this yarn are a little too contrasty for lace, but I like them.

Here's a closer photo, where you may be able to see the angels' heads and wings:


This shawl is a lot solider than most of the other lace shawls I've knitted. I assume that it'll be warmer as a result, but I'm not sure it's going to stretch as much when blocked. I have a mile of this color lot, but I will probably only use two skeins, half a mile, 880 yd. The pattern calls for 550 yd, but the resulting shawl is only 28" by 56". That seems a little skosh to me, so I'll probably use both skeins and have my shawl come out a little larger.

As soon as the replacement pattern arrives I'll finish the Floral Lace Shawl. This time I'm going to measure both before and after blocking.

The Year Has Taken A Sudden Downturn

I've already mentioned that I lost the book with the instructions for the Floral Lace Shawl I'm knitting.

The next thing to happen was that last night (Sunday) I loaded up my dishwasher just chock full of dirty dishes and flatware, turned it on, and all it did was make a funny noise. It's not pumping water in at the beginning of the wash cycle. I went over to Lowe's (after going to the local appliance dealer I've always dealt with and discovering that they only sell new appliances by special order and think I should go to Lowe's for just one item) and bought a new dishwasher. A fancy quiet dishwasher with adjustable top shelf and fold-down prongs, plus all sorts of hold-downs for stuff on the top shelf. I didn't get the old dishwasher fixed because it's about 25 years old and it's time to let go.

Now I'm wondering if these things come in threes and, if so, what's next.

I hope I didn't jinx myself by looking over the washer and dryer I'm considering. I think they'll be a reasonable height when stacked. On the other hand, there's a spiffy clothes-folding surface to put on top if they're side by side, as well as pedestals with drawers to hold all the laundry soap, fabric softener, etc. At extra cost, of course, as is the stacking kit, which I think is just a plastic square that fits down over the top of the washer, with depressions to hold the feet of the dryer.

On the other hand, it's our 37th wedding anniversary today

That's Silly

I've been knitting away like crazy on my Floral Lace Shawl. I've finished the 18th repeat of the body pattern. After making a few measurements I decided that I'd only do one more repeat of the pattern. Rather than the last couple of pattern rows, I have to knit transition rows and the scalloped border. However, I can't find the book with the transition row and border patterns. I've looked everywhere for it. I threw away a stack of recyclable catalogs over a foot high and put about a dozen other knitting and cook books back in the bookcase.

My husband even helped me with this thrash, pulling out magazines and putting them aside for me. He also dragged the stack of stuff to the recycle bin. After about an hour of looking, he suggested that I just buy another copy. I went to Elann and did so. Now I'll probably find the first copy, albeit somewhere odd. In any event, the new one may be here by Friday.

Lace Shawls And Blocking

I thought it would be interesting to show before and after blocking photos of the lace Diamond Fantasy Christening Shawl, to show how much it stretches and how much flatter and lacier it looks after blocking.

This is the before photo:


And this is the after photo. See how much bigger the yarnovers are and how flat it is? It's a lot less dense and the shawl really grew.


I'm still working on the Floral Lace Shawl; I'm somewhere between 2/3rds and 4/5ths of the way to being done. That is to say, I'm nearly at the end of the fourth ball of yarn but I don't know whether I'm going to use five balls or six. I think I may have to go to the next longer cable (Knit Pick Options Harmony interchangeable circular needles) before I go much further. The current one is getting kind of crowded. I meant to measure the christening shawl before and after blocking, to help me estimate how big I wanted to make the current shawl, but I totally forgot. Since this shawl is for me, I'll probably use up all the yarn. I don't think there's much I can make with just one skein of it, as they're fairly small.

I mentioned the whatever I'm knitting for what's-her-name earlier. I'm sorry to say I seem to have mis-measured the gauge swatch and have to frog nearly six inches of 2x2 ribbing, 440 stitches per row on circular needles. It seems to have come out about 150% bigger than I thought it would. If I'd kept going, it was going to be the heaviest and warmest scarf knitted in the history of the world, including the Dr. Who scarves that are such perennial favorites. I'm going to abandon this for a while and make an entirely different whatever for someone else. Fortunately, I have enough victims friends and relatives in colder climates that finding someone else won't be too hard.

If you look here you can see the next lace shawl I'm going to knit (this won't be the next thing I knit, just the next shawl). I got the pattern in November, from Elann, and I've got several choices of yarn in my stash. I'm thinking that blue, rather like Wendy's, might be nice. I married into an entire family of blue-eyed Iowans, mostly with brown hair, so I buy a fair amount of yarn in colors that will look good on them. I've also got some lovely natural (cream) merino from Knit Picks in both lace and fingering weight, but I think a mildly variegated yarn will look really good in this pattern.

Baby Shower Time

Saturday I went to a baby shower and took the Diamond Fantasy Christening Shawl with me. It's going to South Dakota to wait until March, when my dear friend's first grandbaby will be born.


The Diamond Fantasy Christening Shawl is knitted in Knit Picks Bare Merino/Silk Fingering Weight yarn from Sivia Harding's pattern. It's the second Diamond Fantasy Shawl I've knitted; the first was for my friend, the baby's grandmother.



This is a close-up to show off the diamonds.


This is a tassel I made with the same yarn, with a braided strand, to wrap the tissue-paper package. It's going to be a cat toy now that the shower is over. Pretty day, wasn't it? Calm, which matters in the cold-winter High Desert.

And here is the shadow of the shawl on my brick-on-sand sidewalk. I noticed the shadow as I was zipping back into the house to wrap the shawl, put on my shoes, and race to the shower.

The shower was a lot of fun and I even won a prize for guessing closest on how big mommy's waist was. The food was so good that I ate too much and could hardly bear to make dinner for my husband.

An FO At Last

I have finally finished my pretty Bigfoot Shawl from Wrapped In Comfort by Alison Jeppson Hyde. It's knitted in Knit Picks Gloss, which is a fingering-weight blend of 70% merino wool and 30% silk. This is a very robust yarn; I ended up re-knitting about three inches of this shawl about four times and the yarn stood up to it very well, looking just as good the last time I knitted it as it did the first.


The pattern called for three balls of Gloss but I used an extra three-quarters of a ball. This was the result of my decision to knit until the shawl was 16" long unstretched. At the end of the third ball the shawl was 16" long somewhat stretched, but that seemed just a little skosh to me, so I knitted on. The pattern calls for 16" in length, no other description, which is why I had two options. Of course, it was easy to decide to press on after three balls because I had, with my usual caution, bought an extra ball. This leaves me with more orphan balls that I probably need, but it avoids that nasty sinking feeling you get when you're out of yarn but not out of pattern.


Here's a not very good photo of the pattern, a variant of Fan and Feather. This is some of the part that got knitted four times. The yarn looks pretty good, with good stitch definition and shine, even after all that abuse. Knitting with black yarn can be a challenge, particularly for older eyes. I used the screen on my laptop to check my knitting.

So now I've got to block this circular shawl. That's going to be a first for me. I've looked around a little on the Web, as well as checking some books, for tips and hints. I have those rubber floor tiles I use for blocking, plus a zillion T pins and several tape measures. I'm not exactly sure how I should pin out the neckline. I mean, I know it's round, but what's the right diameter? I'm pretty sure this will become easy to see when I get right down to it.

So now all I've got left for my imperative Christmas knitting is a scarf made from Knit Picks Panache for my brother in law. This is such luscious yarn, 40% superfine alpaca, 20% cashmere, 20% silk, and 20% superfine merino. I just love knitting scarves from such luxurious fibers for my brother- and sister-in-law, both of whom I love dearly.

Here's a photo, one I've posted before, just to save readers the effort of paging back through previous posts to find it.

It's a little darker blue than this, not quite navy blue, though. The color is named Dusk.

And the last photo, just because I like the colors so much, is of the triangular shawl I'm knitting for myself. I won't be doing much with it until the blue scarf is done and the BIL and SIL scarves are on their way to Iowa.

This is very relaxing to knit. That may be because the pattern is quite straightforward and the colors are sort of unpredictable. I'd never dream of giving this shawl to anyone else because the colors are so vivid, even gaudy. And, of course, I have the option of frogging the whole thing back and knitting wristlets from it, more in accordance with the plan of the yarn's creator. It's sock yarn, but I don't knit socks.

One last item--I'm beginning to suspect that I may get a washer and dryer for Christmas. The washer doesn't always spin the clothes dry and the dryer seems to be stuck on really hot. We're going to go over to Lowe's and look at the Whirlpool front-loading washers and matching dryers. This isn't exactly what I was hoping Santa would bring me, but at least it's not coal.

What's New On The Knitting Front

I'm going to start out with the knitting for the March baby, my dear friend's first grandbaby.

First is the christening shawl. Traditionally this is worn by the baby at the christening and then, decades later, by the bride at the baby's wedding. Well, the baby isn't a baby at the wedding, of course, but you know what I mean. We don't know whether the baby is a boy or a girl, so I have to write very generally until March.

This shawl, knitted from the Diamond Fantasy Shawl pattern, is finished, with the yarn ends woven in but not clipped. It needs to be washed and dressed (blocked, dressed--I use the terms interchangeably for lace; everything else gets blocked). I got a blocking wire set just for shawls and I think I'll use them for this shawl. The yarn (Knit Picks Bare merino and silk fingering weight) is very nice and I think it will block beautifully.


A close-up, to show the diamonds.


Next is hand-painted Ultra Superwash Merino in worsted weight, from Karen Jorden (sharing.etsy.com). She's one of my favorite dyers as she has a wonderful eye for bright colors.
This yarn (five skeins) was custom-dyed for the March baby. This green is one of the mother's favorite colors and it's safely neutral. I haven't decided on a pattern yet, but I'm considering a ripple afghan pattern. I could make another Argosy baby blanket, I suppose, but I feel as if I should try something new. Be adventurous or something. We'll see.


And here's a slightly lighter version of the same color, in fingering weight. We didn't want to make the two exactly the same. Too matchy-matchy. This will become a shawl for the baby's mother. Like the worsted weight, this is just beautiful yarn. I really look forward to knitting with them.


Now, some knitting for grown-ups in Iowa. This is the start of a scarf for my brother-in-law. It's Knit Picks Panache in Dusk (the alpaca, cashmere, silk, and superfine merino yarn is discontinued, I'm sorry to say). The pattern is the Yarn Harlot's One Line Hand-spun Scarf, which is beautiful indeed in hand-spun yarn, and pretty good in regular yarn.


And this is a close-up of the garter-stitch scarf, knitted in hand-painted brushed Suri alpaca, for my sister-in-law. This yarn is so light and ethereal, it's just amazing how warm it is. The scarf, which is about nine inches wide and over six feet long, took only one and a half balls of yarn.


Here's a bigger photo, showing a section of it. I think the colors are just beautiful and I was ever so slightly tempted to keep this beauty, except that I've never worn a scarf for warmth in my entire life. Instead, I've threatened my husband with a throw knitted from this yarn, to keep him warm. He's not sure if I'm serious or if I'm kidding. Neither am I.


And here's the ball of yarn. It's one of those yarns that you want to cuddle and pet the ball, because it's so soft and nice.


And finally we get to some yarn for me. This is Claudia's fingering weight merino, hand-painted in the Tropicana color way. Yes, the colors are as bright as they look in the photo. Most people use this yarn for socks. Not me. I have six skeins of it.


I'm making a triangular shawl with it. Here's a photo of about half of it. It's too big to lie flat on the needle cable, so I bunched half of it up and spread out the other half. Bright, isn't it?


Here's a close-up, showing the pattern.


And here's another, closer close-up.


This shawl is knitted in the flower motif from this book:


This is a wonderful book by an exceedingly talented designer. I have many of her lace shawl patterns from Fiber Trends and various magazines and books. This book shows how to knit a triangular shawl in four different motifs, either singly or combined, and add a scalloped edging.
With this book a knitter will understand triangular shawl construction and be able to go much further, designing original lace shawls with a wide variety of lace patterns. I highly recommend it.