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.

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.

Another New Scarf

I started another quick scarf, after buying three balls of SWTC Bamboo yarn from my LYS. This isn't a very good photo, partly because the yarn is very shiny (and soft) and partly because it's been cloudy here. These are also difficult colors for the digital camera. The yarn is variegated from a light lavender to a medium teal via light green blue. The colors are actually very pretty and not all faded out, the way they look in both these photos.


The colors are a little better here. The pattern is Faina's Scarf, from Fibertrends. This is at the end of the first chart, the increase at one end.


See the pretty seed stitch border? it's also got a slipped-stitch selvedge that is visible along the left side. While this is lace, it's not very lacy, which sounds contradictory, but isn't. I started this scarf once before in red Lion Brand Microspun, which is very nice yarn, but was way too heavy for this scarf. The Bamboo, which is DK weight, is really a bit too heavy, too, but it's a lot closer. The pattern wanted sport weight, but I didn't have anything really pretty in sport weight.

I'm actually almost done with the second body repeat, but it's too cloudy to get a better photo. As soon as it clears up I'll snap a photo to show it off in its true colors.

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.

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.

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.

It's Raining All Over SoCal

What a dismal gloomy day we're having. It started raining at about 0845 and it's still raining almost five hours later. It's not a hard rain, so there's a good chance a lot of it will soak in instead of running off. Fortunately the storm is coming up from the south and west, so there's no chance of snow for us down here, although it's snowing and sticking at the mountain resorts. The storm is dumping snow on the Four Corners area, in particular my birthplace, Durango, CO.

This is all supposed to go away by tomorrow and we'll have a pretty, if cool, day for the UCLA-USC game. If USC (boo, hiss) wins, they'll go to the Rose Bowl. If UCLA (go, Bruins) wins and if Arizona State later loses, then UCLA will go to the Rose Bowl. Since I bleed Bruin blue and gold, you can tell where my heart is. USC is my second favorite, though. (I'm somewhat less partisan about football than basketball.)

The weather may affect the game, though, because it's being played in an outdoor stadium with natural grass. They've gotten about a half-inch of rain down there, which shouldn't affect the field too much, but if it keeps raining the field may get soft. Neither team is very accustomed to soggy fields.

Speaking of soggy fields, did anyone else see this week's Monday Night Football game, where the field was all but under water? On one kick, the ball came down and stuck in the ground. It didn't bounce at all. It was just standing there, right where it hit, pointy end embedded in the glop. All the yard lines and hash marked were washed away, too. I love watching football games played in real weather, particularly pro games. There was a fairly recent game in a driving snow storm (at Lambeau Field, maybe?), so heavy you couldn't see the far side of the field, and another in such thick fog you couldn't even see that far. Now that's football.

Last night I washed and dried a rollerball pen with a load of medium-colored clothes, mostly cotton knits. What a mess! The dryer drum had a lot of black streaks and my clothes were almost all spotted and streaked and smudged with black ink. The dryer cleaned up pretty well, so that I could dry the load in the washer. I gave up about then and didn't even try to re-wash the stained load. I'm going to do that as soon as I post this. Fortunately, a lot of the load was nightgowns and briefs, so the world won't end if they end up with a few gray splotches. However, one of the victims was one of my favorite U-2 (airplane, not band) tees and I'm a little worried about it.

I've once again put aside my Bigfoot Shawl for another project. I got two balls of Suri Dream handpainted in Rose Quartz in my recent order from Knit Picks. The box showed up on Tuesday and I managed to resist until last night (Thursday), but I caved in and started a scarf. This yarn is just beautiful. It's really soft and so light, but still warm. The colors are very good, too. The scarf is just garter stitch with slipped-stitch selvages, 24 stitches on US 11 needles. It's about 8 in. wide and I've got about 24 in. knitted already. I've weighed the ball of yarn a couple of times and I think I'm getting about an inch of scarf per gram. I'm thinking that I should order another ball of yarn and make two six-foot scarves. I'll try to get a reasonable photo tomorrow if it's sunny enough.

Photo Time

Ta-DA!

Forest Canopy Shawl II
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

This is the Forest Canopy Shawl II, knitted from Knit Picks Shimmer, in Turquoise Splendor. I took this photo in the hope that everyone can see how light and airy it is, moving in the very faint breeze. As I've said before, I'm not fond of knitting with lace weight yarn, but it does make beautiful, delicate, gossamer lace.

Here's another photo, that shows a little more detail.

There's half a mile (880 yd) and 100 grams (3.5 oz) of yarn in this shawl. It took a while to knit, but that was mostly because I was working on other projects at the same time.

This shawl has gone to the friend it was knitted for and she loves it. It was a total surprise and she had no idea at all that I'd made it for her. I love surprising someone so totally. The blues in the yarn make her eyes look so blue it's almost startling.

Here's a photo of the unblocked lace, taken while I was knitting it.

And here are two close-up photos after blocking:

Isn't it amazing how much difference blocking makes?

This is the Sivia Harding Diamond Fantasy Shawl II that I started a couple of days ago. This is about a third done, but I should put it aside and work on other projects. This shawl is to be a christening shawl for my friend Pat's impending grandchild. The baby is due in March, so I have a little time left. Considering that I knitted a third of the shawl in two days, though, it might not affect the other projects much if I just went ahead and finished it.

I think this is one of the most beautiful lace patterns I've seen and I really enjoy knitting it. The yarn is Knit Picks Bare Merino/Silk Fingering Weight yarn and the shawl will take less than two skeins (each 440 yd, 100 gm). This is beautiful yarn. It's so soft and has such good stitch definition. The fabric has a beautiful hand, with the supple weight of silk.

Here's a close-up photo. I just wish there were some way to transmit the feel of this.

Here's the main project that I've put aside to work on the Diamond Fantasy Shawl II. It's the Bigfoot Shawl from Wrapped In Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls, by Alison Jeppson Hyde. It's knitted from the same merino and silk yarn, only in black. When it's dyed, Knit Picks calls it Gloss.

It's a circular shawl, which means that the rows are really long. The pattern is a variation of Feather and Fan, which I like, and this shawl is going to be so nice. It's soft and cuddly and just the thing to wear around one's shoulders when it's a bit cool or drafty. I'm knitting it for my cousin's wife. She finds restaurants very uncomfortable in the summer, when she's dressed up and the air conditioning is set to keep men in wool suits cool. This should look dressy enough, with the silk in the yarn. At least, I hope it does.

Now photos of a trio of scarves. The first is a modified version of the Dragon Scales Scarf, knitted in Classic Elite Posh (70% silk, 30% cashmere) in Merlot.

Then there's the Breezy Scarf, knitted from my own pattern in Lang Breeze (merino and nylon) in Orchid.

This is a big scarf, about nine inches wide and over six feet long. It's for our niece in Iowa City. It get cold in Iowa so I get to knit warm scarves for everyone.

And last, but certainly not least, is Reggie the alligator scarf from Morehouse Farm. He came out of the blocking wondrously soft and merino-y. I think I'm going to send him to our goddaughter at Penn State.

Bigfoot Shawl

Bigfoot Shawl
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

As you can see, I'm making some progress. I've finished ten repeats of the four-row body pattern. I'm almost to the end of the second ball of yarn, which means I'm at least half done. The pattern call for continuing until it's 16 in. long but that seems just a bit too short to me. I've been playing around with a tape measure and I think I want to go longer.

Notice how the edge is scalloping itself. There's no need to add a border; instead just a plain bind-off works just fine. I picked up a great bind-off from Cat Bordhi, in her Moebius Scarf patterns. It's very simple, you just knit two stitches together, return the new stitch to the left needle, knit two together, repeat. I like it because it's loose but it doesn't distort the fabric.

This yarn, Knit Picks Gloss (70% merino, 30% silk) is a real pleasure to work with. As you can see, it's got really nice stitch definition. I'm waiting on the undyed version to be back in stock, which is predicted for 22 Oct. I'm going to knit a christening shawl for my friend's grandchild, who will arrive in the spring. (I'm also going to make a more practical superwash baby blanket.) I already have some Knit Picks natural 100% merino fingering weight yarn for the christening shawl but the silk really makes a difference. Since this shawl is, traditionally, used for the baptism and then put away until the child marries, at which time the bride wears it, the subtle shine from the silk will be nice.