ha, take that intarweb

I got my first 4 shawls put up!  It only took huge amounts of swearing under my breath, a little help from my teen in getting photos, some cooperation from the weather, and time with an internet connection. 

On my side bar I have put up the links to 4 of the finished shawls.  Under finished objects even. 

So, here's the shop for anyone who is interested
My Baby Shop, take a peek?

In the meantime, here's a shawl I didn't write the pattern for, but I did knit. 

isn't it pretty?  I wish I wrote it!

crap photographer, nice knitting for my mum!

Let's see what else I can get done this week!

globe thistle (echinops) shawl, finished!

So here it is! 

on drying rack, notice natural sunlight... ooo

At 70 inches from curved tip to curved tip, and 40 inches down the center spine this shawl was knit from just under 900 meters of single spun, tonal variegated yarn in one continuous thread from beginning to end.

possibly the worst picture, backlit by natural light

I heart it.  Seriously.  I loved every moment of knitting this shawl, and every moment of blocking it.  I continue to love it.  Considering that it took almost 50 hours to knit, my loving it is a good thing. 

mmm natural light... and reflections of my furniture

I'm not a great photographer, but I think the pictures are an accurate representation of the size and shape of the finished shawl.

and the all important back shot!

Now, I think I just need to find a model and finish putting together the repair and care kit to go with it.

No plan survives contact with the enemy

Guess what I had planned for today?

the important ingredients

The plan was put these things together, add pins, let dry.  Short, sweet, simple.

What actually happened was this.
7:00AM:  Collect things together, take picture.  Feel pretty good about things.

7:05AM:  Add 1 tsp soak to bowl, add water.

7:10AM:  Add finished shawl to soak water, let soak.

So far so good!

7:15-7:45AM:  Realize that lunchboxes are empty and leaving for school looms.  Run around like chicken with head cut off.

7:45-8:00AM:  Make coffee, drink coffee.

8:15AM:  Launch smallest son at school.  Giggle.

8:30AM:  Remove shawl from water.  Sigh at amount of extra dye running out in water.  Begin gently rinsing shawl so water runs clear (as I prefer when the dye doesn't ruin my towels).

9:00AM:  Put clean sheets on big son's bed.  Decide to use his bed for blocking.

9:30AM:  Realize that ALL t-pins are missing.  Use bad words.

9:35AM:  Tear house apart looking for t-pins.  They are obvious, how do they go missing??

9:50AM:  Rip apart couch, remembering that smallest son was excavating in it the night before.

9:51AM:  Find Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting book.  Rejoice briefly.  Find a SINGLE t-pin.  Contemplate what constitutes justifiable homicide.

10:00AM:  Shawl is drying rapidly.  Discover 1/2 box of t-pins hidden in the bathroom cabinet.  No idea how they got there.  Realize that this is not enough t-pins to do the shawl by themselves.

10:10AM:  Find and bust out blocking wires.  Crawl over bed using blocking wires and t-pins to pin out shawl into crecent shape.

10:25AM:  Confirm measurements with yardstick.  Feel pleased.

10:30AM:  Realize that I had been planning on documenting the process.  Sadly contemplate undoing all of this and doing it again for camera.

10:35AM:  Decide not to be completely insane.  Take bad photo of shawl blocking on bed, realize that I rucked up the new sheet by crawling on it.  Decide not to care.

Soon, my precious.

10:45AM:  Post.

Nothing But Knit

Another day at work where there wasn't a thing I could accomplish.

I meant to put this post up last night, but youngest son wouldn't stay asleep.  Seasonal allergies kept waking him up, and he wanted comfort.  But here we are today, with pictures of a pile of finished shawl.
Click to make bigger, but be aware:
 

Yep, lace knitting never looks nice until after the magic of blocking.  No wonder folks always look at my knitting dubiously while in progress...






Oh, and it was a truly rotten and LONG day, so I also finished the knitting of this:

Later today look for new post on shawl 2, the yarn and pattern.







Depending on the weather, you may also get "blocking:  how to turn a pile of limp yarn into something stunning."  Or something like that.

shawl progress day 4

Today, work has been trying hard to send me off of my rocker.  Anything I touched has turned to despair and waste. 

Instead of murdering the people around me, I knit today.

Shawlzilla now looks like I've been knitting.  Check out the progress:

Yup, you're seeing right.  I now have a 22 inch shawl as measured un-stretched down the center back spine.  Time to stop messing around and knit a border.  Yay for progress somewhere.

This reminds me, next post about the shawlette progress. 

globe thistle shawl progess (shawl 1), day 3

Today was actually kind of a wash for knitting.  I only got one more repeat finished.

I spent a great deal of time on the phone today, so instead I put together a couple of pins for keeping the shawl closed.  Personally I can't decide which one I like better for this yarn.

Both of them can be clicked for larger versions.  The one with the butterfly, I made with dark purple, deep sea green, and a grey peacock pearls, and with white and deep marine swarovski crystals.   The follow your heart one I made with a single large half-moon pearl, and 2 golden shadow swarovski crystals.


Truthfully, I think the deep purple pearl gets lost in the beautiful purple of the yarn.  The white pearl stands out more, and it glows within the purple yarn.  I guess my preference is for the single white pearl this time.  Now I need to make a shawl for the one with the deep colored pearls.

Given the amount of concentration the larger patterned shawls take, I'm thinking about putting up shawlettes here as well.  I have several skeins of really nice yarn that I want to test with a simple pattern, but that aren't enough to make a large enough shawl to count for the 200 shawl project.  These would be the kind of knitting that can be done while in groups or while being driven around.  The kind of project I don't need to write a chart for, because I know the patterns by heart.

Something simple, that showcases the yarn at the heart of it.  For instance, I have a skein of handmaiden camel spin in madder.  It's roughly these colors:

Only slightly more brown.  I would dearly love to knit this up, as I'm looking forward to autumn and the colors sing fall days to me.  But it wouldn't make a full shawl to the sizes I've posted I would make here.  I'm thinking maybe I'll knit up a shawlette and offer this as well, for folks who want something definitely luxurious but not necessarily large.  Here's a link to the folks I borrowed the picture from, it goes to the exact product the picture references in case anyone wants some themselves.

I guess we'll see how it knits up.

About the Yarn

The yarn I am using for this first project came from 100 percent pure wool.  That link takes you to the exact skein I'm using.  Here's one of their product pictures, which captures the amount of variegation in the skein.  The color in this is a bit warmer than the skein I purchased.

The color as it came through to my house is more blue than the picture above shows.  It's almost a greyish purple, but variegated as shown in the pictures.

Working with this yarn, it is exactly as described.  It is a yarn single, which doesn't bother me as far as knitting it up.  Some people prefer a more balanced yarn, but in an organic pattern the twist of a single can be quite charming.

The only issue I have with this yarn is that it is not a consistent spin.  This means there are some areas in the yarn which end up thick, and others which end up thin.  It's not a traditional thick and thin, and I know it will be quite stable and sturdy when knit up.  I have worked with this brand of yarn in the past, and do not find it to be at all weak, even though it has some thinner spots.

However, someone who prefers more consistency in yarn thickness would want to choose a 2 ply instead of this single.  Singles that are a bit more consistent can be found in Schaefer Yarns, and I've had good luck with Handmaiden yarns for their singles consistency as well.

This single with it's inconsistency is perfect for this pattern, I think.  It adds a realness to the organic flow of the pattern, without losing anything in it's strength or beauty.

I do recommend both this yarn and this company.

day the second, round 2 (fight fight fight)

Ok, so maybe it wasn't that exciting.

Last night, we made a wonderful chicken something or other in tomato sauce.  So tasty, so succulent....

Yep, up most of the night with insano, will-to-live-draining acid reflux.  Shoot.  Guess me & tomatoes will have to remain frenemies.  Tastes so good.... hurts so bad...

So, in an effort to keep myself occupied after the tomatoes decided to digest me back, I got another repeat knit on the shawl.  I did take a picture of it but realized shawlzilla looks about the same as it did in yesterday's picture.  And 100 pictures of a puddle of lace knitting is not very exciting. 

When you knit a piece of clothing, it generally looks like something before blocking.  Blocking brings out the sweet side of whatever you knit.  But for lace, it's an absolute necessity.  The universal truth is that lace knitting looks like crud until it's blocked.  Blocking is when the miracles happen.  Until that point, lace knitting looks like a strange hobby for the deranged... on a good day... with other people who have knit lace looking at it and saying things like "that might not be so bad once you block it."

But I digress.

Last night got me to thinking about what this shawl reminds me of.  The pattern in this color make me think of globe thistles.

So, I'm thinking this will be the Echinops Shawl.  The pattern of the flower head is not 100% like the globe thistle, but the way it's sort of a boxy ball shape, the color variations in the yarn,  and the leaves travelling down the stem all make me think of this flower.

I'm still working out the edging.  I've thought maybe I'll use the beech leaf edging around the outside edge to suggest hosta and garden trellis.  I've also thought about using oak leaf edging (which doesn't look a thing like oak leaves to me, but so it goes).  I would love to come up with an edging I can knit out straight from the body of the shawl, but haven't come  up with something I like enough yet.

Next post, about the yarn.

day the second

Not too much to report today. I didn't get as much time to knit as I had hoped. Too much active work at work to spend time knitting. Tomorrow is going to be a concall day, so I should get more done.

I'm still enjoying the pattern, and I've got some ideas in my head about the outside edge.

Here is today's progress. You can almost even see that I'm through 3 repeats of the pattern. Again, shot from the back. Maybe tomorrow I'll get a decent shot of the front for a change.

Our first pick

My husband ended up being the one to choose the first skein to be made into shawl 1 of our 200 shawl march.

My husband likes jewel tones, so I was a bit surprised that he chose this one. But here is the skein he chose for me to work with.


With flash turned on it looks something like this:
of course, this shows the beauty of the purple, but not that it's more of a heather color. So it photographed darker than it is in real life (at least on my monitor).

So, I chose a pattern to knit, and started. Here's today's progress:



Photographed from the purl side instead of the knit side, because I'm tired and didn't notice until I was resizing them. (Photos will be resized, but until I get more time and/or more saavy no color correcting or editing is done otherwise.)

I decided to begin with triangle shape, because I find it a pleasing shape to knit and flattering to wear. I chose the frost flowers pattern from Barbra Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns, and will work out an edging as I get closer to finished.

On the pattern: it is a bit fiddly because it's got patterning on both the "outside" and the "inside." But once you've knit a repeat or two, it becomes pretty intuitive. Basic pattern documented online on this wonderful site, book available either at a local yarn shop like this one or this one, or available online from places like this or like this. That second online one is totally worth the visit as long as you don't mind drooling.