Vernal Equinox Progress

I thought you might like to see a glimpse of how the Vernal Equinox Surprise shawl is coming along. As of last night I was in the middle of Clue 3. I think it's very pretty, and am doing OK on it! On Monday I even managed to knit six rows in the middle of a knitting group. Amazing power of concentration, huh.

Vernal Equinox Surprise in Progress

I think the way the Jojoland Melody yarn slowly transitions from color to color is quite graceful. I had worried it wouldn't show up well in laceweight, but I think it does. Sorry about the garish red pillow background, but the tan part doesn't show up well against the new couch. The old denim one made such a nice background, but hurt my back!

Knitting a shawl is so comforting, so relaxing, so pleasant.  Such a nice contrast to the local, national and international news. No wonder so many people have taken up knitting the past few years! Glad I have my yarn stockpile.

Making Something with Homespun

I haven't shared this pretty yarn yet, and I should have. My friend Deana has recently begun spinning, a lot, and is getting better and better at it. I love watching her feet and hands working to make genuine yarn out of globs of fiber. This stuff was the February colorway, I think, at Yarnorama, plus some really pretty rust colored roving that I don't know where she got it. After she spun it she gave it to me, since it's more "my colors."

Yarnorama Fleece and Rust-Colored Fleece Spun by Deana

Two skeins are the two yarns plied together, and one single-ply one is the plain rust yarn while the other is the Yarnorama colorway. I have no idea if this makes any sense. I am not good at talking about handspun stuff.

Deana and I have both been pondering what to do with this yarn once I set it (it's been sitting in the bathroom waiting for me to do that--it's plied, at least the two skeins with both colors in them--but it needs to be "set"). Well, today I think I found my answer!

Good ole Brooklyn Tweed has come up with another simple but useful pattern and I think it would look nice in the handspun. It's Jared Flood's new Romney Kerchief pattern. This is a very simple triangle shawlette with just rows of purl interrupting stockinette to create the patterning. It's nice because I can make the thing as big as your limited yarn will let you make it.

I love it when I need inspiration and it shows up like that!

Ordered Something

I've actually made good progress on the Vernal Equinox Surprise shawl. Of course, they go faster in the beginning when there are fewer stitches per row! But, I've gotten through the large number of double decreases in Clues 1 and 2, and am now in the pretty pattern that makes up Clue 3.

Honestly, I thought I would never get out of the "tan" section of the yarn, which is what came up first. It completely matches my couch, too, so I will need to find another surface to take an in-progress photo on. But, now it's turning purple and quite lovely.

I am glad I am using the KnitPicks clear plastic needles due to their excellently sharp points, but the see-through aspect can make grabbing the right bits for decreasing a little challenging. It's OK--I am having fun and that's what counts.

Also fun is the fact that I finally got around to redeeming a gift certificate I got from my choir director to thank me for a donation I'd made to the music program (my old laptop). She'd consulted the other knitter in the choir (who, sadly, no longer reads blogs or does Facebook, just posts to some group on Ravelry, so she won't read how thankful I am) and got the suggestion to give a certificate to The Unique Sheep site. That's interesting, because I had never bought any of their yarn before, but had been reading about their really cool stuff and wanted to check them out! How fortuitous!

Pewter Earth Colorway, from the Unique Sheep Website.

I ordered two colorways of their Gradiance collection, in sock weight. The laceweights looked more fun, because you get more colors, but, like I have mentioned, I really don't need more shawls. I got the Pewter Earth (seen above) and Hurricane Meadow colorways. (See all the colors here, and let the drooling begin.) For the yarn bases, I got one in their yarn with bamboo (Sushi Socks) and one in their yarn with tencel (Tinsel Toes) in it, just because I wanted to try some new base yarns.

These yarns are certainly something to look forward to and I am having fun thinking of socks to make using these colors. No doubt they will be sort of plain! I will want to let the colors shine.

This will have to do as blog fodder until I can get a photo of the shawl.  Work is hard so there isn't much time to make things to show you!

PS (added April 20): I got an email from my blogging friend Dragonfly, who let me know that the photo above, from the Unique Sheep website, is actually a photo she took of her own yarn that she used to make the Evenstar shawl. Apparently their original sample's colors weren't really true. Now, how about that for a small world? I borrow a picture, and it's really my online friend's picture! I love the Internet. And am impressed that out of all those colorways, she and I chose the same one.

Started Something!

It was a busy week for me with not much knitting time, but I did make some progress on the Flaming Desire sock. I am approaching the heel now.

But today my friend Carolyn came by to pick out yarn and a pattern for her special birthday gift. I told her I'd like to make her a shawl, since I make myself so many that I really don't need another one. We had fun looking at all my laceweight yarn and looking at some online, too.

She eventually picked out this yarn:

Jojoland Harmony, Colorway 06, Rainbow

I am happy to work with this yarn at last! Maybe my bad luck with laceweight will change, too. I am trying out using US size 4 needles, which are bigger than I used on my last couple of laceweight projects. We'll see if I like it slightly more airy.

Once we picked the yarn, we decided to go on Ravelry and see what shawls other people had made with it. That was a great way to choose. You could easily see which patterns were messed up by the yarn's color changes and which were enhanced by it. I ruled out a couple of patterns, like Icarus and Swallowtail, because I just didn't want to do them again. Once was plenty, thanks. So, we settled on the Vernal Equinox Surprise pattern that was  a popular knit-along last year. I remembered that a couple of people in my old knitting group had made it. I still see one of them, so I hope if I have an issue, Nancy will help me out! Hers was really pretty. It's a half-circle shawl with a lot of pattern changes, like most patterns that come out in "clues."

I hope I can handle it and that Carolyn will like it. It is good that I have two balls of the yarn, so I won't worry about running out! I started and think it looks good, though of course the first color in the skein was the least interesting one, tan. Hoping it gets more lively soon!

Sock It Again!

Well, with that shawl out of the way (and THANK you for all the public and private comments on Litla Dimun--it's already my work-horse shawl and was perfect for a damp day today), I am trucking along on socks, waiting for a friend to pick a pattern for me to knit her a shawl.

Here is the first finished Flaming Desire sock:

Note the "interesting" crenelated top. For some reason, I did not cast on loosely enough, and it was trying to eat my calf, even though it's a smaller calf than it was a few months ago! So, I spent a couple of hours tediously un-doing the cast=on last night, and today I re-did it as a crenelated cast off. I figure it gives the effect of smoke from the flames of the pattern. Sure it does, yeah.

This is not the greatest photo, but I only have a few minutes between things to do, so my Blackberry came to my rescue once again. Wait until I get a photo of it on my foot or feet when the second one is done. MMM. The flame effect looks best from the front or back.

I'm really happy with the pattern. I even now like my weird heel effect. That's good, since I have to do the second one just like this one! With two pairs of socks, each with one complete, I vow to get something to finished object status this week. We'll see how that goes--lots going on in my non-knitting life, ya know!

Since I only had one sock picture, here's another nice flower. This is an ornamental cabbage blooming in a barrel filled with dianthus. I guess the cabbage will have to go in a week or two, but it certainly produced a grand finale!

  

A Simple Sock

My sister asked me for black-and-white socks, so I looked around my stash and found some yarn I think fits the bill. I probably last shared a photo of this project, which I named Bruce, because I worked on it watching a Bruce Springsteen concert on TV,  in December. I carried it around for a long time to work on when I needed something that didn't require a chart (like waiting in airports), but it went slowly. Then I took it off the needles because I needed a size 0 for some other project...that really slows a sock down. But, I did manage to finish the first of this pair last week.

This is my office, so you can deduce that I finished it while waiting for some software to crunch (I had a big project that had to churn away for a half hour). The yarn is from Knitivity as are many of my sock projects, and according to the label it was made in October 2008. I think it may be another one-off that didn't do what it was supposed to do for a named colorway, but I thought it looked cool. I like how it stripes.

The photo above was supposed to show how there is one rib that travels across the sock, but mostly you see a sideways Polycom phone and some fake flowers. Unfortunately, my little design element was so subtle that it didn't hardly show up at all! Because of that, sock #2 is going to just be a 2x2 rib standard toe-up sock. No bells and whistles. That's fine. They will be sturdy, comfy, and quite neutral for my sister's wardrobe that is also quite neutral.

I hope it will be fewer than four months before I show you the finished second sock. I'd sorta like to be done with this by her July birthday! (I could finish in a couple of days if I wasn't distracted by the more exciting orange socks!)

Last Litla Dimun Post!

I got the menfolk to go outside and take photos of me in the Litla Dimun shawl last night, so I can finally show what it looks like as a shawl. After hearing that it looked like a pair of underwear, and worse, a diaper from the blocking photos, I figured I better post this...post-haste!

I really think it looks nice. Sturdy, yet floaty! Here's the back.

And just for fun, here is a close-up of the pattern. You can see how the garter stitch looks quite delicate after blocking, yet it's still plenty warm. I wish I'd brought it to work today, as we have a little chill in the air.

It was a beautiful early evening yesterday, and perfect weather for spinning around in your new shawl! Farewell, Litla Dimun--Suna will stop obsessively posting about you now!

Some of our flowers look particularly lovely while we were in the garden with the camera, so I will leave you with our Creme Brulee petunia and the new yellow wildflower that just opened.

That was nice, wasn't it? What interesting colors they now have in annuals. This next one is a perennial we planted last year, but this is its first bloom.


A sock will show up tomorrow. And maybe more flowers. I have been taking a LOT of flower photos, and so has Lee!

Blocking Litla Dimun Shawl

Well, Litla Dimun is all finished, and I wore it to my knitting group yesterday, but I still don't have a photo of me wearing it. Dawn took some, but I am trying to be patient waiting to receive copies! To let you get an idea of how much nicer it looks blocked, here are a couple of blocking photos.

It has ended up very light and delicate, and looks much more like an actual shawl than it did while I was working on it.

I was touched when my friend Aggie said that the finished product was one of her favorite shawls...ever. It may not be spectacularly lacy or bead encrusted, but it is elegant and will be very warm.

I used some hair conditioner on it, and it does feel a bit softer, too. I promise to show you what it looks like ON someone soon.

Next I'll show you a finished sock. I finally finished one of the plain black-and-white socks I started for my sister in December. I'd take its needles off, which made it hard to work on for a while. Tomorrow or Thursday I'll show it to you. I had to work on it yesterday, because I'd left the Flaming Desire pattern at home when I went to Georgetown to knit. Sigh. I also tried to spin with my overly fancy drop spindle. I have some rather thick yarn. It is not worth showing off, for sure. I don't think spinning is going to be my thing.

Luckily I have some nice hand-spun yarn to play with soon, since Deana gave me some in a colorway she knows I liked better than she did. When I finish setting it, I will show you that, too. Wow, a lot of teasers. It's the best I can do after two long days of recording training materials. I am glad to work, but it does take away my way with words.

Odd Heel Flap Pattern and Some New Yarn

http://Yesterday I said I'd share some new yarn I've gotten in the past week or so, and I will, but first I thought I'd share what I have been doing on my Flaming Desire socks. Here is a phone photo of the first completed leg, on my arm in a Starbucks where I was waiting for someone who never appeared.

Flaming Desire, by Anne Hanson at Knitspot.

I sure think the pattern is pretty. And I do think it looks like flames. I have discovered that my usually stretchy-enough cast-on is a bit tight. To remedy that, I am considering un-doing the cast-on and putting stitches back on the needles, then doing a more stretchy bind-off. I might do the crenelated one that puts the fun large picots on, like smoke rising from the flames. I would welcome any other suggestions for a fun top to the sock. No one ever sees the tops of my socks anyway, so goofy seems like it would be OK.

When I got to the heel flap, Anne Hanson had recommended doing a version where the slipped stitches are on the wrong side of the heel. I felt creative, so decided to slip the stitches with the yarn in the back, which puts a horizontal bar across the right side. I was hoping it would make an interesting texture. Here's a slightly blurred image of what it looks like:

Tweedy Heel Flap

I find it a nice, tweedy effect and oddly different. I am sure a sock knitter who looks at them will say, "Hey, what's going on with your heel?" I am not thinking any of them would say, "Ooh, I will try this on my next sock," since it isn't that attractive, in my humble opinion. I don't know if I'd do it on a lot of other pairs of socks, but at least it's a change from the more usual heel flap choices (I do like flapped heels--slip stitch heels I can just never get to look the same on each side and that bugs me).

And Now for the New Yarn

I got what I think is the last shipment from the Intention Yarns club I was in. Two shipments were combined into one, and as usual, the instructions for what to do with them have not arrived in my email, so I have no clue what I am supposed to do with the roving they sent or the 200 yards of worsted weight yarn. I didn't take a picture of the roving, which I believe you are supposed to make felted prayer beads out of, but it is lovely, and I think I will try to use my drop spindle to make some yarn from it, with the help of Deana or Dawn or Suzanne. Or anyone willing to help for that matter.

Here's the worsted weight yarn. It is called "Friendship," and is 50% alpaca, 30% merino and 20% silk. It feels heavenly, as you would predict, and really is a lovely, ethereal semi solid silver. I am thinking it wants to be fingerless mitts or a cabled hat. I saw a hat that my friend Ray designed that might be good in a lovely soft yarn (the Double Entendre hat on this page). But, I really need a hat with ear coverings...realizing most of them are not pretty--maybe a nice color would mitigate that.

I also got two new sock yarn colors from Knitivity. I ordered them so fast that I got the prototypes--go me. It's nice to be able to order new yarn again, though I am knitting so slowly these days that I have to slow down the acquisition! The first yarn I got is called "Equinox" and was based on a photo of a sunset. I also think it looks a bit like flames.

The second color is something I'm surprised he hadn't done before, being a Texas dyer, "Bluebonnets." I do already have a sock yarn in a bluebonnet colorway, but this one has more shadings of blue and green, and less white, so it looks more like actual bluebonnets (which, by the way, are incredibly beautiful this year in central Texas after the wet winter).

Both of these are in Ray's sturdy superwash wool/nylon yarn base that I think will make perfect basic socks to WEAR and not dwell on a fancy pattern with. Sigh, that reminds me I need to finish the other pair of socks I am working on, for my sister. They are in Knitivity yarn in a simple pattern. I think I'll finish the orange ones and crank those others out, too. What a good knitting citizen I am.

[Additional note: I did not know this at the time I was writing this blog post, but if you head off and buy something at Knitivity, and mention my name, I will get a discount on a future purchase. Of course, if you heard about them from someone else, mention them, and they will get a discount! Discounts are good.]

I'm off to block Litla Dimun, so perhaps the next post will have a real FO photo of that project.

A Lumpy Finished Object

I took the Litla Dimun to a women's group meeting on Thursday and suddenly, I was finished with it! It really did go faster and faster toward the end there. Here's a picture of it in its unblocked, lumpen state:

Litla Dimun Shawl in Undyed American Shetland Wool.

After seeing how big it came out and looking at my picture, I decided that, even though I have enough yarn left over to do it, I am not going to add a border. I think the elegant simplicity of the borders and gusset lace is just enough. It is also going to be a great size to keep in the office to wear when the air conditioning has gone crazy on me.

I can't block this until tomorrow, since we may have overnight guests who will want to use the blocking surface...er...guest bed. That's OK, it will give me something else to blog about, right?

Tomorrow I will have some new yarn to show you. Blogger's photo uploader doesn't like me again, so I am not going to try to deal with the photos today!

I am happily back knitting on my Flaming Desire socks. I am enjoying how nice and big the chart is, and how quickly rows go. It's nice to get back to socks. I have so many socks I want to knit, especially one based on those Russian mitten patterns--I better get a move on! Plus, I am going to make a friend a special birthday shawl. OOOOOH, that will be fun.

Have a fun weekend, and enjoy your holiday if you are celebrating one of them this weekend!

A Review of Folk Shawls

I did get a lot of knitting done over the weekend, but didn't manage to finish the Litla Dimun shawl. Since it was cast on at its longest point and is getting shorter and shorter as I go on, it feels like I was moving really fast! It was especially nice when I hit the two rows that decreased 16 stitches each, rather than just 4. I get the impression I'll actually finish that project in my lifetime!

Since I didn't finish the shawl over the weekend and since the bookstore didn't have Wendy Johnson's new book, like I'd hoped, I thought I could at least talk about the book I got the pattern from. I have had the Folk Shawls book, by Cheryl Oberle, quite a long time (it was published in 2000), but hadn't made anything from it until this project. That doesn't mean the book hasn't been used. I have read through it many times, dreaming about making one or more of the patterns, or thinking of ways to use ideas from them. The patterns are so clearly written that you can easily envision yourself working on them.

One reason I read it so many times is that there are examples of shawls from such a variety of traditions. Not only are there the expected British Isles, Ireland, Scandinavia, etc., represented, but there are Japanese, Spanish and even the Americas. I like some better than others, but the explanations of the traditions and techniques involved are all fascinating. The book makes a great introduction to techniques from around the world, and give you an idea of what you might like a lot, so you can head out and find more patterns in your favorite tradition.

That is one reason I chose a pattern from the Faroe Islands (which happens to be the first tradition focused on in Folk Shawls). I had read the patterns here and went out and made some Faroe style shawls in the past. I kept coming back to the Litla Dimun and Stora Dimun patterns, because they seemed more authentic (others I made are the modern versions that start on the small end and build, while these patterns are bottom up and have shoulder shaping).

If you don't have this book already, it's one I'd recommend adding to your library while it's still in print. Some of the shawls are huge masterpieces, but there are also some (which I give Ravelry links to so you can check them out), such as the Simple Garter Stitch Prairie Shawl and the Wool Peddler's Shawl (which many people I know have made), that are good introductions to knitting shawls or knitting lace. 

By the way, the mittens blocked nicely and came out very soft. I look forward to wearing them.

I didn't get to go knit with friends this evening, due to my son having a band event (sometimes you have to do the ole family stuff), but I got my knitting need met by looking through this treasured book once again!

Wet Suna Mitts

Well, hooray. I did finally finish the ethnic mittens. I don't know why it seems like it took so long--I only took three weeks, in the end. I think the fact that the two-handed knitting goes more slowly than regular knitting in the round just got to me. I always had to drop the yarn to wrap whenever there was a 5-stitch gap, and then make sure I didn't get the yarn twisted, so it seemed to go slowly. But, here they are. They are wet, because the instructions said to block them, which should explain the intense color.

 Actually. Charlene Schurch says to block them inside out. I think that is to be sure the floats are well stretched out. So, here is what they actually look like right now:

They really don't look too bad on the inside. I find the ribbing is especially nice to look at inside out. I will give you a picture of the actual dried mittens on a hand once they are ready, but I had wanted to share their completed glory.

To summarize, these are sock pattern 21 from this book:


The yarn is Ella Rae laceweight, which I got at Yarnorama. They have (or had last time I was there) a really nice assortment of this yarn. I made the large size, since the yarn is so fine. I am glad, because you get more pattern in the large size!

I do think that I would have had a more successful finished product if I had chosen more contrast. I really need to pay attention to that--perhaps I need to go buy one of those red lenses to look at yarn through, to make sure I have enough contrast. I had the same problem when I used to make quilts, too. I guess we all have our areas for growth, don't we?

I think when I finish the current socks, I may make a pair of socks using one of these patterns--since they are 64 and 72 stitches around, the mittens should easily translate into socks, don't you think? That's another reason to buy the book, even if you don't like mittens--the patterns are really striking and fun. Of course, I can always try more mittens. I guess, even in Texas, I could use a couple of pairs of mittens!

I am looking forward to working on my shawl and other socks for a bit, but still have the Anna Zilboorg book, with all the top-down mittens (and socks). But, hey, isn't it true that there are so, so many more patterns out there that we'd like to make than there is time to knit. Even during 5 weeks of no work, I didn't get very much knitting done--life does get in the way.

Happy knitting, every one.