lace – Enchilada Sunrise

Belated Christmassy round-up

I never did talk about how Christmas was in the end, did I? So I shall inflict in upon the world now. I actually did get everything finished and ready that I needed to. All my online shopping arrived (whew!) even though the post was all over the place, I finished the present I was making for Mum, and I even made chocolate chip cookies with moderate success!

The scarf for Mum was the Branching Out pattern [Ravlink], and I knitted it in a lovely Merino / Tencel blend that I spun on the wheel – the first time I’ve knit with my own handspun. I just left it as a single, and it worked really well (imo, anyway!) and I like the way the colour repeats came out. Mum says she really likes it too, which is the main thing!

I also joined two Christmas swaps, one through the Limegreenjelly group, and one through Plurk. The post was / is still being less kind where those are concerned. It seems to have eaten the parcel from the latter altogether, but I have now had my LGJ parcel from Cal, and a fabulous one it is too:

Two braids of LGJ fibre (one Merino/Silk, one Merino, yum!), a beautiful skein of Posh Yarn Elinor, an Orange Blossom perfume stick which I think is from Lush, mini Green & Black’s choccy bars (om nom nom!), a set of Knit Pro interchangeable needle tips and a cable for them (which spookily I’ve been wanting for ages), and an adorable Lego keyring. :-D I just hope she likes her gifts from me as much as I do mine.

Insufficient Yarn Error

The main project that I’ve been knitting on recently has been the Ishbel scarf, and I was using some really lovely soft, squishy yarn for it: some BFL sockweight by Nimu.

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Isn’t it preeeeeeeeeetty? I know you can’t see it terribly well in that picture because it’s only some of the stocking stitch portion. But trust me, it’s lovely – the colour of ripe blackberries. The pattern calls for 300m of yarn, the skein was 365m. I used the suggested needle size because I liked the drape of the fabric that gave me, although it put my gauge a little bit off. That’s not important in a scarf, triangular or not, right? Well, I knitted all of the stocking stitch section, and thought I still had plenty of yarn. The I started on the lace charts: chart A, then B, then as I started A again I began to get a bit worried. I kept going though. Right up until I ran out of yarn with essentially 8 rows to go. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Has my dodgy gauge has eaten more yarn, or something? I’m not sure that makes sense – I haven’t knitted more stitches, after all. I’ve got more stitches to the inch than I should have: that means that to get suggested gauge, I’d have to go up a needle size or two, thus making larger stitches, and therefore less per inch. My stitches are smaller, so they should be using less yarn, right? The resulting scarf must be a bit smaller than intended, that’s all.

As I see it, I have a couple of choices: rip out the whole thing (noooo!) and start again with different needles or yarn, or knit the remaining few rows in something else. But what? I only have this one skein of lovely Nimu ‘Striding Edge’ BFL, and I love the way it’s feeling so much that I do want to use if for this project. Bah. My first instinct is to edge it in a black yarn, since it’s such a dark colour to start with. But the only black yarn I have in what to my naked eye looks like a comparable thickness (I mentioned that it’s a very squishy sockweight, and it’s relatively loose-spun) is acrylic DK. No. I also have some similarly squishy sock yarn by the Yarn Yard – their merino ‘Hug’ yarn, in a couple of colours that might do:

[thumb:906:c:t=Mysterion][thumb:612:c:t=Damson][thumb:823:c:t=Damson knit up]

I don’t know which, if either, would be better though. So I’m posting a poll. Help meeeeeee!

[poll id=”3″]

You know what’s really annoying, though? This is the fourth time I’ve run out of yarn on a project recently. I must be doing something wrong.

41: A knitty post

Since I don’t think I actually posted here when I finally finished Mum’s birthday shawl, I shall do so now! I was almost a year late giving it to her in the end, so instead of it being finished for her birthday in April 08, it was finished for Mother’s Day in February 09. The border had taken me *so* much longer than I anticipated, and then I had blocking anxiety so it took me ages to screw up the courage to do that in case I messed it up! But the finished result was worth all the work:

Actually, I don’t think I ever put put the project stats here for this, since it was Sekrit Knitting, so here they are now:

Pattern: Wild Flower Shawl by Dee Bamford. [Ravlink]
Yarn: Posh Yarn Sophia 2ply (100% cashmere) in ‘Strawberry Shortcake’.
Needles: 3.25mm circular (Addi Turbo bamboo)
Ravelry Project Page: WFS

And would you believe, this shawl is now almost-famous? Our knitting group was in the Readers Projects section of The Knitter magazine, issue 7, and this shawl was one of the ones we sent off to them to feature. Hee!

Project 365, 22nd March – 4th April

I meant to post these weekly, but I’ve gone and slipped up already. So here are another two week’s worth of Project 365 photos. They’re also up at Flickr in my Project 365 ’09-10 set and in the Project 365 album for this year in the photo album here (you can see the great-big full size versions there). This time I’m going to put the medium-size pics up here rather than the thumbnails and put some comments in as well. Ideally I want the medium pics to link to pop-ups of the full size versions, but the plugin I’m using to integrate the blog with the photo album is being a bit temperamental about that. But with a bit of luck that’s what I’ll get. Here we go:
Continue reading “Project 365, 22nd March – 4th April”

A bit of a catch up

Oops again: I managed not to blog for yet another whole month, and missed my 8-year Blogoversary in the bargain (thanks for the ‘versary wishes!). So what have I been doing?

Well, I’ve done a couple of websites for my brother and another group in his year at uni, for one of their group projects (no, I wasn’t doing the work for them! They’re allowed to ’employ’ people for various jobs that they can’t cover themselves in the group). Gave me a chance to do something new-ish with embedding streaming video and audio, and play with some CSS3 as well. Hooray!

Talking of websites… I still haven’t got the redesign for this one sorted out. Really must buckle down and do that. I had to delete the (MT) search script for the blog because it was being hammered with spam and overloading the server… hopefully when I switch over to WP I won’t have that problem. However, I want to get the new design done before I change over (so I don’t have to faff around turning this one into a wp theme as well), especially since I’m going to be running the whole site apart from the photo album through it.

Other than that, I have got some knitting done: I finished Em’s mittens, and I’ve even managed to blitz through the rest of the WFS [RavLink], which is actually Mum’s birthday present… from last year. Ahem. But it’s done now! All except a bit of weaving in, and the all-important blocking, that is. I’m thinking I’m going to evict the cat from the bedroom tomorrow, clear off the bed, and use that for blocking it on. If it doesn’t get dry in time, I can always sleep on the sofabed for one night. I’ve actually been quite organised with my knitting so far this year: I still have several unfinished projects, but I’ve put most of them to one side and worked on just two or three… which has meant I’m finishing, or getting towards finishing things! My final pair of SKP08 socks, and the gloves I’ve had hanging around for ages with just one done are both well on their way. No pictures today, though. Site redesign first! Off I go again to work on that :-)

Rebel rebel

My second pair of socks for the Pentathlon is underway. For this one, I think the main challenge is in the preparation (there was confusion over which translated version of the pattern and which chart was most accurate), and since it’s a 16 row lace pattern where the stitch count increases and decreases a couple of times, you have to keep your mind on what you’re doing. I’m not finding it too much of a problem though. Not mindless telly knitting, but fine for watching something where I don’t want to have my eyes glued to the screen the whole time and so can keep count.

However, I have rebelled a little ;-) The pattern recommends using solid or semi-solid colours, and I… have not. I was going to: I said in my last post that I was intending to use a solid red. But the lace pattern is a leafy sort of thing, and I just didn’t want to make it in red. It would probably look lovely in the Yarn Yard September Club yarn:

…. but much as I think that yarn is beautiful, if I make yet another pair of green socks right now I might lose the will to live. ;-) So that one was out.

Then I thought, well, it’s a really pretty pattern. (In fact, if ever a pattern said “knit me in pastel pink!” to me, it’s this pattern, but that’s never going to happen. Sorry pink, but I’ll never wear you. Ever.) It’s lace, but I’m not sure that a multi yarn would obscure the pattern completely. And the Yarn Yard Feb 08 ‘Art Deco’ club yarn is really really pretty: light blue, chocolate powder brown, cream, pale yellow, a hint of soft green. Really springlike. And I could use the minty blue-green contrast skein for the cuff, toes, and maybe the heels. So, that’s what I’ve cast on with. And I was right, this yarn is really pretty. However, so far I’m not entirely sure if it’s knitting up as a pretty lacy sock, or a small woolly pizza. Below is a photo of the cuff and first lace repeat. Any thoughts, anybody:

Anyway, here are the project stats as they stand at the moment:
Pattern: Berlin Muster by Kristin Benecken [Ravlink]
Yarn: The Yarn Yard Bonny (previously Sock) in Art Deco (Feburary 08 Sock Club yarn)
Needles: 2.5mm DPNs
Ravelry Project Page: Pentathlon Pair #2

If I do decide to change the yarn, I’ll definitely stay with Yarn Yard Bonny as it’s just perfect for the project, and I think I’d either go for the solid bright blue from the November club yarn or persuade myself that three pairs of green socks in five months would be fine, and use the above August one. I’m hoping that the Art Deco will work out alright, though. Not least because I’ve set myself the goal of coming in within the first 100 this time…

Forest Canopy

I can’t quite remember if I’ve mentioned this here yet, but I have cast on my Forest Canopy Shawl. This isn’t the best photo – it wasn’t good light and for some reason I couldn’t get the focus. Maybe I should have zoomed in or something? Anyway! What you can see here is about half of the set-up section of the lace pattern. I’ve now completed the set-up section and I’m about to start the first body repeat.
Project stats:
Pattern: Forest Canopy Shoulder Shawl by Susan Lawrence.
Yarn: Posh Yarn Eva 4-ply (55% silk, 45% cashmere) in Tuscany.
Needles: 4.5mm (bamboo straights for now, to change to a circular when it gets wider)
I’m actually kind of confused about this pattern. Not about the knitting of it as such – the pattern looks straightforward enough in terms of knitting the stitches. But it’s the construction of the shawl that’s stumping me. It’s not making sense in my head. You see, the pattern describes it as a “top-down” shawl. To me, the top of a shawl is the widest part, the edge that goes across the shoulders. Am I mistaken? Because the shawl starts out with… um… I’ve forgotten how many, but only a few stitches for the cast on, and then you increase from there. That would indicate to me that I’m knitting from the bottom point upwards.
I would have just assumed I’d got confused with what top-down meant. But. When you’ve knitted the desired number of pattern repeats, it then tells you to knit the border along the bottom edge and follow the directions to get the scalloped cast-off, etc etc. It doesn’t say anything about casting off the top edge and picking up along the bottom. Yet, if I’m starting with a pointy bit….. argh! Perhaps I’m missing something vital about the shape of the shawl because I haven’t yet started knitting the main pattern. I know I’m not knitting from a corner, either, because I’ve got the centre stitch right where it should be for knitting directly up or down.
Can anyone give me any clues? Anyone? Help?