Merry Christmas

It's a little early, but I thought it better to post while I still had a lot of free time. This is what our Christmas tree looked like when it snowed this past weekend.

I think that I've found a plan for my knitting for the upcoming year. Details to come...

Crazy lace at 1am

I worked on this shawl like crazy late last night and early this morning just to finish it. Why? Because I wanted to take a picture of it in the snow. ;-) It's supposed to warm up sometime this week and I'm afraid all of the snow will melt. I don't think we'll have a white Christmas.

This shawl was my first designed by Birgit Freyer. I say first because I bought a set of her patterns and they're all so beautiful! I've had this website bookmarked for over a year, but was always hesitant to buy them. The patterns are a little more pricey than typical lace patterns, but I found this one worth it. The charts were clear and easy to read. As a bonus, this pattern was easy for me to alter. I cast-on fewer stitches for a slightly thinner shawl.

This shawl had a few unique stitches in it. Some stitches changed the stitch count on that row, but will be accounted for on the next right side row. This makes the top points of the little diamonds match the bottom points.

Details:
Pattern: Johanna by Birgit Freyer
Yarn: Wollmeise lace in Granatapfel (235gms)
Needle: size 3 Knit Picks Classic Circular
Mods: decreased cast-on for thinner stole
Blocked size: 20 inches wide by 98 inches(point to point) or 72 inches(straight part only)
Start: November 18, 2009
Finish: December 21, 2009

I'll leave with a picture of the snowman that my daughter made-- all by herself! --wearing the shawl. ;-)

Chaos

Not much chaos here. We're having a pretty low-key Christmas present-wise. My kids received a lot of gifts during our Thanksgiving trip. This shawl was started and finished during our trip. I'm not sure how I would look using a circular shawl ;-), so I'll probably use this as a lap blanket. The pattern was easy to follow and easy to knit. It was a great project to knit during a road trip.

Details:
Pattern: Order to Chaos by Wendy Johnson
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy in Black Parade (3.5 skeins)
Needle: size 5 Knit Picks Options
Start: November 17, 2009
Finish: November 28, 2009

Right now, I'm working on another shawl with my last skein of Wollmeise lace yarn. We didn't get the huge snow storm like east of here, but we have around 6 inches of snow. Pictures to come...

Left hanging...ouch

That's how I felt after finishing Diana Gabaldon's Echo in the Bone. It is around 800 pages long and so many things were still left unfinished. Her books are usually very long, but I read through them quickly. The story flies by and I just need to know what's going to happen to the characters. And now I'm left waiting for another 4 years. That's about how long it takes her to publish another one in this series. In the meantime, I've picked up King's Under the Dome. Yes, it's another huge book. I tend to gravitate towards books of this length.

There has been plenty of knitting too. I knit my daughter a few shawls. She's asked for a shawl a few times lately. I'm hesitant to give her anything in laceweight that will easily snag. She's still 8 and likely to use it to tie around herself, her dolls, to some railing, etc. I picked out a few pretty skeins of sock yarn and set out to find suitable patterns. What made this easy is that The Loopy Ewe's 4th quarter challenge is to knit a shawl. Many knitters have found patterns that will use only a skein of sock yarn. Perfect!

I started out with a free garter stitch based shawl pattern called Multnomah. I'm not a big fan of garter stitch, but this shawl is very soft and squishy. So far, my daughter loves it.




Pattern: Multnomah
Yarn: Perchance to Knit in Fleur
Needle: size 4
Blocked size: 56 inches across and 16 inches down the center back
Start: November 7, 2009
Finish: November 11, 2009

Next, I wanted something a bit more like the lace I knit for myself. For this yarn, I picked the Traveling Woman pattern. It starts with stockinette and ends with lace at the bottom edge. This pattern was very fast to knit. I think that I knit stockinette faster than I can knit garter stitch. I like the nicely rounded back to this one. I might make this one in a larger size for myself.


Pattern: Traveling Woman
Yarn: Hazel Knits in Sailor's Delight (90 gms used)
Needle: size 4
Blocked size: 58 inches across and 15 inches down the center back
Start: November 10, 2009
Finish: November 11, 2009

I'm still knitting socks. I started this one to go with the Solid Socks group color for November. It's brown this month and I've had this yarn in my stash for long enough. I used this cable stitch that reminds me of pretzels. yummy. This yarn is thicker than usual sock yarn, so this pattern went by quickly too. Right now, I'm using the leftovers from this skein to knit socks for my son in a basic knit/purl stitch pattern.


Pattern: by me
Yarn: Opal 6-ply solid (90gms used)
Needle: 2.5mm
Method: magic loop, 2 at once, Turkish cast-on, short row heel
Start: 11/4/09
Finish: 11/9/09

And I just finished this shawl yesterday! The sun was really harsh when I tried to take some photos, so I tried some indoor photography. Once again, Anne's pattern was flawless and easy to knit. I like how this is a knit until you run out of yarn type of pattern. I didn't knit that far, but it's good to keep in mind when I have a limited amount of yarn.

This was knit with one of the giant skeins of Nyoni that I bought last year. I had enough yarn to probably knit 2 more repeats, but I didn't need the shawl to be that big.

Pattern: Boxleaf Triangle by Anne Hanson
Yarn: Fleece Artist Nyoni in Moss (180 gms used)
Needle: size 5
Mods: Knit something between the medium and large size.
Blocked size: 74 inches across the top and 36 inches down the center back
Start: 11/12/09
Finish: 11/16/09

Up next, I have two more lace projects that I've just started today. The socks for my son that need to be finished. After that, I need to knit him a few more pairs of sport weight socks for this winter. He's grown out of most of his socks from last winter.

Focus

I'm lacking focus these days. I'm usually a one, maybe two project person. That's one easy one to carry around and one more complicated. Right now, I have 4 different socks on the needles sitting on my desk. One was a vacation knit that I'm not sure that I like. One is a test swatch for a pattern I'm trying to design. That was started and ripped multiple times on vacation. Two are colorwork patterns. I want to write the pattern while knitting the second sock of those pairs.

When I look at a new book, it's always the stranded patterns that stick with me. I rarely knit them because I have tension issues and have a hard time fitting the sock to my legs. But I'm determined to get it and that means practice.

Let me back up and talk about my finished projects from the past few weeks. Over on Sock Knitter's Anonymous (SKA), one of the challenges of September was to knit a Wendy Johnson pattern. I decided to challenge myself and knit knee highs. I've finally accomplished that. I wasn't happy with my yarn choice, but it was the only yarn that I had on hand with enough yardage for knee highs. Now I have ideas of designing my own knee highs.

Details:
Pattern: Catriona Knee Socks by Wendy Johnson
Yarn: Knit Picks Essential/Stroll Tweed in Black (3)
Needle: size 0 (2mm) circular
Mods: increased a lot more than the pattern states to accommodate my calves
Start: September 19, 2009
Finish: September 28, 2009

When we go on vacation, I usually like to take a lace project with me. On this trip, I took some Wollmeise sock yarn and knit Trevi. Those two are a great combination. Trevi really stretches a single skein of sock yarn into a good sized shawl. I like lace patterns with strong geometric lines like this one.

Pattern: Trevi by Anne Hanson
Yarn: Wollmeise 100% sockenwolle in Merlot
Needle: size 4 (3.5mm) for the main part and size 3 (3.25mm) for the knit on edge
Notes: I knit 6 repeats of chart B and had 15 gms of yarn leftover
Start: October 4, 2009
Finish: October 10, 2009

And when I came back from vacation, I was fed up with the socks that I took with me. I was trying to design a sock pattern for self striping yarn. I had a few good ideas on paper that I took with me, but didn't like the way they looked on the actual sock. bleh. Those are still sitting on my desk and I started this pattern. I'm calling it my H.F.V.B. socks--that stands for: home from vacation blues. ;-)

Pattern: H.F.V.B by me
Yarn: Opal uni 4-ply solid
Needle: size 0 (2mm) for the foot and heel and size 1 (2.25mm) for the leg
Start: October 14, 2009
Finish: October 21, 2009

Even with all of these projects going, I'm itching to knit another shawl. It must be the cold weather. Well it's back to knitting, I'll leave you with these pictures from my part of the world...