The veil is complete

I finished pinning this to the floor at around midnight last night. This shawl grew a lot with blocking. I think part of that is due to the yarn used and part of it is due to the stitch pattern. There was patterning on both sides of the stitch patterns. This shawl looked really small before blocking, but it's a good size now. After blocking, I wasn't sure if I liked it. It looked so delicate and airy. That is what I was going for, but I wasn't sure if I would be able to wear it without hurting it. After carrying it around outside, hanging it on trees, and taking pictures of it all over, I think it's quite durable. This yarn is quite thin, but isn't really that fragile. I did snag it while hanging it on this tree, but everything fell back into place with a little tugging.

This pattern wasn't too bad to knit. It wasn't boring because I had to keep track of knitting the sides and the center area. That required looking at two charts on every row. I wasn't able to memorize the border on this shawl. This shawl had 28 repeats of a 14 row border on the long edges, plus whatever was needed for the corners. The sampler shawl had 50(?) repeats on one long edge.

The corners on this shawl required more double and triple joins. I think it came out nicely. I'm glad that they blocked out nice. The points were pretty sad looking before being blocked. I didn't take a picture of it, but the grafting of the border turned out a lot neater on this shawl than the sampler shawl.

Here are the details...
Pattern: A Knitted Veil from Victorian Lace Today
Yarn: Hengyuanxiang (2 balls)--This is a laceweight, superwash wool yarn from Shanghai.
Needles: size 2 Knitpicks classic circular
Unblocked: 21" x 57"
Blocked: 31" x 77"
Started: 2/15/07
Finished: 2/27/07

Veil is progressing

I'm getting towards the end of the main section of the knitted veil. Just picture the same thing, but longer in the airy center portion. It's starting to get a bit boring, but the end is coming up. I like that section with the large diamonds. I could make the shawl longer, but I plan on following the pattern and see how it ends. It's interesting following two different sections of one chart. As long as I keep the magnets in place, I'm fine. We won't talk about the time where I forgot to move the magnets, knit the same row twice, didn't realize it until I was 10 rows away, and had to tink back. Ugh! I survived and the shawl is almost done. I'm guessing that it will take another week to finish at the rate I'm knitting.

Our snow has finally melted and the temperatures have been a little warmer. While this is great, that means I can't take anymore shawl in the snow photos. I'll have to scout out a new location.

My mind is wandering off to the next project. I'm planning on taking the plunge and knit myself a cardigan. I have some odds and ends colourmart cashmere in dark blue. I think it will be enough. The ultimate plan is to knit a plain cardigan very similar to a store bought one that I like. If that fits well, I plan on using the camel hair yarn to make a cabled version. I'll have a lot of swatching to do to see how many stitches I need to add to accommodate the cables. The camel hair yarn is just asking to be made into something classic looking and cabled.

My sewing projects have been cast aside for a while now. I have to do some modifications to the handbag pattern that I was making before I can continue. That left me unenthusiastic about sewing. I do need to start thinking about spring and summer dresses for E. I have plenty of fabrics. I just need to pair them up with a pattern that I want to use.

I'm free!

Free from the responsibility of watching E and D. My husband just returned from a 3 week business trip. What a relief! Watching E and D has been stressful for the last week. Things went surprisingly smoothly for the first two weeks. E and D played well and they listened to me. But towards the end, I think we were all getting tired of each other. Now they have Daddy back and they are happily playing outside in the snow.

Dwight brought back yarn! This is the same yarn that I'm using for the knitted veil in the post below. I like this yarn a lot and it's a shame that I can't order it from anywhere off of the internet. It's so smooth and easy to knit. Dwight paid attention and bought more colors and more balls of each color. This red is a different red than the one I'm currently working with. This red is more tomato-ish and my current one is a deeper, darker red. The labels are a little different, but there is still no yardage information on it. I should have asked him to ask the people at the store. Oh well. With at least 4 balls of each, I should be able to make a nice sized shawl out of any of the colors.

He also bought a knitting book. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a pattern book or a stitch pattern book. This book has knit and crochet items in it. There are many pictures of sweaters, vests, skirts, shawls, scarves, hats, and bags. There are stitch patterns for every item, but there are only a few schematic drawings with measurements. There are no directions, no yarn information, or needle sizes. The pictures of the items are in color and on glossy paper.

The patterns are a rougher, plain paper. This is an example of a pattern for a shawl. That's it. This is crammed onto one page with around 5-6 other patterns. I can probably decipher the shawl patterns, but I'm not sure about the sweaters. I haven't knit an adult sized sweater yet, so we'll have to see about that part in the future. The back of the book does have a very good section showing what all of the knitting symbols mean. Phew, at least I don't have to figure that part out. Even if I never knit a sweater, I'm happy to have this book. It will be great for ideas. I was also very surprised that Dwight bought me a book. The fact that he took the time to search for a knitting book is very sweet. He had some interesting things to say about the bookstore. He said that every chair was taken and people were reading. He said that the store felt more like a library and that all of the books looked thumbed through. My book was in great condition.

He also brought back things for E and D. I don't know what they were more excited to have, their toys or the snacks. They think the snacks that Daddy brings back are pretty cool. Dwight doesn't go on many business trips, but it's a lot of fun when he brings back so many cool things.

Starting the knitted veil

For those that read and are not familiar with Victorian Lace Today, that's a pattern. I'm already married. ;-) The names of the patterns in this book are not very catchy. I think it's probably easier to reference the patterns by page number.

The lace from yesterday was the beginnings of the Alpine knit scarf (pg. 36). I decided that I did like that section with those needles, but I didn't think I was up to knitting the miles of the rose leaf center. That was frogged and I started flipping through the book again. I settled on A Knitted Veil (pg. 68). There will be a knitted on border later, but this border has open diamonds very similar to the ones in the Alpine scarf. The diamonds are outlined in that scarf, but aren't here. I really like the larger diamonds in the more solid area.

I'm not so sure about the star like pattern that's really open. That will be the main part of the shawl. I'm going to knit a few more repeats of that before deciding. They are very fast to knit, but I'm still not sure about all of that openness. Most of the shawls that I have made were more solid. This will be quite a change if I decide to finish it.

D is feeling a lot better. It wasn't even a 24 hour bug. It's so funny how he could be so sick in the mornings and back to running around by the afternoon. Today, he acts like nothing was ever wrong. Things must be back to normal because the house is full of noise again. It was so quiet when he wasn't feeling well yesterday morning.

Maybe I should have swatched

This is not a good morning. D woke up at around 5am and threw up. And again at 6:30am. He's laying down and watching tv. In the past, I know that his stomach seems sensitive when it's sick. We tried liquids already and his stomach doesn't want anything. It's going to be a long day.

My knitting news isn't very positive either. I started the Alpine Knit scarf from Victorian Lace Today last night. I'm using that unknown red lace yarn from China. By my guesses, I think that it's very similar to Jade Sapphire's Lacey Lamb yarn. That yarn is 60 gms and 825 yds. My yarn is 62.5 gms. That makes this a really fine laceweight or almost cobweb yarn. I tried using my Knitpicks size 3 needles (3.25mm). Those yarnovers that are spread out were nearly an inch long! I frogged that and started again with a size 2 needle(3mm). That's what is in the picture and I still think it's too open. I must confess that I didn't really swatch. I usually never swatch for a shawl or scarf project. If I continued, this shawl would be around 24" wide. The pattern states that it should block to around 18". Argh! It's frogging time again. I'm not sure if I want to do this pattern after all.

So, what do I do? I really want to use this yarn. I love this deep red color. The yarn is very smooth and springy for a lace yarn. I want something geometric versus something leafy. My sampler shawl had plenty of leaves in it and it's time for something different.

Inbetween projects limbo

After finishing the sampler shawl, I wanted a project that was a little smaller, but still lace. I dug through my yarn and decided to try this yarn again. This is a ball of Cherry Tree Hill's Cascade Silk in tropical storm. I has very deep blues to lighter blues with some black too. I have tried several patterns with it and wasn't very happy with any of them. This time, I looked through Victorian Lace Today and tried to find something that would look good in a variegated yarn.

This scarf was a very quick knit. The edging was the most complicated part. I didn't get to memorize it, but it wasn't too bad following the charts the whole time. The center area was very easy. It's knit in garter stitch. I did knit 11 repeats of the chart b(the center area) instead of the 6 called for in the pattern. I was using a much smaller needle than the pattern called for and I wanted a long scarf.

Here are the details:
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Cascade Silk-Tropical Storm (approx. 45 gms used)
Needles: Size 3 Knitpicks classic circulars
Unblocked size: 10" x 73"
Blocked size: 11" x 84"
Started: February 9, 2007
Completed: February 12, 2007


I'm trying to show what the drape looks like with this yarn. This was as far out as I was planning on walking today. We have freezing rain, so this picture was taken off of the side of our porch.

Now, I'm in project limbo again. What to work on next? I'm thinking about making another shawl. I want to use that pretty red lace yarn that I posted about a while ago. I also have some cashmere that I want to use. If all works out according to my plans, the cashmere will be a scarf, hat, and wrist warmers set. I have some fiddling to do with patterns, gauges, swatches, washing swatches, etc. before I can do those though.

Beginner Sampler Shawl is complete!

I finally buckled down and was determined to finish that border last night. I did finish it and blocked it last night. The border was torture. Okay, it was just boring. After doing one of the long straight sides, I got tired of turning the work back and forth. I started knitting backwards and everything went much faster as a result. This shawl is HUGE. Because of it's pre-blocking size, I didn't block it as aggressively as I usually do. I'm not very happy with how it looks. I think that I will block it bigger when I feel up to all that pinning again.

Stats--
Yarn: Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud in Iris (approx 4.66 skeins used)
Needles: Knitpicks Classic Circulars-size 3 for the body and 2 for the border
Unblocked size: 85" x 29"
Blocked size: 92" x 35"
Started: November 14, 2006
Completed: February 8, 2007

Here it is blocking. I blocked in on a really old green and white gingham sheet from the 70's. It helped me evenly space out the points of the borders. I must mention that this shawl called for approximately 1650 yds of "superfine weight" yarn. Alpaca Cloud is pretty fine for a laceweight. I ended up using 4 skeins of alpaca cloud for the main body of this shawl. Each skein is roughly 440 yards. I ended up using around 2/3 of a fifth skein of yarn to do the border. Even though dyelots were different, you can't really tell the difference. Thank goodness.

Here is one end section and the center section of the shawl in the snow. You can see how often the stitch pattern changes. Often enough to keep it interesting, but not too often to drive you crazy. My favorite parts are the knitted lace sections. I like how open those sections are. The coloring of the yarn is most accurate in these outdoor pictures. The yarn was great to use and very soft. I have made a few shawls out of laceweight alpaca. I think the next shawl will be a different fiber.

It's so cold!

The daytime temperatures are in the teens. Sometimes, they're barely in the teens. Low temps are in the single digits. I'm not even going to talk about what the wind chill does. Brrrrrrr. When it's that cold outside, it just feels colder inside no matter the setting on the central heat. My hands have been so cold and I don't like knitting with wrist warmers. I haven't been knitting on the shawl much. That's partially due to the cold and partially due to the repetitiveness of the border. I'm about half way done with the border. I think I will have just enough yarn.

My mind is wandering to the next project. Another shawl? Finally make that cardigan for myself? A sweater for one of the kids? More socks? I'm having trouble deciding. ;-)

Endless edging

I've decided to not worry about the yardage on the mystery yarn at least until I finish with the sampler shawl. I did have to buy another skein of yarn for that shawl. It arrived this past week. I reluctantly balled it up and started the endless edging.

Here it is so far. I haven't been working on it as much as I did when I was doing the main section. The border gets boring after a while. Each repeat is only 12 rows and between 7 and 14 stitches wide. It's easy to memorize and easy to do. In the photo above, I've complete 27 out of 140+ repeats. Below is a close-up of the border.

I can't wait until this project is done. Not because it has taken a long time, but because I want to do so many other shawls out of that book. I'm holding myself back from casting on for another one before this one is finished.