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

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.