It took a bit over a year, help here and there from friends and the loan of blocking wires (Thanks Shadowdancer!), but it’s done, blocked, and bound off (which is after blocking on this pattern). My first lace, my first shawl, and really the first thing I’ve knit for myself to wear that wasn’t a hat.
It’s a bummer we don’t have a season going for my first bind off lace, but such is life.
I feel so clever for coming up with that title.
Here’s my chalice shawl, at about half done. I’ll be cutting it close, I’ve used 2 of my 4 hanks of yarn. According to the circular shawl calculator I used, I’m about 58% done. But since my hanks aren’t the same size (learning moment) I’m not sure how much I have left. I’m hoping it’ll be enough, but I can just short the pattern if needed.
I thought I’d share a quick trick that I stole from Shadowdancer. I was bemoaning my desire to spread the work out, but my needles were too short. She mentioned that she had a “bit of tube like thingy that you could put over the tips of your needles to make them one big cable.” (ok, the quotes might be a bit unnecessary, as I no-doubt just misquoted her)
“Aha! “I thought “I know that hardware stores stock small tubing for pond pumps and such. I’d just need to get a tube smaller than my size 10 needles.” A quick trip to the hardware store, and $2, resulted in an additional 4 feet of “cable.,” enabling me to lay out my project to photograph it. “Success!”
I’m really happy with this pattern (which was written by a fellow Season of Lace-er. Thanks Mary White) It’s really easy, and the fact that it’s knit in the round means that my accidental color changes look like they were planned.
Here it is so quiet. Why? Is there no season of lace any more? I don’t know it.
But whatever the reason for the quietness is, I will show you some of what I have knitted in the last month.
There was my wonderful Catshawl Jellico Cats from Sharon Winsauer. I loved to knit every stitch and love the result.
And for a friend I knitted a stole with oodles nupps.
Soon I will write the pattern for it.
At the moment I’m working on a shawl with yin and yang motivs. I can only show the half of its progress.
Best wishes Utlinde 
After catching a spinning bug, I’m finally back to knitting. And since spring is right around the corner, I’m back to lace.
Here we have my “lacy cable knee high socks“ Sadly, I did just use the pattern name. I’m hoping for a more inspiring name to pop to mind. Since the socks are turning out beautifully, that’s likely to happen.
This yarn is Samantha in Stitches Footcrazy, in the lagoon colorway. I won this yarn last season, and it is very very lovely stuff. I’m not sure this is the perfect pattern for this yarn; we’ll see how it goes. I might have to do another ravelry pattern search, specifically for knee socks, because this yarn is yummy.
The other thing in my knitting basket is the direct result of my catching the spinning bug. A couple months ago I bought 4 oz of Blue Face Leicester roving, and after much spinning ended up with some lovely light fingering to laceweight yarn. (And yes, it varies that much. I’m still exploring spinning)
After a bit of puttering around ravelry, wanting just *the perfect* pattern I decided on the Chalice Triangle Scarf. I knew I wanted something knit in the round, to help even out the color changes. Since I’m not sure how much yarn I have, and because Murphy likes to take his law out for walks around knitting patterns; I wanted something that could I could fudge the edges on. So far, I’m *extremely* proud with how it’s turning out.
Oddly, now that I’m over the spinning bug, I realized I really missed knitting during that time. I’m back to lace, and feeling back to myself. And before anyone freaks out about the safety pins in my lace, they’re coil-less. And deranged pixies ran off with all of my stitch markers. I’m ever so annoyed.
Hey there — you may remember me..
Once upon a time, I seemed to knit nothing but lace. Lace lace lace.
I loved lace so much, I talked my dear friend into helping me start a Giant Repeating Lace KAL. We called it Seasons of Lace.
I loved lace and the KAL so much that I spent my life knitting lace, and chatting up all sorts of lovely people who design lace patterns and sell lace yarn, so that they would donate lovely lace related prizes to the folks who joined in our lace KAL. And still, I knit lace.
And then there was life. And massage school. And suddenly, I was buried in way too much to do!
It got so bad that lace all but disappeared from my needles. It’s been socks, and a shadow-knitting afghan that I was effectively commissioned to design and knit. And the current lace project languished, pining for my attention.
In many ways, it was simple (ish) math that was getting between me and my lace knitting.
I’ve gone on a tear, and am adapting Susan Pandorf’s Dwarrowdelf Stole pattern for use as curtains. This means I needed to make them a lot WIDER to fit my windows. So, I hauled off and knit a top edge, vastly increasing the number of repeats called for by the stole pattern. And then I looked to see what the ratio of repeats on top edge piece would be to the repeats on the body, and my brain fried a little.
I knew that the repeats on the top edge were 14 rows “wide”. I knew that the ends of the top edge included a five row edge. (I spaced for the longest time on the three rows of set up at one end and the four rows of … well… set down at the other). I knew that I was getting approximately 7 rows to the inch.
I knew that the repeats on the body would be 24 stitches wide. I knew that the ends included a 9 stitch edge on one side and an 18 stitch edge on the other. And… I knew that I was getting approximately 6 stitches to the inch.
Clearly, forgetting those 7 extra rows bollixed me up for a while. But suddenly, after my brief escape to Oak Park, I made the math work! And here, we see the winding up of the skinny top edge:
It’s pushing 44 inches long here. The next thing I did was that five row edge, and bind off. I’m now in the throes of picking up three hundred and some odd stitches along the edge that runs along the left side in that picture. So much for something to work on where the rows are short and I can feel like real progress happens when I knit for a few minutes.
I am looking forward to a new Season, as I have just got myself back into Lace Mode. I recently decided it was time to crack on with the Rock Island I started right at the end of the precious season. Yeah. On the last day, or the last week, or whatever it was, I finally joined the KAL. I knit a billion and ten rows of the edging, and then I got discouraged. Or more truthfully, distracted. I think I knit a sweater or two, and some other bits and pieces. Then I girded my loins, squeezed my courage up into a ball, sucked in my breath, and made another attempt. I still had a billion repeats of the edging to do. The whole thing is rather alarming – there was over six feet of it by the time it was done. Can that possibly be right? Well, I read various project notes, and checked what people were saying on Ravelry, and I’m prepared to believe it’s at least in the ballpark (although, after a look at the pattern dimensions, and using some elementary math, I’m skeptical that it’s meant to be quite this long). No matter: if I have a large shawl, that will be fine, as long as it doesn’t make me look like a crazy old bat - à la Miss Haversham – once it’s done, dusted, and dyed black. Note the implication, then, of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. Because, tarnation, I will finish this thing. And then I can agonise over the next project.
As of now, I’m two-thirds of the way through the Rock Island chart, which seems to be working out more or less OK, with a little help from the utterly necessary highlighter pens, and very occasional fudging. Because really, truly: I’ve tried tinking lace rows, and I don’t know if other people can do it, but I. Can. Not. If my life depended on it, the wake would have been held long ago, and the moss would be growing over my grave already.
A couple weeks ago I finished my Branching Off socks. I just forgot to post the pictures.
This yarn is Lost City Knits new Pathways Sock Yarn in the “Extra Virgin” colorway. And man, is it a nice yarn. Denise informed me that she got a new base yarn, which is super soft and squishy. It’s a great sock yarn. And have you seen the colors she gets? I have to be careful not to go look at the pages too much, it’s bad for my budget.
Lately I haven’t been knitting as much. I recently caught the spinning bug instead.
It’s a quick one I tell you!
And just so lovely. I knit this in BMFA Socks that Rock Mediumweight, in Mossay, a really beautiful color.
I finished my wisp.
Normally, I’d take pictures of the lace blocking. However, I’m not going to block this one. I realized that as it is now, it fits perfectly. Blocking would screw that up. So instead, here’s a picture of me wearing my wisp after having just walked the dog.
Hey, I never said it was pretty. But it works like a charm. I figured I might as well do the “awkward picture in the bathroom mirror with the cell phone” since there’s no way to make this look elegant.
Besides, everyone needs a chance to laugh.
After knitting a LOT of lace I’ve taken a bit of a break…but now I’m back and really enjoying myself! I don’t know if we’re in a season or what, but I’m having so much fun that I want to share my latest project. Nypon…just cast on about three days ago and already and I’m already to the last chart, so this is a quick one. I’m using BMFA Socks That Rock in Mossay. Such a beautiful yarn and so lovely to knit with.
