Persistent Knitter

My daughter has been very sad that she doesn’t have a rainbow sweater. Since I was planning on knitting her a sweater for her birthday anyway, it’s perfect! I am using the “Supersize me!” pattern from The yarn girls’ guide to knits for older kids. It’s super simple, and exactly what I wanted to knit, and for once the gauge matches what I want to use. The pattern calls for doubled Koigu (expensive anyone?) so I’m subbing the Lorna’s laces worsted weight (not as expensive; but still spendy). The sock yarn shown in the picture might turn into a pair of rainbow socks to coordinate with her sweater. Here’s the progress I’ve made so far:

Isn’t that fabulous rainbow-y yarn? I hope i’ll have more pictures of the Alpine Lace shawl soon; but it’s still drying. It takes forever for things to dry here. I’ve sped up the process by adding a fan blowing directly on the shawl.

Blog it first, or Ravelry it first?

So I’m in ravelry and I’ve put this project in there as a WIP. I linked into my pictures in flickr, then I wanted to blog about it. It seems to me that I should be able to select a project, and say “blog about this” and it’ll let me pick the pictures to use and publish to my blog. For now I use flickr’s “blog this” button to do that from within flickr; but I can only choose one picture. I don’t like having to do updates at multiple locations. I suppose in Ravelry I’ll just update it when I get farther along; and I will only be linking in new pictures.

sea silk! The small ball on the right is what I had left over. I tried very hard to use everything I could from the two skeins of sea silk I had allocated to the project. Here it is stretched out just a tiny bit, before it’s wet.

I found some room in my seldom used guest room to stretch it out on the floor. I didn’t even have to move the bed (thankfully). I bought blocking wires at the hardware store (seen on the right), and spent about 15 minutes cleaning them with steel wool. When I went to block it, I realized there was no way I could fit those wires through the garter stitch edge without making it look weird. I used pins instead, and my daughter’s very colorful beach towel:

I didn’t even realize one side of the towel was striped! The blocking job isn’t perfectly straight, but that’s Ok.  The lace really opens up! I hope it stays open once it’s dried.

I hope to model it once it’s dried and the ends woven in, but here’s the project info.

Pattern : Alpine Lace from Victorian Lace Today
Yarn: 2 skeins Sea Silk in Woodland colorway

Pattern mods: Removed one of the center rose pattern repeats. I cast on 103 stitches, increased 6 to the center, and did 40 repeats of the rose leaf pattern through the center. When I ran out of the first yarn, I left the ends dangling and counted the number of rose leaf patterns I had done up to that point. That let me estimate how many I could do with the second skein and still have enough left over to do the final border.

I love that this pattern has the border attached, and when you cast off ; you were done! Speaking of the cast off, I really liked the suspended bind off suggested in the pattern. I’ll be using that on other projects to help prevent an overly tight bind off.

1. Look down at your lace knitting and say, “Hmm… that YO looks twice as big as it should”.
2. Look a bit further, and decide, “I’ll just drop down that set of 10 stitches a few rows and fix it”.
3. Let your husband distract you every 5 minutes as he says, “Ooooh – look at this new car configuration” as he’s playing Need for Speed: Carbon* on the couch next to you.
4. Spend the next 1.5 hours gently tinking, coaxing, and generally pleading with your knitting to “Get back ON the needles properly”
5. Spend another 20 minutes ripping back until you think it’s safe, and then gently putting the knitting back on the needle. Tinking one more row to make sure you have all your yarn overs in place, etc.

Things you should do:

1. Don’t look at the knitting. The YO’s are fine.
2. Really. Stop looking at the knitting. It’s fine. Nobody but you would notice anyway. Even you won’t notice once you get another inch knit.
3. Tell your husband “No more talking! I mean it!”. You have my permission to forcibly take the controller away and shut the xbox off if needed.
4. Go to bed early. Really – you need all your rest for the birthday party of inflated air happening tomorrow
5. Read in bed if you insist that it’s too early to go to bed.

* Don’t bother getting Need for Speed: Carbon. Need for Speed: Most Wanted was 1000 times better, so just play that one again instead of playing a lesser game with more flippy graphics than content.

Especially when it comes to me in the form of fiber! This is the selection from Chameleon Colorwork’s July fiber of the month club. I can tell you – I have not been disappointed in anything I’ve been sent so far. The colors are fabulous, the fiber is amazing. It’s wonderful to spin!

You’ll notice that I have not one, but two bundles here. There was a slight mix up, the first package got sent to the wrong (old) address. I realized I hadn’t received my package after about three weeks and emailed Janel. She was so kind, and mailed me out another package right away. of course, Murphy steps in and I receive the first package which I thought had been eaten up by the post office. Well, now I’m the proud owner of two bundles of this Optim fiber! I’ve sent mail off to Janel so I can pay her for the extra bundle. There’s no way I’m sending it back. :)

The Optim is interesting stuff. The fiber feels a lot like silk and has a wonderful sheen to it. The tag says it’s superwash, and is “mechanically stretched merino wool”. It doesn’t appear to have any crimp in it, and is a bit sticky at first – but once you get it drafting, it seems to slide wonderfully. It also seems to have the silk thing going on where it gets a bit static-y. If anyone else has spun this stuff up – I’d be interested in hearing your experiences. I’ve got 8 ounces to play with and am looking forward to it.

I have been attempting to upload my digital photos to flickr, and in the process am finding a lot of pictures I took of knitted things. This was the very first thing I knit. Katie is just under a year old here, and wore this sweater for a while (note the rolled up sleeves). It’s a Mission Falls pattern from the Wee knits book. The hardest thing was all the ends to weave in. I swear that took longer than actually knitting it.

I’ve been uploading a lot of photos into flickr so I can use them in Ravelry. I also get to link to all the patterns I’ve designed and am selling at The Knit Foundry. Yay!!

This is the pinkest sock I’ve ever knit. I designed it for the February sock of the month club at theknitter.com a few years ago. The yarn, Dolly Bollicine, was wonderful to knit with. I made a pair of fair isle mittens with the Dolly yarn (different colors) after these socks. I’ll have to see if I can dig up the pictures of those.

PS. you can buy the pattern for these socks here.

This is amazing:

http://www.petegoldlust.com/carvedcrayons.html

It’s making me look at my kid’s crayon box in a whole new light. What must it take to have the patience and skill to carve at such a small level!? It really makes me want to try it for some reason!

I just passed the halfway point on my Alpine Lace shawl. I have a tiny ball of yarn left; which means that I should have enough to finish the shawl without having to dip into the third skein.  I’m surprised that the blue bits are what is standing out. When I knit it, I only see the light green areas pop out at me.

I think it’s going to block out huge, and I have no idea how I’m actually going to block it, given that my blocking board isn’t long enough. I’d love to buy some of those interlocking tiles that everyone seems to be liking lately; but the $1000 plumbing repair bill we had to pay today puts a bit of a crimp in that. Do you think if I got these they would block as well, and I could use the excuse “it’s for the kids!”?

Oh, and the other exciting thing?  I’m within 300 people of making it into Ravelry!

• You signed up on June 12, 2007
• You are #8430 on the list.
• 293 people are ahead of you in line.
• 15110 people are behind you in line.
• 34% of the list has been invited so far

My two remaining skeins of sea silk in the Woodland colorway.I took this shot because they are very different when you open them up. The top one has almost no green in it at all. This is the joy of hand dyed yarn.

I’ll finish my Alpine Lace Shawl with the bottom skein which matches the other skein I used much better. Thank goodness for dumb luck that let me pick one of the two skeins that match each other. (I have three total).

So this weekend I’m moving Knit Foundry from my previous webhost (aka “The Host that doesn’t let you do anything because it doesn’t think you are smart enough”) to a host that is a bit nicer and more permissive and reasonable about such things (aka “Do what you want, it’s your own foot if you shoot it”). All the files will look the same, with the exception of the forms you fill out. The previous forms wouldn’t work randomly and I’m hoping with better luck with the new ones. So, if you happen to visit The Knit Foundry this weekend, you might see a short period of time when pages might not load, it says it’s not found – we’re still there! I promise!! I’ve set it up so I can re-enter the magic numbers (aka DNS) , point to the new location, move the files and tada! new location. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Meanwhile I’m knitting steadily on my Alpine Lace Shawl (yes Marie, it’s Sea Silk. Woodland colorway). A bit of frustration this morning as it seemed like I couldn’t knit a row without some sort of error (usually a dropped YO). This afternoon was much better. Must be because it’s the weekend!

Oh, and another on my weekend to-do list, check the Ravelry antsy page. My friend Jill is already “in” and she’s given me a sneak peek. Wow – it’s pretty darned cool.