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.

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.

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).

Jill had requested a non-blobby picture of my Alpine Lace. Since I’m all for trying to show it off, here it is. I just stretched it out on the bed, with some sheets of printer paper* underneath. It’s not very even, and I didn’t pull on the sides much (for fear I’d pull stitches off the needle; I didn’t have any stoppers), but this is what it looks like.

I’m loving this pattern. It’s actually easier now that I’ve got the center pattern going. The wrong side rows for that are fairly easy, which offsets how hard the edge stitches are on the wrong side – I just can’t get my brain around how the stitches work on the wrong side; it’ll click by the time I’m almost done :)

*I almost wrote ‘typing paper’. What’s up with that?!

My knitting funk is officially over. I got my sea silk, I did some math, and cast on. I’m not making it as wide as called for in the pattern. I’ll find out in another 9-15 rows if I did my math properly for the center patterns. The yarn is so pretty and the variations in the colors are mostly subtle; exactly as I like it. I had to do a bit of reorganizing to get the chart into an easier to read and shove-in-my-bag format. So i scanned it in, put them next to each other and printed it on card stock. It folds over to protect the tape while it’s marking my place (tape available here); and lets me set it up as a little tent card while I’m knitting.

Oooooh… ahhh. lacy wrap/stole started from Mountain Colors Mountain Goat yarn. (Morning Glory pattern from here),

But wait. Oh no!!!!!!!!!!

Do you see it?

Look closer.

The top skein is a different color than the bottom one!

Closer examination of the tags show that it’s a bonehead mistake – they are totally different colors. In my glee at having such beautiful yarn I apparently didn’t even make sure they were all the same color. The bottom skein matches what I’ve already started knitting with. The top skein is something completely different. There’s no blue, although the purple undertones are the same.

So what do I do??

Some options as I can see it so far:

• Call the store to see if they have more of the given color. I called (actually my friend Jill did, as I was so distraught at the time), and they don’t have any more of that color.
• Use only two skeins for the pattern I’ve started. It’s a really really really long stole; so maybe it’d be ok shorter by one third.
• Start doing every other row with the ‘odd’ skein for a while to incorporate it into the stole without being obvious about it.
• Knit the middle of the stole with the odd skein
• Cry
• Put it aside in the ‘naughty step‘ for daring to be the wrong color
• Do something else entirely

Thoughts? Ideas?

Now the question. What to make?

Option 1:

Option 2:

Option 3:

All three are in the Gathering of Lace book. I was originally going to make option 1 (and why I got two skeins as one wouldn’t be enough), but now I’m just not sure!  Help me decide…. which do you like?

Thanks to little Katie hands for helping me hold it open so you could (sort of) see the pattern.