I'm a Big Girl Now

Well, a Big Girl Lace Knitter that is! You know you are all growed up when you can grab yarn and needles and successfully knit a semi-complicated project that you couldn't couldn't do before. For me that project is Evelyn Clark's wonderful Trellis Lace Scarf, first published in Interweave Knits, Spring 2006. Excited after completing my first lace project, an Old Shale scarf, before Christmas 2005 I had just finished knitting my 1st lace shawl, Kiri, for the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics (which coincided with the Winter Olympic Games in Torino, Italy in February, 2006). Those two projects sealed my fate -- an addiction to lace knitting. I was ready to take on the lace world...or so I thought.

I fell in love with the Trellis Lace Scarf immediately. My first order of lace yarn from Knit Picks had arrived and I was ready to conquer anything lace. But pointy-tipped lace needles were not readily available in 2006 as they are now and I was using Addi-Turbos. The 7-into-5 cluster stitches which are the hallmark of Clark's design had me befuddled. I just couldn't get my needles to gather up 7 sts once, let alone 3 times to form the 5 sts needed for the lace patterning. After multiple attempts I finally gave up and repurposed the yarn for another shawl. I was not ready for fancy stitches just yet. You can't run a marathon if you are still mastering the art of walking.


After finishing my Echo Flowers shawl, I had an odd ball+ of yarn left over -- just the right amount for a lace scarf. I love my shawls, but scarves are so much easier to wear day in and day out and I could use a few more in my wardrobe. A quick survey of my pattern options and I came across an old working copy of Trellis. Perfect! It's amazing how readily I can purl super loosey-goosey sts on the row before the cluster sts, then scoop up all 7 sts and come up with 5 nowadays. It's almost like magic, but I know it has everything to do with all the nupps I've knit over the last year or so.

I'm adding a few 8-0 seed beads just to the edging. I like the little touch of bling and the beads add just a tad of extra weight which really helps a lace scarf or shawl drape nicely when worn. I'll probably knit a few more repeats of the 16 row lace pattern so I'll have the option of wearing the scarf doubled as is the current rage. I have lots of yarn so the only question will be do I have enough patience to stick it out when I'm sick to death of knitting the same thing over and over again (the problem with scarves). We shall see!

What does 08.08.08 mean???

It's supposedly a very lucky number in China. How convenient that it happened to fall on a Friday this year...perfect timing for the Opening Ceremonies of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing, China. I love watching the Olympics - everything from the Opening Ceremonies to most of the competitive events (nix wrestling, boxing, and a couple of others) to the Closing Ceremonies - it's all fascinating to me. Some sports I follow all the time - gymnastics, swimming, cycling are among my favorites. Some sports are novel to me. This year I've learned a little about the team sport handball. And to think I thought handball was a game played by 2 people in a racquetball court!


A more recent "sporting event" added to my "Olympic experience" has been knitting. It all started 2 years ago when Stephanie Pearl-McPhee aka The Yarn Harlot got the wild idea to have an international knitting event of challenge and goodwill in association with the Winter Olympic Games in Torino, Italy in 2006. And thus the Official Knitting Olympics was born. The KO is be held every 4 years in true Olympic tradition associated with the winter games. But the idea caught on in an enormous sort of way, so with the Beijing summer games looming on the horizon a comparable, but distinctly different Olympic event for fiber fanatics seemed inevitable. And what is the biggest thing to come along since The Yarn Harlot and Torino? Why Ravelry, of course! I love Ravelry, or at least most of the time I do, so it was the logical venue for hosting an Olympic-sized event. And so the Ravelympics were born. The knitters and crocheters, representing their unique teams, cast-on for their respective events during the Opening Ceremonies and work feverishly to complete their projects before the Olympic Flame is turned off in Beijing.


I was a beginning lace knitter 2 years ago during the Knitting Olympics. My chosen project was very ambitious - my 1st lace shawl. I knit Kiri in a heavy laceweight/light fingering weight red cashmerino. I finished in time, basked in the glory of my triumph, and forever sealed my addiction to lace knitting. Now, 2 years and many shawls later, I'm still knitting lace and loving it. This time the choice of what to knit was difficult as there were so many awesome patterns to choose from. I signed up for Team G.R.I.T.S. (Girls Raised In The South, one of the Ravelry groups I participate in) and entered the Shawl Relay, Laceweight Long Jump, and Balance Beads. That was the easy part. The rest was hard. I needed to use yarn from The Yarn Haven, my favorite LYS as I am also participating the int shop's Olympic event. That limited my pattern options some. The rest of the decision should have been easy--choose something you like that you know you can do. But could I do that??? No way! No, I desperately wanted to knit Mystic Meadows, an ambitious cables and lace stole that would be hard to complete in the 17 days of the Olympics. I quietly entered 3 shawl projects into the Ravelympics, knowing I would knit only one. Every good gymnast has an alternate plan for each routine, right? Right!


OK, so that's the scoop. Now to the event. I cast-on during the Opening Ceremonies. I started my ambitious project - the Mystic Meadows shawl. I calculated in advance that I needed to knit between 25-30 rows per day in order to finish the "race". It was ambitious, but doable, I thought. But 3 1/2 hours and 13 rows later, with a fair amount of tinking to correct mistakes, I knew I was in over my head. Could I knit this shawl in 17 days? Absolutely. Could I knit the shawl AND watch the Olympics? Nope. No way. Mystic Meadows demands too much concentration. Too much counting. And so I set it aside and cast-on the Angel Lace Shawl, my alternate plan.

The Angel Lace Shawl is another wonderful pattern by one of my favorite designers, Evelyn Clark. Like many of Evelyn's shawl, Angel Lace is a top-down triangle shawl which starts with a few stitches at the neck and increases as the shawl progresses. I'm using a favorite yarn, Misti Alpaca Lace in a pretty pastel lavender, and adding ivory ceylon 8-0 seed beads to the "face" of each angel and along the bottom edge. I started on August 9th knitting the 1st chart and 4 repeats of the 2nd chart. I added 1-2 repeats each day until I completed 16 repeats last night and declared the shawl big enough. Today, the 10th day of Olympic competition, I started knitting the edging so I should be ready cast-on Tuesday or Wedsnesday. The Shawl relay referee decided that blocking was required for the "race" to be complete, so I will be doing that as soon as I finish casting off. I will triumph once again! And best of all...I will have another wonderful shawl to wear with pride and joy! Yea team!

The Angel is Done!

I'm pleased to announce the completion of the Angel Pearls Beaded lace Scarf, my 1st FO of 2008. I really thought I would be done in no more than a week, but a few interruptions for things like Christmas and another unplanned hospital admission for my Father sort of delayed things a bit. Well, that and the fact that I was so afraid my scarf would be too short that I kept adding extra repeats of the main chart. The pattern called for 10-11 repeats and I finally stopped after 15. You know how the story goes: you finish knitting a repeat and you try the thing on to see if it's long enough OR you grab a tape measure and run the numbers. You hmmm a bit and decide it's too short and knit another repeat...and another...and another...and well, you get the idea :-)

At 14 repeats I figured I was OK, but I decided to knit one more just to be sure. Well, after a nice warm bubble bath to get the machine oils and grime out of the yarn, the finished scarf headed to the stripped down "blocking bed" (formerly known as the guest bed). I gave the scarf a nice block, but not as severe as I typically stretch my lace. I was concerned about the fine, cobweb wt fibers breaking, so I was gentle. From previous experience I have learned that alpaca does not hold a crisp, sever block anyway and I'm thinking a gentle block has a better chance of keeping it's structure. We shall see. Anyway, I was so surprised to find my finished scarf measured 77" long and 6.5" wide. That's at least 10" more than I anticipated and I'm so pleased! By the time I add the beaded tassels to the points it'll be 80+ inches! Cool!


The finished shawl used only about 40g of yarn. After some fancy calculating I used roughly about 236 yds. of the triple stranded yarn. That's pretty much spot on with what Sivia used in her original scarf out of Kid Silk Haze, so that's also good. Oh, I forgot to mention how I solved them problem of the HOLE. Some careful scrutiny revealed that I had dropped a yo stitch from a k2tog. After playing with it a bit I realized I could do a repair job that would be essentially invisible, thus avoiding having to tink/frog back the better part of a repeat. So after casting off, I went back with a single strand of the cobweb fiber and caught the yo loop up to the next row where it belonged, weaving the yarn tail before and after the catch-stitch. You can't even see it and I'm happy. Those of you who know me well know that I could never just leave a boo-boo like that. If I couldn't have made the invisible repair I would have frogged back for sure :-)

Cross another one off the list

Yup, you can cross another WIP off the the list and move the Little River Socks (Panda Cotton-Fall Herbs) to the FO list. I only have one pair of UFO socks left to finish (Christmas Daddy, I promise they'll be done by Christmas this year). I took some pics but they're still in the camera so you'll just have to wait for that "footsie" pose. NBD, really, I promise as this pair was the ones where the yarn clashed with the lace patterning. But they're still comfy and the right colors for immediate wear, and that's what counts right now.

Having completed 2 pairs of socks this week, I can now cast-on some new socks from all this amazing yarn I've stashed over the course of the summer. The first pair up was also dictated by my need for socks to go with brown pants and shoes, so I cast-on a pair of Cookie's Monkey Socks published in Knitty last winter. I'm using the new Araucania yarn that Sandy gifted me and I have to say, the yarn and pattern are a perfect match. That sounds so simple and obvious, but with all the handpainted, space-dyed, and/or otherwise interesting, non-solid-colored sock yarns out there, making a perfect match has become anything but simple. One only has to surf the web a little to see countless pairs of hand-knit socks, including the ones I just finished, where the match-up, er, well... just didn't match.

So I cast on and knit the ribbing and a couple of pattern repeats on Thursday night. This morning I tinked back about 3 rows to fix mistakes (what, me count????) before forging on and I'm into the gusset decreases. That's what I call a pretty fast knit! I love the lace pattern, both how it looks and how easy it is to both knit and remember. However, the cuff has more dimpled textured than the Geosphere at EPCOT, which means these socks will require proper wet-blocking. Note to self-find tutorial for how to make own sock blockers from children's wire clothes hangers (I hope I bookMarked that link way back when).

As if casting on one pair of socks wasn't enough, no, I cast-on another pair last night. This time I grabbed the ultramarine Panda Cotton and tried out a Mystery Sock pattern Mona Schmidt (of Embossed Leaves Sock fame) is doing on her blog this month. the pattern has some interesting design elements, like casting on 80 sts and knitting the ribbing on size 0 needles, then decreasing to 60 sts and going up to sz 2 ndls for the lace cuff. The pattern is interesting and I'm learning new tricks, but this yarn has a ply of shiny bamboo twisted around a core of wool so it splits and snags easily--not good for fiddly lace on tiny needles. I've put this sock in time-out for the moment while I think about it, but I suspect I'll frog this one and go for a different yarn choice.

Friday was a time-out from knitting day as I went to my favorite fine craft show of the year--the Foothills Craft Guild Fine Crafts Marketplace. I've gone almost every year since I've been back home and I've gotten to where I know quite a few folks now. I was there for 3.5 hrs and it wasn't nearly long enough top see everything. Reg, teh great gal that she is, allowed me to reneg on my promise to do a yarn shop hop with her this weekend, so I was able to afford to buy a few treasures to bring home. I skipped the blown glass ornament (Mark Sanders) that I've been collecting and opted for some exquisite lampworked beads that are covered in tiny flowers. Stunning! They had my name written all over them. I also bought another shawl pin from a silversmith out of Crossville. I love the one I bought from her last year and I wanted another one to diversify my collection. For the other purchases I was helping Santa, so mum's the word :-) Once again, I'll try to get some pics up in the next day or so.

Saturday was for recovery---I was *so* exhausted after being on my feet all the time at the Craft Show. so what did I do??? Watch football, of course! It wasn't hard to be glued to the TV seeings as my beloved TN Vols were playing their best so far this season and they whooped up on Arkansas and their Heisman hopeful Darrin McFadden. The defense was so good I was speechless. Where were they the last 2 months???? We've got 2 tough games (Vandy, Kentucky)to finish out the season and earn a trip to the SEC championship, but we can do it. Amazing. Truly amazing. (The Diet Coke, remote control, recliner, and knitting are all ready and waiting :-) Go Vols!!!

Moving on to the next lace project

Well I'm moving on to my next lace project, the Hanami Stole by Melanie Gibbons at Pink Lemon Twist. I loved knitting her Scheherazade Stole as a part of the Mystery Stole 2 KAL last summer so it wasn't a difficult decision to purchase Melanie's newest design when it was announced a couple of weeks ago. I love her very clear charts and detailed directions, making Pink Lemon Twist designs wonderful even for newbie lace knitters.

I took this picture a couple of days ago when I had knit the 1st 32 row repeat of the initial basketweave section. I'm halfway through the 3rd of 7 repeats thus far and am quite happy with how the stole is coming along. I am using 2 strands of 2/28 laceweight silk yarn, color-Melissa, from Richard at ColourMart for this project and 3.25mm (US 3) needles. This is my project using 100% silk yarn and I must say it is so soft and well, silky! It can also be quite slippery so I have to be sure to keep my tension consistent, but that hasn't really proved to be much of an issue.

I cast-on using a pair of Bates Silvalume straight needles, thinking it would be easier than using Addi-turbos since I was also adding beads as called for in the pattern (more about the beads in a minute). But after I had a few rows knit and had successfully shed all the stitch markers, I quickly moved over to my turbos for faster knitting and more space to spread out my work to inspect and admir it :-) Then my goodie box from KnitPicks came in the mail yesterday, so I switched over to the new Options circular needle to give it a test drive. I quickly learned to not push the needles around with my fingertips on the points of the needles as I apparently always did with my Addis. But once I conquered that move, it's been smooth sailing. The cable join is very smooth, the cable is so flexible & forgiving, and the pointy tips are totally awesome! I'm glad I bought the size 2 & 3 circs in 2 lengths. I will definitely be getting the interchangeables when the budget permits.

The one thing I'm not all that thrilled with in the Hanami design is the beaded cast-on. I normally use a knitted cast-on so following that direction was no problem. But stopping to grab a tiny crochet hook and pick up and place a bead on a loop, then slip that loop on the needle every other stitch x 95 stitches, well.... what a PITA! It took me over an hour just to cast-on. That might not have beem so bad but I'm not all that thrilled with the final look of the beaded edge. The size 8-0 Toho clear silverlined beads that I used were the same beads Melanie used in her pink version (Mill Hill beads are manufactured by Toho), but they are barely visible on my pale celery green silk. The effect doesn't seem to be worth the effort, at least in this case. I don't know, maybe if I had use a bead with more contrast, such as a gilt-lined opal frost bead, perhaps I would have been happier. In any case, the only 8-0 beads that will work using Melanie's technique are Tohos or Delicas--all the others don't have a big enough hole. I recommend folks get 6-0 or "E" beads for this project as they will all work no matter who the manufacturer is. Besides, 6-0 beads are much more readily available in craft stores, for those who don't visit specialty bead shops (or have a big bead stash like I do).

Also in the goodie package from KnitPicks were the blocking wires I ordered. One of these days when I get a breather from my research project I'll wash and block the Hidcote Garden Stole, but I doubt it will be anytime in the next few days. I have *so* much work to do and time is terrifyingly short. My dissertation defense is schedule for March 26th so I'll be working like a mad dog to make it in time. But I'll still need time to do a little knitting to keep sane ;-)