Splish Splash

My lace shawls have been taking a bath...in nice warm sudsy water...before being stabbed with long skinny wires and stretched to the limit. And since it's been so hot and dry around here lately, the stoles were bone dry in record time. The end result: 2 shawls (Coral Lace, Hanami) are already finished and a third one is soaking even as I write (MS3-Natural). Oh boy! I had to block the shawls one at a time because I don't have enough blocking wires to do 2 at the same time. I probably would have done them individually anyway since these projects fit on my guest bed and it's so much easier on the creaky old body to use the bead instead of the floor in the family room.


First up is a Coral Lace Shawl that I started last year sometime and cast-off earlier this summer. For some reason I just didn't get around to blocking this shawl which is kind of sad because it turned out beautifully and is the perfect summer accessory. The pattern is the Lavender Linen Lace Shawl out of Nancie Wiseman's "Knitted Shawls, Stoles, & Scarves" book (pp.62-64). I used one 2 oz. ball of Jaggerspun Zephyr 2/18 laceweight yarn (50% wool/50% tussah silk) in the coral colorway and US 4 (3.5mm) Addi-turbo needles. My final dimensions after blocking were 64" x 30" (published dimensions were 61" x 28").


The finished Coral Lace Shawl is very light and airy. You would hardly know you had it on it's so light! I think if I were to knit this again I would go down a needle size as I think the YO holes are a bit too large. The simple leaf motif and bottom-up construction would make this a wonderful 1st shawl pattern for someone wanting to venture into lace knitting. It would be just as wonderful knit from a fingering or DK weight yarn too, for those not quite ready to try their hand with the skinny stuff.



The next shawl up for the swish and stretch treatment was the Hanami Stole. Knitting this stole was challenging because of the fine silk yarn I chose and blocking proved to be equally as challenging. Threading the blocking wires proved to be difficult as I had no eyelet row separating the body of the stole from the edging. Even though I picked up very small bites, the finished stole ended up having a lacy loopy look to the edges. The looseness of the edge was exacerbated by the fact that I did not employ a slip stitch on the 1st stitch of each row. I usually knit the 1st stitch on garter band so as to maximize the stretch of the final shawl and it works well with stretchy fibers. With silk...not so much. Ah, another lesson learned.


So here's the scoop on this shawl: The pattern is the Hanami Stole by Melanie Gibbons of Pink Lemon Twist. It was knit out of 2 strands of 2/28 smooth silk in the Melissa green colorway from ColourMart.com using US 2 (3.0mm) KnitPicks Classic Circular needles. I knew this yarn was much finer than the Alpaca Cloud used by the designer and that I would need to add extra repeats to make sure my stole was long enough. Her final dimensions were 19" x 70". Mine turned out to be 19" x 58"-- a little short despite the extra repeats of the basketweave section plus a bunch of extra rows I added after the transition chart.

After blocking I could see that length wasn't the only "special feature" of my silk Hanami. The final ruffle never did ruffle with this fiber. The center portion of the stole, which is stockinette with very few eyelets, wants to curl at the edges already. Not that I'm surprised-- you should have seen the whole stole curled in from end to end before it's swish and stretch session. It looked more like a stalk of celery than a lace stole! The bottom line: A lovely lace stole pattern, not my favorite mind you, but still a good knit. One thing is for sure-- next time I'll stick to merino or baby alpaca when knitting this stole and save the silk for something else. Live and learn >:-(

P.S. I'll upload more photos to my Flickr site tomorrow

I Love Casting Off

I love casting off... well, I do and I don't. I don't really like the *process* of casting off. You know, making sure your tension isn't too tight...or too loose, and that your stitches are nice and even. All that stuff is a royal PITA. Now, make that soon-to-be-finished project one knit on small needles with double-stranded ultra slippery silk yarn, then decide at the last minute that you need to add beads to the cast-off edge and the PITA factor just rose exponentially. *BUT* move another lace stole from the WIP list to the FO list and, well...I just love casting off!

Yes, it's a WooHoo moment: the Hanami Lace Stole is finished! The timing, of course, was perfect as the KAL group I joined to help motivate me to finish my stole is casting-on tomorrow. Does that mean I was extra motivated??? (yes, absolutely yes!) The cast-on edge of the Hanami Stole is beaded, but the cast-off edge is a ruffle that doesn't include beads. In fact, the only beads in the design were at the cast-on edge. I really didn't think my silverlined clear beads were very noticeable against the celery green of my stole, a huge disappointment as they were such a pain to cast-on with. But after knitting my ruffle, I didn't think my edge was ruffled enough -something I also blame on the yarn. The silk yarn created a stockinette fabric that curled *a lot* more than usual. I was concerned that the stockinette ruffle would also curl and not hang properly so I decided to (gasp) add beads to the cast-off edge to add weight and give some balance to the otherwise asymmetrical design. This was my first 100% smooth laceweight silk project and it's had it's challenges. Only blocking will tell the truth in the end, but I suspect this project would have been better served with a wool or alpaca lace yarn.

I guess I need to have a little "block party" as I have four lace projects in need of a bath and blocking: a small shawl, 2 stoles, and a mohair scarf. Hopefully I'll get started on all that blocking this weekend. There will be pictures forthcoming!

Getting my act together

WHEW! It is so nice to be able to finally feel like I am starting to get my act together once again. The whirlwind of the dissertation and graduation quickly spun into visiting relatives and friends and a neglected garden complicated by the daily challenge of supporting my parents as my Father's health continues to deteriorate and my Mother struggles to cope with it all. I've had neither the time nor the energy to put my own little corner of the house in order so to speak. But at last, the time has finally arrived and I'm digging through the piles of papers and dust and whatnot at last. It's really scary how fast life turns into chaos when one doesn't have, or take the time to keep things in order.

While I filled the big black bags full of trash and shopping bags full of things to donate to charity, I had plenty of time to rethink my knitting projects and priorities. Like my overloaded desk, I think my knitting plate is a bit overloaded too. How easy it is to get caught up in the spirit of the sticks and yarn and commit to this KAL and cast-on that project! Being a process person, I love starting things but don't always finish what I started. Yet with my knitting I almost always *want* to wear or use the finished item, so I am more motivated to persist through to completion. So with one KAL just started (SOS'07) and another about to get underway (MS3), I had to stop and think about what I'm doing. I made some choices and hope that I will be able to work through them with some efficiency.

My first serious decision was about my Bugs Shawl that has been sitting in limbo while I agonized over what to do. I love the yarn, but I hate how the lace designs turned out. After a nice sit 'n knit session with Sandy at the Yarn Haven yesterday afternoon I came to the conclusion that to frog and reuse the beautiful yarn is better than trying to force myself to complete something I dislike. I will take the shawl into the Yarn Haven and us the swift and helping hands there to help me get the task done without having to do the unthinkable and cut the yarn.

So the Bugs is bugging out. Next up was the Panda Cotton socks. While I was at the Yarn Haven yesterday I looked at all the cotton yarns with sock-making potential and decided that I still like the Panda. I found several patterns that I felt were a better match for the yarn, but the lace was too complex for a multicolor yarn. I especially fell in love with Meida's Socks from the new IK Favorite Socks book (another KAL I joined). If I did this design I could meet the needs of 2 KALs with one project--COOL! So I purchased 2 balls of Panda Cotton in a one of my favorite colors, periwinkle, an I cast-on last night. As of this moment I'm on my 4th repeat and things look great! My knitty pal Ewe-Nice says they are a perfect fit!

I'm also trying to finish a couple of WIPs so I can wear them and move on to other things. I finally finished the cuff on the 2nd Jaywalker sock and am about to knit the heel flap. I am *so* ready to be done with Jaywalking! There are "funny little places" all over the place, but none of them are especially visible once you put them on, so I'm not tinking to fix them all. In fact, I chose to leave some as a sentimental reminder of when they were knit--like while waiting for my graduation rehearsal to begin or keeping company with my Dad at the hospital. Sometimes mistakes have meaning that would be a shame to repair.

I'm making faster progress on the Hanami Stole now that I'm into the eyelet section. It's a pretty stole and I will enjoy it, but I suspect the softness of the silk will always leave it with curled edges. Perhaps adding beads will help weight things, I don't know. I have my doubts about the silk holding a good blocking too, but I won't know for sure until I'm finished. I think I will stick to garter stitch lace for fine silk like this in the future. I'm planning on finishing Hanami before casting on the MS3. The will give me time to see what the design will be and make decisions about yarn and if I want to use beads, etc. or, for that matter, if I even want to knit it right now.

So that's the way things are here at beadntat. The place is getting clean, the knitting is moving along, and I looking for a *real* job for the first time in years. Life is good--very good.

Slippery Stuff!

So I was knitting away on the Hanami Stole last night and I was feeling pretty proud of myself for being on the last repeat of the basketweave pattern (I did 8 repeats instead of 7 for added length). You know that feeling...like you finally arrived and can move on? Well, I was almost at the station when I realized I had goofed up on the row I was knitting. No big deal I thought, as I had tinked back on *many* rows in this design. Let's face it, this one is not for beginners as it requires intense concentration and counting like a crazy woman to keep on pattern. There's no room for error either because one mistake set's you up for disaster on subsequent rows.

So I knitting this thing in a deliciously smooth, 100% silk--double stranded--on super slick KnitPicks needles, right? And I'm shoving the stitches along the needle as I'm carefully tinking about 25 stitches when whoops! My hand slipped and about 10 stitches slid right off the end and promptly started to run. YIKES! It's going on 11 PM, so I'm a little tired, which didn't help either. I carefully lay the knitting on a pillow and grab for my little box with the stitch markers and safety pins. I catch up as many loose loops as I can find before jumping out of bed to find some dpns for the rescue job. Thinking I'm using 3.25mm needles, I grab a set of clover bamboo dpns in the same size, but the dull points and "fat" needles don't seem to want to pick up the silk. That's when I realized I was using smaller needles :-( So I ditch the clovers, and grab some smaller Crystal Palace dpns with the nice pointy tips and smoother surface and start to work.

Those little devils ran like crazy and I ended up tinking back about 6 rows, one stitch at a time because I had no lifeline and no way to put one in after the fact. (I still hate lifelines and won't put one in this project). It took me at least 1 1/2 hrs. to rescue my stole and get her back tot he point where I had all the requisite stitches back on the needles without holes or mistakes. I just finished knitting the last row of the 8th repeat of chart 1. I had hoped to have the transition section (chart 2) finished by now too, but I guess accidents do have a way of interfering with progress.

At least I only have a few rows of basketweave lace left to knit. Funny thing though, this afternoon I was watching the new PBS series, From the Top, on child prodigy musicians playing at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Today they were featuring a youth orchestra playing Beethoven and the ambience stage lighting revealed a lattice pattern as a backdrop to the orchestra--and it looked exactly like the basketweave pattern in the Hanami Stole! I did a triple take to make sure I was just loosing my mind and starting to see strange images. i guess that's what I get for the nightmare I experienced last night >:-{

Hanami Update

In light of my frustration with the Bugs Shawl, I decided resume work on the Hanami Stole design by Melanie at Pink Lemon Twist. Melanie designs and leads the Mystery Stole KALs and MS3 is slated to get underway in about 2 weeks. I took this as motivation to finished the Hanami so I can start the MS3 without feeling guilty about the excessive number of WIP/UFOs in my stash.

I've been back at it for maybe 3 days now and have completed the required 7 repeats of the 1st (basketweave pattern) chart. I am using 2 strands of ColourMart 100% silk in the Melissa (a celery green) colorway and 3.25mm (US 3) KnitPicks circular needles. The original design was knit in a slightly fatter lace yarn (KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud) with 3.5mm (US 4) needles. Guess what that means? You guessed it, My gauge is smaller and so is my stole. Melanie's blocked dimensions were 19x70". With my stole technically at the halfway point, I'm at 17x26". This is not so good because the finished stole needs to be nice and *long* for proper wrapping. I knew I had to make it longer for me, but them my Mom saw it for the first time and dropped an atom bomb-sized hint about hoe the green was more her color than mine and how nice it would feel wrapped around her neck! Let's see, what would the Aussie Guy on Animal Planet say... CRIKEY! (I mean no disrespect to the deceased--I just thought it was an unusual word...one his daughter Bindi repeats often on her new tv show...but I digress).



Okay, so it has to be longer and that means I have to endure knitting at least one more 32 row repeat of the basketweave pattern. Did I say how sick I am of knitting the basketweave pattern? I should be done with it and the transition section by the time the weekend is over, so then I can get to the real business of knitting holes. My fibro has been pretty grumpy as of late, so I'm trying to not overdo things, like doing too much digging in the garden, etc. Yeah, right, so I started digging my way through the piles of stuff in my closet instead! At least the shoes are back in their boxes and up on the shelf where they belong and I can walk into the closet without tripping for a change ;o) Next up: some more dejunking! It's good for the soul and creates more room for the yarn stash (did I say yarn stash????)



edit: I used US 2 (3.0mm) KnitPicks Circular needles for the Hanami Stole, not 3.25mm as originally stated. OOPS!

S+F/K=T

For those of you not well-versed in knitting statistics, let me interpret the data for you (wink, wink): When you add Stress and Fatigue and then divide your limited attention by knitting, the end result is tinking. Tink, tink, tink! I was knitting row 21 and was more than halfway across the row when my stitches just weren't lining up the way I thought they were supposed to. I tinked and reknit the same 20-25 sts several times but still just couldn't seem to see where the problem was. But there was one thing I was certain of and that was that something wasn't right.

Let's face it, when knitting a very distinct lace pattern such as the basketweave section of the Hanami Stole, if you make a mistake it will be screamingly obvious down the road. So I applied the lesson I learned well as a neonatal nurse--when in doubt, yank it out. Of course in nursing the rule applied to IV's and endotracheal tubes which, when improperly placed or dislodged, can result in harm to the patient--something no nurse would ever want to inflict on a tiny newborn. It's a good rule and I applied it to my knitting as I painstakingly tinked back 2.5 rows and reknit them. I didn't really find the error in my previous knitting, but I know it's right this time and that's what matters most. I'm now 86 rows into the stole. My new KnitPicks Options circular needle was tremendously handy in picking out all those central double decreases--a nightmare to tink. I must admit those sharp tips are mighty handy and are allowing me to knit faster than I could with my rounder tipped Addi-turbos. Yup, I'm sold on these babies!

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 ;-)