WIP: Nameless Cowl

After a few false starts, I finally cast on a design idea that has been kicking around in my head for a while. I just think the right yarn had to come into my life for it to happen. 

It's slow going. The right yarn just happened to come to me in the form of Reliquary II, a lace weight yarn by A Verb for Keeping Warm. It's 80% superfine merino and 20% silk and is just the perfect thing to knit this light, floaty, lace cowl. The color is out of my normal range but the Cochineal is the best kind of blush pink and I love the pairing of the color with the large, graphic lace panels. I'm excited to finish this project but I'm enjoying the knitting process so I'm taking my time with it.

Aphrodite (Shawl #7)

Last weekend I finished up my Aphrodite shawl. This thing was totally time consuming and I knew that if I didn't focus and finish then it would be a long-hibernating WIP. I'm totally pleased with the result. My yarn was definitely on the cobweb side which was a bit of a pain but the blend was wonderful and the final result is quite pretty.

Pattern: Aphrodite by Sivia Harding
Yarn: Colorful Yarns Heavenly Lace in Turquoise
Needle: US #3 Addi Lace & size 12 crochet hook
Beads: size 8/0 silver lined transparent dark aquamarine, approx. 13 grams
Mods: My yarn was tiny enough that I followed the instructions for the large size and got a medium-ish size shawl with about 540 yards (the skein I bought was 600 yards).

Startitis Rules

The changing weather seems to be affecting my ability to focus on large projects. Small projects are leaping on and off my needles with astonishing speed. This Brandywine Shawl is growing quickly - I've already got 12 repeats of 15 completed. I'll attribute that to the amount of garter stitch in the pattern rather than my staying up all hours to work on it. This yarn is from Deep Stash (bottom of the cedar chest) and was purchased at my first Madrona several years ago. Tactile does beautiful natural dye jobs and I hope the store gets back in production. I've also got socks, bloomers for Little One, and a sweater for Little One on the needles at the moment and I'm thinking about adding something else today. Part of the casting on craziness comes from diving into my stash, seeing what I have, and wanting to knit it RIGHT NOW. If only I had an extra set of arms...

Return of the Damn Stole

Remember way back in February when I ran out of yarn for the Print O' the Wave Stole? 15 repeats short? I finally got another skein from the lovely folks at Brooklyn General in New York. This thing is back in progress after a 3 month hiatus and I can't say I'm hating it; time out proved to be beneficial for both of us. The new skein has quite a bit more white in it but I'll have to wait for daylight to see how noticeable the shift in color turns out to be. I would still like to see the Ravelry pattern page for this edited to reflect the correct yardage or at least a range of yardages since there are two versions available. Misti Alpaca Handpaints have 874 yards so theoretically I should have had 74-ish yards left over. Not. I'm excited to finish this and see it all blocked out. Squee!

Slacker!

Vacation must have agreed with me a little too much. I've been knitting up a storm, walking with the Little One, and even doing a wee bit of housework as well. I came back from Stitches with 2 sweaters, 4 shawls, and a hat's worth of yarn. Eek! The immediate goal is to knit this new stash up before it has time to languish. But wait, there's more!

I've had a skein of Malabrigo Chunky in the Polar Morn colorway in queue for a while and it suddenly struck me that I needed to knit a hat. But not any hat. A slouchy beret! Huh? I am not a hat person but somehow I think this one works and it has the added bonus of knitting up very quickly. Like, 4 hours quickly. Pattern: Icing Swirl Hat by Ysolda Teague. I knit the large size on size 10 needles and had 4 or 5 yards left of the Malabrigo Chunky.

A fellow Purlygirl is having her first baby and it's a boy so I figured I'd knit up a little something something for the little guy. I love love love the book Vintage Baby Knits so I chose to knit the Rufus Textured Cardigan out of Cashsoft DK. This is a fun pattern but I did a lot of modifications. The pattern is written in pieces with the button band partially knit separately and then seaming the whole thing together. I cast on to work all the pieces at once from the bottom, using #4 dpns to knit the button band with the piece but at the smaller required gauge. I joined the arms in the round and knit a la EZ method. Once the button band had eaten up all the stitches for the fronts and sleeve caps I knit the edging sideways joining the held stitches for the back of the neck with the button band. I think I have better notes for this on my Ravelry page. Everyone at knitting seemed to really like this sweater, especially the little shawl collar.

Last, but not least, I finished knitting up Herbivore. This was the second part of my Ravelympics challenge that I did not finish by closing ceremonies. I really like the architectural quality of this piece. The columns of twisted stitches are simple and clean and draw the eye upward and the angular shape is very interesting. It's a nice change from the lacy little shawls I've been knitting recently and the color is gorgeous! I used Malabrigo Sock in Persia. This yarn just loves to be knit on size 6 needles. It's silky and drapey and although it is a sock yarn I think it leads an exciting double-life as lace yarn.

The Short & Short of It

I ran out of yarn on the damn shawl. 15 edging repeats short out of 84! BLAR! More yarn has been ordered but the damn shawl is on a serious time out while I knit on other things. Damn shawl.

The Edging Effect

I've been busy creating a knitting callus on my right pointer finger and trying not to look at exactly how much of the edging I have left to knit versus the amount of yarn I have in my ball. I'm cutting it close. So close, in fact, that I've been knitting faster and faster trying to make my yarn not run out before I'm done. This is shawl number 2 for my 10 of the year and I'm uber-excited about how it's turning out. The pattern is Print O' the Wave by Eunny Jang and I'm knitting it in Misti Alpaca Lace. I tried casting on for this in my final trimester of pregnancy and my mind was not prepared for chart reading of any sort. The pattern is tedious but exceedingly beautiful and rewarding. Both halves of the center portion are knit separately, grafted together, and then stitches are picked up around the whole thing and an inner border is knit. Break the yarn, cast on for a sideways knit edging, and continue around until you meet up with your provisional cast on and then graft the live stitches together. The way the pattern repeats in the center portion does not allow for marker placement so you have to be really careful to mark where you leave off. But the edging!!! It's getting close to becoming the seventh circle of Hell. In total you knit 84 repeats of the edging chart and that is a whole lot of knitting back and forth on 20-ish stitches. I'm keeping my head down and my fingers flying until I'm done. If I stop now it just won't get done. Eek.

Caricia

My mini Caricia worked up beautifully and quickly and I have quite a bit of yarn left over. Blocking pictures never quite do it for me but they do show the pattern wonderfully. I really like that the upper border edging is knit as you go so there isn't any funky picking up or anything when you think you are finished. When you're done, you're done. Another fantastic thing about this is that the yarn did not rub off on my hands as I worked with it. I think that may be a first for me and my love of uber dark blues and it's a really really good thing. This is a mini shawl - just large enough to wrap around my neck and loop bandana-style to wear under my coat. I like this size, it gives all of the satisfaction of knitting lace triangles without the wearability issues of a larger shawl. If I use my knitting time to knit lace then I really want it to be wearable and not languish in the closet waiting for a "nice" enough reason to wear it. Plus it's a good size to use up all of that sock yarn stash that seems to be multiplying on its own. Isn't there some type of math equation that shows a correlation between the breeding rate of rabbits and the rate that sock stash seems to grow? If not, there should be, because even when I don't buy sock yarn for a while I go to my stash and I swear there's more of it. Really.

Ocher Damson

I knit some pretty over the weekend. I actually had two whole days off in a row! Unbelievable. We took the Little One to the zoo, I made a crazy amount of cornmeal pancakes both sweet and savory, and I cleaned the house. Yep. As of this morning all laundry was washed and put away, the bed was made, and the floor was swept and vacuumed. The rest of the place is starting to finally recover from our first 6+ months of parenthood. I like this upward swing in cleanliness it makes me less crazy. So, yeah, knitting. Ysolda released her first pattern in Whimsical Little Knits 2 which I cast on for immediately. Not to the detriment of other projects, mind you, I was between sweaters at the time and only had a pair of socks on the needles. I dug a skein of Malabrigo sock yarn in Ochre out of deep stash (really deep, it wasn't even entered in Ravelry!) and knit it up over the course of my weekend, binding off at about 8 last night. Yellow is not really my color but I'm loving this mustardy goodness. It makes me want to dip into a big jar of fancy french mustard - the kind that sears your nostrils a little bit. Specs: Damson by Ysolda in Malabrigo Sock Yarn in the Ocher colorway on size 6 addi turbo lace needles. 4 days!

Catch Up

I've been doing stuff, really I have. This last weekend I made an AWESOME recipe from one of my first vegetarian cookbooks. A strawberry tart! Yum! The Man declared that it "tastes like what cheesecake should taste like, but doesn't." Super yummy and super easy. I'm a huge fan of almond & flour crusts, they're kind of like shortbread. I baked the crust one evening and did the filling and strawberries the next morning and then left it to chill. I even glazed the thing with apricot glaze so it's tangy and sweet and rich from the cream cheese layer. Ahh...everything I want in a summer dessert.


I've also been knitting a little lace. Well, not so little. It's the Icicle Dream Stole from the 2008 Winter Twist Collective. So far, so good. I'm on the third chart of four on the first half of the stole. (You knit the two halves separately and then graft them together.) The yarn is Dream in Color Smooshy in the color Midnight Derby. We got a few very darkish skeins in at the shop and I just had to knit something with the last couple. The pattern calls for a laceweight but I'm not such a fan, hence a sock-yarn stole. I'm excited to see the end product, it's my largest lace project so far.


And finally...
This is what I'm doing right now. Eating some watermelon and knitting the body of my sweater, again. That small disaster from the other day? Yeah, this is it. After ripping out the ribbing I decided to try it on again to see how much longer I wanted to knit it. I decided it was a bit too snug. :: sigh::
So I cast on and just started knitting the dang thing over, directly from the frogged sweater. The man came in while I started this and looked really confused. "Why are you knitting that sweater into the same sweater?" I'm pretty sure daggers flew. "For fun." A couple days later and I've got a little over 13 inches reknit and should still be able to finish up by the end of the month. Probably to the detriment of my mom's birthday gift (her birthday was last Saturday). Sorry, mom!