The Fountain Pen Shawl, Finished

Fountain Aster
Pattern: Fountain Pen Shawl, by Susan Lawrence, Interweave Knits Spring 2009
Yarn: Handspun 80% merino, 20% silk (worsted spun, 2-ply)
Needles: 4.5mm Addi Turbo Lace (120cm length)
Cast On: June 2009
Bound Off: February 20, 2010
Finished length at centre: preblocked - 34.5" / blocked - 50"
Modifications:
Ths pattern calls for 11 repeats in total. I didn't have enough yarn for 11 repeats, so I ended up with 9 plus the border.


I love the pretty pointies.

Blocking wires make this all so much easier. My friend and my mum and I made a set a few years ago for, practically, tuppence. Just a few stainless welding wires and a poster tube. How many hours has this saved us? Innumerable.

Colour not quite true, in any of these pictures. Darker than the sunlit shots, and lighter than the blocking shot.


Getting all arty with my crocii.



I usually do this thing with the trees and the grass and the points of lace, and I don't see any reason to stop now. In the absence of a good camera and a keen-eyed photographer, we have to settle for nature's spartan glories.

Drapey goodness.

See? The grass, the tree, the shadow of winter sunlight....now you're all meant to sigh "how beautiful! How understated!".


From the wheel it was born, and to the wheel it has returned.*

And that, my friends, is the story of how my first spinning became finished knitting.

I'm so proud of this project, because it is a study in gruelling hard work and perseverance. I had bought the roving before I even had a wheel or knew how to spin, on the advice of a sheep-show vendor who, when I asked her whether it would be too much for a beginner to handle, said "I'd go for it. I'm a both-feet-in kind of person."

So am I, I thought, and I went for it too. At times I was so frustrated I wanted to burn the lot, but I set my teeth and grimly carried on, drafting all wrong, overtwisting, underplying, stripping the roving down to a frayed and frazzled thing....and ended up with 1010 meters of ropy yarn experiment. But it was the weight I was shooting for, and it was an incredibly valuable learning experience.

As dubious as the finished yarn was, I picked a pattern, cast on, and worked on that sucker til it was done. My hands hurt (did I mention "ropy"? I think so.) and I had to rip it out twice, but it is finished and blocked and ready to wear.

And I have a little list going, of mistakes I'll not make again.

Thanks for your patience on the knitting posts. And, hey! This is the first one in..............oh my gosh. I just checked. LONG TIME.

Anyway, Carry On! I shall be back soon, with more of something-or-other.

----------------------------

* Shit. Remind me not to drape my lace over my spinning wheel in the name of artistic photography. It got caught on a hook. ("The bolt of Tash falls from above!")

BTW

A half hour ago I finished casting off my lace shawl and wove in the ends. I filled a bowl with lukewarm water and set the shawl to soak, got out the blocking wires, and sat down to write a triumphant post along the lines of "This is finally done! Can you believe it? I bet you thought you were going to have to wait forever to see this FO!"

Then I realised something.

I never did get around to telling you that I had begun the Fountain Pen Shawl from IK Spring 2009.

Or that I was using my purple laceweight handspun yarn...

or that I was half way done...

or that I took a chance on 11 repeats, and ran out of yarn...

that I ripped it back to 10 repeats, began the border, and ran out of yarn...

that I ripped it back to 9 repeats, began the border, and did NOT run out of yarn...

that I was almost done, that I was enjoying the border pattern, and that I'd likely finish by the weekend.

Oopsie.

But now you know, right? And the shawl will be dry by tomorrow afternoon, and if it's sunny you will see pictures. So, really, hardly any waiting at all! Yay!

Circle Mutable

Cap Shawl
From Victoria Lace Today
by Jane Sowerby
The Ravelry entry for this shawl is here.

Cast On: January 3, 2008
Bound Off: August 30, 2008
Finished Size: 99"
Weight and Yardage: 178 grams, 1958 yards ETA: A Raveller has calculated there are 89,214 stitches in the Cap Shawl. That's a lot......a lot of stitches.
Tension: ?
Needle: 4.5mm bamboo circular
Yarn: 3.2 balls Fiddlesticks Zephyr 50% silk, 50% merino, colour Ruby, 630 yds/2 oz (~56 g)
Yarn Source: Village Yarns, Cumberland, BC
Yarn Cost: $64
Modifications:
The pattern does not use directional decreases: that is, all the decreases are k2tog, even when the lace is sloping left. I used the left-leaning SSK decrease when called for as I felt it created a less choppy, more elegant line in the left branches of the crest o' the wave section.

Notes:
A word on blocking circular lace. What you want to do is this: take a huge sheet, folded 4 times and centre marked, and pin it flat to a carpet. Pin a measuring tape at the centre, or you could use string, and hold a fabric marker at approximately the radius measurement of your desired finished size. Mark a perfect circle. Block to the circle, or to a consistent distance away from it. Circle perfection, and no irritating measuring and repinning.

Also, use blocking wires.

At first I wasn't sure how I felt about this shawl. I wish it were a bit more complicated, both because I was bored while knitting it, and because I like intricate lace. However, the sheer size of this mammoth shawl makes it impressive.




As to wearing it, as Annalea asked yesterday, I think it will do well with the top third folded down. It will still overlap a lot in front, but I think it'll be okay. The real problem will be storing it. I don't necessarily want it folded up somewhere between layers of tissue, but because it's a circle there's no good way to display it, unless I want to run a bunch of pins into my wall. Anyway my walls are not big enough to accommodate it - I only have an 8 foot ceiling. I guess I could buy a 100" curtain rod and hang it, in half, from that...we'll see.




Practical considerations notwithstanding, I am in love, sweet sweet love, with this shawl. You can tell by the fact that when I went to put all the photos from the memory card onto the laptop, Photoshop told me I had taken 83 pictures of my shawl. News to me.



Here are some of them, with grateful thanks to the beautiful, angelic Jen for being a good sport and modelling for me. Do click on the pictures, as they look much better when bigger.



It was quite a windy day here, and the beach seemed perfect, but it did prove a little tricky to get photos that were even moderately well focussed.





I like the motion shots though.





After a half-hour at the beach, I went home and played around in the shrubbery, lying on the grass and crouching awkwardly trying not to get the neighbour's house in the shots. I was hoping someone would notice me and come over and exclaim over the shawl, but no one did.



Yes, for you I hung my brand-new lace on two apple trees and a rhododendron...




...and let it drag on grass.




Herb garden fence, ornamented.





Thanks for all your wonderful comments yesterday. I just meant that post to be a blocking update, so I hope you can summon up the will to comment again today, on the very same piece of knitting...I like comments.

Spitting Distance

Don't talk to me please. (Commenting doesn't count.)

Of COURSE I am.

Someone asked me the other day, "Are you still knitting?"

So it's obviously time to do a fibrey post...the last time I talked about knitting was on June 18. The thing is, as Kristine noted not long ago, people are interesting because they grow and change, and converse about more than one subject.

But here's some knitting for Annalea, who bemoaned the lack of knitterly content on the blogs lately.

My cousin had a little girl a while ago, and I knit her a sweater. But I knit the three month size and finished it when she was nine months old.

So I gave that to another, newer baby, and cast on another sweater. This time I knit the 1-2 year size.

And now she is two years old. And here is the sweater:

But it's a drop-sleeve, so I think I can have it finished by the weekend, if I try really hard. It shouldn't take me too long to knit two little drop sleeves - they are pretty short. Then next week I can do seaming and button bands and buttons and weaving in........

I have a feeling it's not going to fit her for long, if at all. Maybe I should start something else.

I like this pattern - it's a Sirdar, from book whose cover has ripped off so I can't tell you the number. This is the fourth sweater I have made from it - two of the others are here and here. The only thing I don't like about the patterns is that they are all written out. No chart in sight. It makes it very hard to keep my place, and very hard to spot a mistake in the pattern. (This sweater had two so far.)

The yarn is also Sirdar - Snuggly DK. I still like it even though it's all synthetic. It's incredibly soft, not too pilly, and washes well. It took me a bit of practice to get the tension right on the stranded bits though - it was quite tricky. By the time I knit this piece it was coming along, though, so it doesn't look too bockety.

I am working on getting my WIPs out of the way so I can knit the Rheingold Wrap. I have been resisting the temptation of swatching this project, but last night I fell and now this is on the needles:

The swatch is half-done - sorry about the unsatisfactory picture. (My tension is apparently unsatisfactory too - I can see white bits through that knitting. I'll have to go down a needle size.)

Can I just say I HATE this method of swatching fair isle? You are supposed to cut the yarn at the end of every row, knitting all the chart rows from right to left. The problem is, I'm such a cheapskate and a yarn-hoarder that I kept trying to find a way around Alice's directions. I tried knitting it in the round (messed with the tension), tried carrying long loose strands across the back so I could rip it out later (kept entangling my fingers) and tried snipping the ends really short (unravelled the knitted edge). In the end, bitterly defeated, I just did it the way she wanted me to. But I hate the trailey ends of yarn and I hate the waste...I have this horrible feeling I'm going to run out of yarn and have to order more, which will of course be a different dye lot. I did order extra yarn (I wanted an additional 30 centimeters) but I've grown pessimistic about my ability to eke out yardage.

Speaking of which, I have run out of yarn on the lace shawl. I am about 45% done the border, and have three inches of yarn left....just enough to spit splice the new ball in. It has arrived at the yarn store, and I just have to drive 40 minutes to get it.

I've read elsewhere that the yardage guidelines in Victorian Lace Today are unreliable, but I didn't know HOW unreliable until I ran out of Zephyr on this project. The book calls for 1700 yards and I bought 1890 yards. I should not have run out.

In other news, the visit with Ox and Ames is going so well. We are having an absolute blast. We are getting a lot of swimming, canoeing, and eating done...luckily the first two are so far balancing out the third. Until they leave for their new home at the end of July, posting here will continue to be spotty and unreliable. Hopefully there are still some readers when I get back...

In Which I Show Fondness for My Readers.

I've been meaning to post a progress picture of the Cap Shawl for ages, but the whole process made me tired just thinking about it. You slip all the stitches on as many needles as necessary, being really, really careful not to drop any of them, and you pin the whole works out, take a picture, and slip the stitches all back on to your needle. It takes ages.

And you see, my darlings, how much I love you - I did it.

I used five long circulars for this, and didn't get the entire thing done, which is why you only see a photo of about 45% of the outside edge. The rest is all bunched up on one needle at the bottom of the frame.

I am on row 107 of about 170, which is deceptive because the rows get longer and longer as you go. Then there is the knitted-on border, which will take tons of yarn and FOREVER to do. A more accurate idea of my progress would be to say, I have used up almost one of the three required balls of yarn.

Pretty, though, isn't it?

And tomorrow, precious poppets, is Puppy Pick-up Day. Pictures forthcoming!

"Seriously. NOT!! NOW!!!"

Welcome to the End of the World. We hope you've enjoyed your stay.

It probably doesn't look bad to you, but I'll have you know this is my third attempt to fix this mistake. If I can't do it soon, it'll be frog time - and tinking four 370-stitch rounds is a prospect that daunts even me.

Almost Forgot a Title.

Today is one of those coastal days that overwhelm newcomers and visitors by their sheer pervasive soakedness. But hey - it grows the trees that everyone admires so much. (Click to embiggen.)

Well, my respite from knitting lasted all of about 2 hours. Here is the Log Cabin Blanket, in progress:

And here are the first 18 rounds of the new lace project:

which will in time become this:

Gift certificate in hand, I went to Village Yarns' (no website) January sale the other day. I had a bit of trouble spending the money, actually - the vastness of my stash has been a weight on my chest lately, interfering with my enjoyment of it. One thing I hardly have any of, though, is laceweight. So I picked up three skeins of Zephyr Wool-Silk in Ruby, for the Cap Shawl, and also bought 15 skeins of Berroco Glace at 70% off. Yes, Please!

The Glace (the orange rayon in the picture below) will become a Clapotis - at last - for a friend. Then there is the celadon -....lime?.....celery?....whatever, it's green - Handmaiden Sea Silk, which is gorgeous, and which I bought for my mother at 40% off. She's trying to decide what to knit with it, and left me one of the two skeins to wind into a ball for her. Lastly, at bottom left, are the two balls of Naturally "Me" which is a 50% cashmere, 50% merino blend. I bought this at half price to make myself Odessa.

I've been spending some time on Ravelry lately. It hasn't cut into the knitting time, much, but I find the queue concept very motivating. It's not that I didn't have a list of things to knit BEFORE Ravelry, it's just that having them all in a line, with thumbnails clearly visible and yarn details noted beside the photo, keeps me enthused about casting on. I've already started three of the things in my queue, and have plans for at least two more.

What I'm hoping, then, is to revive my Stash Reduction Plan of last year. I haven't fallen off the wagon, per se, but I have not done as much actual knitting as I thought I would have. I haven't bought much yarn, either, but there is still Much to be Done.

Thank you for your encouraging comments on my very cheerful and zingy New Year's Day post. I think you all were right: it's bound to be better. Besides, in the end, really, there's nothing to do but go on - one has no choice but to hope for the best. I appreciate your words.

I also appreciate these.

They arrived in my mailbox today, and should go a long way toward cheering me up....which, if you are at all familiar with the plots, will probably strike you as ironic. Thank you so much, Joe and Dave, for your generosity.