And they are finished. Same old generic white bread pattern that I always make. I knit these on 2.00 mm double points, starting with 72 stitches. These are my current favorite knitting needles. The brand is Lykke, and I may have bought a bunch of the straight single point needles as well.
The yarn is West Yorkshire Spinners sock yarn, color name Brightside. I love this yarn, it is nicely spun, comes in lots of fun colors, and is also nicely priced. I got mine here, this is a great shop with many tempting yarns, good service and fast shipping.
Blogiversary! Sixteen years ago I hit “publish” on my first post. I’ve slacked off from time to time in keeping up here, but I’m still finding it a rewarding way to connect with the many friends I’ve made over those years.
I almost missed it, I’ve been just a little preoccupied with work, and when I’m home, I have tended to just go brain-dead in general. I’m working three days a week in clinic doing primary care internal medicine, so don’t have the exposure that I would if I were working in the hospital, but it is still very stressful right now. It doesn’t help that I’m in that “over-60” group, and so is John. I am very fortunate in that I work for Kaiser Permanente—we’ve had a somewhat heroic response to the pandemic in the past few weeks, in terms of getting ready for what’s undoubtedly coming our way. I think we are miles ahead of other medical groups elsewhere, and certainly anyone that is in private practice.
As someone who likes things that are nice and orderly, and doesn’t enjoy big changes, this has been a challenge, but I’m doing OK. John and I certainly are in a privileged position in that my job is pretty secure, we’re both healthy despite the age thing, and we have enough “stuff” of every variety to outlast any epidemic. I certainly have enough yarn around here to last through an apocalypse.
Since this is in fact a knitting blog, here is some knitting.
I’d like to try to finish those this week. Since I can’t leave the house until Monday, that is a possibility, even for a slow knitter like me.
I think I actually have managed to match the stripes on these.
I still haven’t fixed all of the older photos from the blog after I deleted everything earlier this month. It’s sort of tedious going back into individual posts, finding the photos (if I still have them), and uploading. Right now I’d much rather be doing something less annoying.
Take care of yourselves, wash your hands, and stay home unless you have to go out. There, I’ve covered both the “knitting” and the “doctor” part of the blog!
I think I posted about this one, but I think it got trash-canned in the Great Blog Deletion of 2020. I have a bunch of leftovers from socks I’ve made, along with a bunch of sock yarn mini skeins that I bought a long time ago thinking I was going to make one of those ridiculous “hexipuff” blankets.
This is much easier.
Mitered squares! They are somewhat insanely addictive to knit. And it’s not like I don’t have sock yarn around here. And time to knit, at least while I’m not at work.
And yes, I am weaving in the ends every few squares so I don’t have a huge mess to deal with.
In troubled times, it is comforting to have an easy, yet satisfying project to knit. The only decision to make is which color I’ll pick up next.
Since I finished the Winter Solstice shawl, I needed some lace in my hands. I am knitting a secret project that eventually will have some lace, but don’t really want to post about it until it is done and gifted. It is currently in the witness protection program. And currently it is just endless garter stitch, so not particularly interesting anyway.
I have three other lace shawls in various stages of progress. I found the oldest one and pulled it out to work on.
That is the Cathedral Stole, pattern by Birgit Freyer. I’ve renamed it Ruby Slippers, since it is a glowing ruby red.
According to Ravelry, I started this almost exactly four years ago. I remember when I bought the yarn. This is a handspun mohair lace yarn spun by women in Tajikistan.
This is lovely yarn, and the pattern is delightful. The designer has about a million lace shawl and stole patterns available, this likely won’t be my last one.
Since it is hard to imagine what the finished lace will look like, here is a photo from the designer’s pattern page.
And just like that, it is Sunday, and the last day of the festival. The theme this year was Bluegrass Beyond Borders, and we heard some wonderful bands from Brazil, Argentina, Ireland, Sweden, and Italy, among others. My vote for best of the festival goes to the band from Brazil, Trio Brasileiro. Look them up on your favorite music source, or try to hear them live. They do educational workshops in Port Townsend, so they do play regionally from time to time.
And I finished a sock. Here is the first of the pair.
And the second sock ready for the day’s festivities.
I might have accidentally managed to start the second sock at exactly the same place in the stripe sequence.
Yarn: Fyberspates Gleem Lace, 2 skeins, 1748 yards total. I used all but 14 grams. This was a gift several years ago from Jennifer AKA Major Knitter.
Needles: 2.75 mm
Started/Finished: 3/16/17-2/16/20
For: Me
Modifications: None
What I Learned: Patience. This is a huge shawl. None of it is difficult in the sense of technically challenging. There are several rows that have cables, but once I got it out of my head that cables in laceweight yarn aren’t any different than cables in heavy yarn, it was all good. I learned to fix some mistakes without tinking back multiple rows.
Pattern/Yarn rating: ***** for the pattern. It was formatted nicely, and no errors. **** for the yarn. It is gorgeous, but there is just enough variation in the color from one skein to the next to annoy me a tiny bit. In the finished shawl it almost looks a bit like a gradient. In over 1700 yards of yarn, there wasn’t a single knot or whacky bit that had to be spliced out.
I predict that I will wear this one a lot. I love the color, and I really like that it is such a generously sized shawl.
And now I get to pick one of the other four lace shawls I have in progress to focus on! I already have one chosen, since it will be a gift that has a “needs to be done” date.
I finally finished the Winter Solstice shawl today. It’s still drying on the blocking mats, but I couldn’t wait to show photos.
Well, actually, I did have to wait. I wasn’t able to log into the dashboard for my blog to get going with a post. It took me much of the afternoon, but I finally was able to fix the damned thing, which involved going into the actual wordpress file manager and renaming and deleting some things. NOT what I really planned to do with my afternoon.
Anyway.
This is pre-blocking. It got a good soak in the sink, and then blocked.
And I needn’t have worried about running out of yarn. 14 grams left.
We had a little excitement with Arlo on Thanksgiving. We had a houseful of people, some that stayed overnight, and with one big friendly extra dog. Arlo disappeared, which isn’t unusual, but I couldn’t find him the next day still. I was beginning to think he had escaped and gotten outside, but he eventually came sauntering out of some hiding place.
He is starting to be a little more cuddly than when we got him earlier this year. He is now sleeping on our bed, and today for the first time he jumped up on my lap while I was knitting.
Speaking of knitting, that missing yarn finally showed up a couple days later, delivered to one of our neighbors. Fortunately Larry doesn’t knit, so he was happy to turn it over to me.
That’s all the colors that I now have of this*. Aren’t those pretty? It brings just a bit of springtime, which is quite welcome in these dark, rainy days of December. I only have one skein of each color, but I’m thinking a summer top out of that pale aqua would be lovely. Or the purple. Or maybe one of each.
Sweetpea is going to have to pitch in if my Christmas knitting is going to be finished. It doesn’t help that I decided to do Christmas knitting just yesterday. Stay tuned.
It is just time to finish this one. I understand if you’ve forgotten the details, since it’s been on the needles since March of 2018. I’m down to one repeat of the second to last chart, and one repeat of the last chart, then I’m done. Of course that amounts to 72 rows, with increasing number of stitches each row, and at the end there are 693 stitches to bind off.
These last charts include a few rows with cables. Though I do know how to knit cables without a cable needle, I’m not a cocky enough knitter to attempt that trick in lace weight silk/merino. So those rows are a bit fidgety.
It does make some very pretty little cables, though.
The pattern name is Longest Night, I’ve been calling it Winter Solstice, and I want it done before the solstice gets here. I think that is doable if I exercise a bit of project monogamy.*
*Remind me of that if you see me casting on any new lace projects before you see this one done.
How the heck did that happen? Time to start thinking about Thanksgiving plans and Christmas.
It also is time to start thinking about wool. Specifically nice wooly sweaters.
I’m currently knitting Shinsetsu. It was on the back burner for most of the summer, but now it’s just the perfect thing to knit. And I want to wear it before winter is over.
That’s the back. The front is all lovely cables and a wide shawl collar. The back is just plain knitting. I’m up to where the sleeves will be. I am modifying this in one way. The back is knit in reverse stockinette, meaning that what is normally thought of as the wrong side of the knit fabric is the public side. I detest the look of that, so I’m doing it my way.
Here is the pattern page on Ravelry so you can see what it looks like finished.
Kiri was a bust. I spent much of the day trying to get it started. The pattern is described as easy, for beginner knitters. After a couple of false starts and tinking back, I eventually ripped it out. I’m not a beginner lace knitter by any means, but there was something wonky with this pattern. I couldn’t get the stitch counts to come out, and I just didn’t like the look of the pattern in this yarn. Last but not least, I use Knit Companion to keep track of absolutely everything I knit, but especially lace charts. The grid on the pattern chart was “off”, with grid squares that varied ever so slightly from place to place. This made adding stitch markers and counts impossible. It was driving me nuts.
So here is the reboot:
This is much better behaved. The entire thing is charted, the pattern repeats don’t shift around aimlessly, and best of all, the main shawl body chart has 16 rows, 12 of which are plain knit or purl rows. This is much more what I had in mind to keep my sanity.
By the way, WordPress has stopped emailing me blog comments again. I can still reply directly from the website, but if I miss a comment and don’t answer you, that’s why. ????
I finished my Hitchhiker shawl on the long plane ride home yesterday (finished project post later when I find it in the heap of bags). So I had an itch to start something new. Meet Cloud Blue Kiri:
I purchased the yarn when we were in Carnation and Duvall WA a few weeks ago. We stopped at Tolt Yarn & Wool, and this was one of my purchases. It is Biches et Bûches Le Petit Silk & Mohair. I’m not quite sure what possessed me to start yet another lace shawl, especially in fuzzy lace weight mohair. If you’ve ever knit with Kidsilk Haze, this is similar, but if anything, with longer mohair “feathers”. Any mistakes in this are likely not going to get ripped back. The pattern is Kiri, which is a similar version of Birch, but top down so you don’t have to cast on (and count) millions of stitches. I knit Birch 15 years ago, and there isn’t enough whisky in the world to make me do that cast on again.
For those of you keeping track, this makes four lace shawls on the needles. My plan was actually to start a simple project to take the place of the Hitchhiker, but this yarn just rolled out of the bag and into my lap. It’s mighty pretty yarn, but I might need that whisky before this is all over.
I finished a hat today for yet another friend going through chemo. I enjoy knitting for friends, but I hate the reason behind this. Cancer sucks. But the hat is cute.
Modifications: The body of the hat has a k2tog/yo row every 12th row. I substituted a plain knit row for that, since you don’t want a hat full of holes if you are losing your hair.
Project rating: Love it. The yarn is a little splitty, but the color is rich, and the yarn is very soft. The pattern is very well written and easy to follow. John and I both might need one of these in a wooly winter yarn.
I am making progress on my Winter Solstice (aka Longest Night) shawl. I “only” have 80 rows left.
Here’s what it will look like when done. Photo shamelessly copied from the pattern page.
And 45 minutes? That’s how long it is taking me to knit each of those rows. And they keep getting longer by 4 stitches every other row. The shawl should be named Longest Knit.