Category: Knitting

The Church of Bluegrass

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.

I’m off to hear the banjos!

Winter Solstice

Yes, there is a bona fide finished project right there!

Project Details:

Pattern: Longest Night Shawl, by Lori Law

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.

Stay tuned!

And then a miracle happens

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.

Full post with details once it is dry.

Arlo

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.

*Euroflax sport weight linen.

Marathon knitting

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.

November

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.

Lace reboot

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.

The pattern is Feather Duster, by Susan Lawrence.

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 might have lost my mind

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.

Hat for a friend

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.

Project Details:

Pattern: Tebe Slouch hat

Yarn: Cascade Ultra Pima cotton in Cobalt

Needles: 3.25 mm

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.

45 minutes

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.

Lots of lace

I posted a couple of months ago about the leftover yarn from my Evenstar shawl.

I didn’t weigh the yarn on the cone before I started using it, so I decided to wind it off so I could get an accurate yardage measurement for how much is left.

75 grams left, or 1150 yards. I was surprised by how much is left. That’s enough for a nice sized shawl. It’s a lovely cashmere silk blend, so back into the stash it goes to await its own special project.

Here’s to a nice Labor Day weekend for us all! We’re doing our big annual fried chicken dinner for some friends and neighbors tomorrow. I’ll post some photos.

Nice recovery

I’m back in business with the cardigan.

Fortunately it’s a fun pattern, and lovely yarn, so I didn’t really mind having a do-over. Now it’s just mindless stockinette with some back shaping thrown in.

And I even remembered to change needle size like I was supposed to after the lace bit. I’m sure I’ll find something else to screw up along the way.

Someone remind me to cast on the correct size for the fronts when I get there.

TGIF

Wednesday is really my “Friday” since I started working part time. I do still enjoy Fridays though. I can sleep in, I’ve gotten most of the to-do things off my list on Thursday, and best of all, I have my weekly Friday knitting group.

I realized as I started writing today that I’ve not posted about many things that have happened over the past few months. My life is sort of an open book on Facebook, so if you follow me there, this will mostly be old news.

First off, we lost our kitty Zoe earlier this spring. She just disappeared one day and never came back. I suspect one of the eagles got her, or perhaps the occasional coyote that is seen around here.

Ripley started getting mopey and clingy after Zoe was gone, so we ended up adopting this little boy.

His name is Arlo, and he’s probably about 8-9 months old. After a few days of hissing the two cats are getting along just fine.

They both are going to be indoor cats, if I have anything to say about it. There is less decimation of the bird and bunny population that way, and the cats have a better life span. Our departed kitty Will announced his intent to be an outside cat early on, and tore holes in all our screen doors to prove it, and Zoe just followed in his footsteps. Ripley has been out, so knows the way to get back in if she escapes, but doesn’t really show any interest in being outside except on our enclosed decks. So far Arlo hasn’t made any escape attempts.

The other big event of the past several months is that I joined the Episcopal Church (and left the Catholic Church). There were a lot of reasons behind this decision, but I’ve really found my spiritual home. I was received into the church at Pentecost, along with several other adults, and a baby and older child who were baptized at the service.

I found some knitters among the congregation, and we started a Friday knitting group!

We celebrated July 4th holiday with family and friends.

No, it wasn’t all that cold. My California relatives just aren’t used to 70 degree temps in July.

I got a great sticky note from one of my clinic nurses last week. I didn’t think I’d done anything all that awesome, but she evidently thought so. It made me smile, and I saved it on my bulletin board.

On the knitting front, John’s sock (first of the pair) is almost done.

Last but not least, I started yet another knitting project, because, why not? It’s a Patty Lyons summer sweater KAL, and I love the pattern. The first clue just dropped this week, so it’s not too late to join.

I just got my yarn in the mail yesterday, so haven’t cast on yet. I haven’t washed that swatch yet, but the prewash measurement matches the pattern gauge perfectly.

I have a few more of those to-dos to get off my list today, then I get to knit with friends and go out for pizza with the neighbors this evening. Happy Friday to all of you!