Ravellenics Day 1 - Observer Shawl

I cast on for my Observer Shawl last night :)

Pattern page here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/observer

My ravelry project page here: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/yarndancer/observer

I'm using this huge cone of light fingering weight yarn



on 5mm needles, and it's coming out great! I had wondered about the large needle size, but it's really knitting up into a nice fabric.

The shawl is knitted using the Pi formula by Elizabeth Zimmerman and each part of the shawl is written out as a separate section, which is very useful for keeping track of where you are in the pattern. It's a written pattern, not charted, but having it in these sections makes it much easier to read - also the way Mindy writes her patterns with regard to pattern repeats makes it a "clean" pattern and very easy to read. There's no extraneous waffling - it's all very much to the point and straight-forward. I like her style of pattern writing :)

This is the shawl after section 2:



And this is is after section 3:



which is where I stopped last night.

Getting pictures of black yarn in knitting is very difficult! I ended up with my fingers etc being washed out and just a big white blur because the camera needed to absorb so much light for the dark stitches to show. Still, nobody's looking at the pictures for my fingers or toes (hopefully, lol) :) Also - trying to take a picture of circular knitting that wants to fold in on itself requires about 3 or 4 hands! I don't know how I'm going to manage it when the shawl gets bigger!

I'm really enjoying this project. The beginning was hard - I had to knit my end piece of yarn from the CO into my first row, because I kept picking that up and knitting with that instead. I had to frog it a couple of times because I was getting muddled up with that bit of yarn. But now it’s got going, it’s really quite addictive! I'll be knitting more on it tonight, I'm super excited! :D

WIP Wednesday - Oh my, where did all this come from??

I felt this morning that I hadn't really done that much this week to write about. I've been kind of skipping between projects again, and that's made me feel like I've hardly accomplished anything on any of them. Then I went through my project bags to take photos :)

I've been knitting on three projects this week. I've got an afterthought pair of socks on the go - this pair from the toe up. No photos yet of them though. And I cast on two new scarf projects. I finished the Willow Scarf (I think I said that already in another post) but it's not steamed out yet, so it doesn't count as an FO yet.

The first scarf is another rectangular scarf to work on when the bf's mother comes to visit. I'm using yarn from two cones held double, so it has to stay beside the sofa, and that's the only time I'm on there. Same yarn as the willow scarf - laceweight burgundy acrylic. I got the two cones from a charity shop ages ago, and they've been never ending. This should be the last scarf that comes off those cones though, they're nearly finished! :D



The pattern is Falling Water by Bonnie Sennott. It's a free pattern off Ravelry. I cast on 48sts, (an extra couple of repeats) and it's been going really fast. I chose that pattern because the repeats are quite a few rows long, so I wouldn't get bored with it so easily. That's the plan anyway. I've got to the stage where I've memorised the pattern, and can just read where I am on my knitting, which is always good :)

I also cast on Celaeno by Rosemary Hill, from the 7 small shawls ebook (the first one). This is the first pattern I've knit from that book so far, but there are lots more that I want to make from it. I've purchased the second book too - can't wait to see the patterns she comes up with for it!

I'm using the Sundara fingering silky merino that I won in a blog giveaway from Lina at photoknitdog. It's so lovely to knit with!! So soft and squishy! I'm really enjoying it. I was going to make Elektra from the same book with it, but it turned out that I didn't have quite enough yardage for it. With this pattern, I have a bit too much yardage, but I'm just going to make the shawl/scarf bigger. I've knit up to the point where the pattern says to start the lace, but I'm going to follow her instructions for making it bigger and knit more garter stitch.



I've also done lots of spinning and spinning related stuff. I plied and set the green yarn I'd been working on (it turned out to be merino), and I'm very happy with it. I'll be casting that on soon, as a pair of Deep In The Forest mittens. The pattern is printed and I'm all ready to go!









I was worried that the dark green would be a lot thinner than the light green, but I think it'll be fine. Setting the yarn seemed to make it a lot more similar to my eyes at least.

I also spun and plied all of the pink fibre that I had.





This is corridale - I'm going to make some sort of scarf/shawl thing from it but I haven't decided yet. It turned out to be somewhat of an aran weight - I'll have to search Ravelry and see what patterns are there. I had quite a bit less of the dark pink, so I still have some light pink singles sitting in my basket. I'm going to go back to my LYS and see if they've got more of the dark pink, then spin that up to go with it (there's enough of the light pink left to make that worthwhile)



And so, with all that spun, I was still itching to spin something, so I went back to some cream coloured corridale that I'd spun singles of ages ago. So long ago, that the twist is completely unenergised just now. So I'm plying them up, and I'll see what they turn out like.

And that's another WIP Wednesday! I've been a lot busier that I thought I had, and I've still got 2 FO posts to write :D

Lace Doubt

I've been making good progress on the bf's mum's birthday shawl. I've knit a quarter of the middle sections repeats. However, I'm a bit unsure about how it's turning out...





It looks kind of small for a quarter of a shawl...

I know lace blocks out, but does it really block out that much?? When I stretch out the knitting, it stretches to maybe a foot. But it needs stretched out to the sides as well. It's supposed to be 19"x60" when it's got the border knitted on, and is blocked out. When I stretch it out to the sides, it again maybe measures 12".

I'm hoping that with the addition of water and blocking pins it'll stretch out more... Does anyone know if that's likely?

I figure that stretching sideways is more important at the moment. I can always knit more lengthwise if I need to - I have plenty of this yarn, it's not going to run out any time soon. I'm just not sure yet if I'll need to. Part of me is thinking that I'll need to knit a whole extra foot or so onto it, but then I worry that it will become super stretchy as soon as water hits it, and it'll end up like a mile long.

I have knit some lace before, however that's still waiting to be blocked... (I'm so bad at getting around to stuff like that! When I finally get round to it, I'm going to have like 3 shawls all at once!)

The yarn is more cobweb-weight than lace-weight I think, so that's partly why I'm worrying it'll be too small. It's so thin!! I have to slow my knitting right down when I'm working on this, because otherwise I knit into stitches below and just generally mess it up. It's turning out to be quite zen knitting actually, because I have to actually pay attention to where I'm sticking the needles, and be quite mindful of the process. The lace pattern is simple enough that only a little attention needs to be paid to that, it's all on the actual working of the stitches, which is really nice.

So, if anyone out there has any advice about how much really thin wool yarn will stretch in the actual blocking process, I'd really appreciate it :) Just now, I'm going to keep knitting and see what happens. I still have 6 more repeats to go until I really need to decide whether to knit more onto it, so I'm trying to focus on that and ignore the nagging doubts. Having a deadline is useful, because otherwise I'd get so worried that I think it'd just end up in a bag in a corner somewhere :D

Deadline Knitting

Not a whole lot of progress to report on my various knitting projects. I 'm still knitting on my 3rd Tubey, still haven't got photos of the 2nd. I did manage to get my 2nd pair of Hebi socks finished, but I haven't taken any more photos of them as a pair yet. And I sewed one of Mariah's seam, and have pinned the other one, maybe that'll get sewed later on today. So progress is being made, just very slowly.

I've had to cast on another project though - I know, how awful!! ;p

I'm going to make "Miss Lambert's Shetland Pattern for a Shawl" from Victorian Lace Today (rav link) for my bf's mum's 50th birthday. Which I have been procrastinating about until it finally dawned on me yesterday that it's in 2 weeks!!! So I guess none of my other projects will be getting worked on much for the forseeable future ;)

She used to knit and had some white laceweight yarn that she gave me ages ago, along with a pattern which was for a similar type of shawl, but all written out in words. Millions of lines of "k2tog, yo, k1" etc. I just couldn't face that. So I handed her Victorian Lace Today, and asked her if she'd like one of those instead. Since this shetland lace pattern is similar, that's what she chose, which is good, because it's just an eight row repeat for the main section, and isn't too hard to memorise or work ;)

The yarn is some sort of Jamieson and Smith laceweight. I'm not sure how old it is, but I think it counts as "vintage" ;) It's sooooooo thin!! I'm using 3.25mm needles, and it's going to be super lacy and airy.

I'm having fun knitting the lace just now. I enjoy having the intricate pattern to think about and concentrate on. I can tell I'm going to hesitate when it comes to blocking (I always do!), but hopefully the fact that there's a really close deadline for this shawl will mean that it gets done!

I don't have any photos of it unfortunately (I've been really lax recently about taking photos of my knitting, must sort that out!) so here's a spring flower instead.



I've got a bunch of spring flower photos over on my flickr account. I went to Cambo gardens recently, and went a bit mad taking photos of the pretty :)

Not So Monogamous Any More

My powers of project monogamy seem to have run out :) I knit all of Mariah, joined the hood and everything, and now it's sitting waiting at the seaming stage. I just can't seem to get motivated to sew it up :( It's only a small amount of sewing as well, since the sleeves are joined to the body already at the yoke. Just the 2 side seams, the 2 arm side seams, and the zip to put in. Hardly anything, really. And yet, it's been cast to the side while more interesting projects get knit on. Poor Mariah, I really should get round to finishing it soon!

I've cast on another pair of my Hebi socks (rav link) This time I'm making them in white. I took a sudden notion for white lacy socks for some reason :)





The yarn is Regia Stretch, in white (colourway no. 1) They're knitting up quite nicely. The yarn feels different to the Regia 4-fadig that I normally use. The difference is that it has polyester in it, which you wouldn't think of normally as making yarn particularly elastic, but it does seem to have more "stretch" in it, at least in yarn form. When it's knitted up, it feels more solid somehow, thicker even. My gauge is the same, so I reckon it must be the yarn. It'll be interesting wearing them to see how they fare against the 4-fadig that the originals were knitted in.

I've knit the first sock, and I'm halfway down the cuff of the second. I'm making them a little shorter than the originals, 15 repeats this time on the cuff instead of 17. They look cute :)

I'm not knitting them monogamously though. All that knitting on Mariah alone seems to have made me want to knit on 3 different things at once. I knit another Tubey sweater, because I still seem to be on the pattern repetition kick, and then immediately cast on another. (pics of them still to come in a FO post), and I knit the Milkweed pattern by Laura Chau. Here's a pic of it before blocking:



and as it's still blocking right now, I can't post a pic of it post-blocking yet ;) That'll have to wait for another post too. I used Trekking XXL for this one, in colourway 305. I really like this colourway. The different shades of pink blend together quite well. It's kind of stipey, but not too stripey. Just right :)

I just can't seem to concentrate on any of these for very long at a time, but I suppose it means that they're all getting worked on :) I'm just having fun picking up whichever one takes my fancy at the time!

Vogue Shawl Completed!!!!!

OK, the knitting was done a while ago, and the blocking was done about a week ago, but I've finally taken pictures, so now it counts as finished!





Pattern: #02 Beaded Shawl by Karen Joan Raz from Vogue Knitting, Winter 2007/08
Yarn: Rennie 100% pure wool, off of ebay, in gray
Needle size: 4mm
Started: June 30 2008
Completed: September 4 2008

(Thank goodness for ravelry, eh? I'd never have remembered all that, or taken notes)