Picture Day (Catching Up)

I rembered to bring my cable with me this time. Go me.

So here are a few pics from the last 2 weeks or so to prove to you, me and everybody that knitting has in fact occurred. And there are some cute cat pictures too.

Here's the finished top section of the Icelandic Lace Shawl.

Here's Pixel being totally unconcerned that he is interfering with my picture.

Some goodies I took up to my Mom. That yellow thing in the middle is actually a very cute baby sweater that I wrote the pattern for myself. I'll get pictures of Quinn actually in it soon. Hopefully before she grows out of it.

Here's some sock progress. Yes, I know they are not identicle socks. But I really like how self striping yarns make fabulous fraternal, twin socks.

And last for this morning, my fierce new knitting bag. Which I'm using as a purse, because mostly what goes in my purse is knitting anyway.

It's suade. I love to just pet it.

How much sock can you knit in a baseball game?

I can knit this much.

If you want to get all technical it's 4 1/2 " using Opal sock yarn on size 1 double points. The pink and purple and blue in this color way is very pretty, but the orangey brown and black stripe mixed in to the colorway begs a question. What the hell were they thinking?

I've been avoiding this preticular sock for this very reason. I finished the first one in June. It is not second sock sindrome at work here. I have never before hessitated at making a second sock. The pattern is very nice, it's a plain 1 by 1 rib for an inch at the top and a 1 by 3 rib the rest of the way. I just can't stand the colorway. And size 1 needles take longer than size 2.

In my real life, yes I have one, I've been busy at work and haven't had a lot of time for knitting. I always get quite sad when I don't have time to knit. It makes me want to go and buy yarn, um, more yarn. So I did. Yesterday I popped in Michael's and picked up some of the new self-striping Sugar and Cream, and Paton's has some new colors of SWS. So I got some of that too.

Funny how yarn just jumps out at you when you haven't had enough time to spend with it. And all I really needed were some clasps to fix a bracelet. I got those too.

In other news the shawl is coming along fine. I've finished the first ball of yarn and I was going to do a big 'I Finished the First Ball' post. But I was working and got busy and couldn't stop knitting on it so finishing the first 437 yards became a non-event. Bad me, these things should be celebrated.

It's hard to see in the picture but the center bit of lace is shaping up nicely. Now that I've knit on it a while I'm getting to like it. I'll never use this pattern again but it looks pretty cool now that I'm knitting more than 2 rows an hour. Funny how when the work goes faster the patterns starts being less irritating.

Lace knitting: the Shawl Saga

This picture should be titled 'I Love My Cat and Will Not Kill Him'. He knows this, of course. He also knows that he is a black cat and I am knitting a very delicate white shawl. If he did not kill mice for me and keep my feet warm at night I would wang his little kitty head against a wall.

Sigh.

As you can see, around the cat, I have been working on my shawl. I've progressed to the last panel of lace that forms the center of the triangle. It sits right around the top of the shoulders and the base of the neck.

I'm not sure I like it. The lace is formed by an alternating K3tog (knit 3 together), k1 p1 k1 into the next stitch, row and plain knit rows. Because of the decreases you end up knitting the 3 (k1 p1 k1) stitches on the next pass. The resulting lace looks a bit like moss stitch with holes in it. It does not lay flat, because it's kinda fancy garter stitch.

It's not an amazingly difficult pattern, it's just time consuming. The K3tog's are touchy and you have to be really careful to not lose a stitch or split the yarn or only knit 2 out of 3. (Of course some of this is my fault for knitting super slippery alpaca lace weight yarn on super slippery Addi Turbo's. But i will over look that.)

I just don't know if I like the look of it. It looks OK in the magazine picture, but is somewhat distorted by the drape of the garment. So I'm left with questions. How will it look in real life once it's knitted up? How will it look once it's blocked? If it's ugly will my hair be long enough to cover it? Well, probably, my hair goes past my waist. Will it look good enough to not need long hair?

And most importantly, can I keep my cat off it long enough to even answer these and other facinating questions?

(Que dramatic music.)

I'm making progress!

See how far I've gotten.

Ok, it's not blocked so it's not nearly as impressive as it could be, but it's still progress.

This is how the pattern works. You cast on 339 stitches and knit your way up and in, then you come back and pick up sticthes to knit the border. So basically you start in the middle. The shawl itself has 4 kinds of lace pannels interspersed with reverse stockinette stitch.

I've done two of the different kinds of lace. Here's a close up. If you go by the charts I have done A, B and C, and just finished row 57. On the big picture you can see where I've put red dots on the rows I've finished. I mark up most of my patterns eventually which is why I work from photocopies alot.

In the original pattern the rows of eyelet lace at the bottom and the rows of eyelet lace at the top would be in a grey-beige color. The feather and fan lace block in the middle would be in dark grey at the bottom shading to light grey at the top. So if you think about it I've done a fair swack of knitting.

I like to think about it that way. I can't wait to see how much it's going to stretch out once it's blocked. The lace is working up so fine I wonder if it'll fit through a wedding ring?

Slogalong with Mason Dixon

Some days are Chuck Berry kind of days, and some days are My Life With Thrill Kill Kult.

I listen to a lot of music. A whole lot. All the time. If I'm on the computer then the computer is playing launchcast or the CD of the day. If I'm doing house work, the radio or the stereo is on. Husband has the TV as his favorite form of background noise, I like my noise to have a tempo and actual musical notes. I will listen to opera but I will not listen to rap. Ok, I'm not overly fond of country and western either, but I love music. Love it, love it, love it.

Given my love of music I tend to associate events, objects, people, days, with songs. I'm having a Genesis, just after loosing Peter Gabriel, kind of day. Phil Collins was all that and a bag of chips but still finding his feet. So thats me today, musically inspired but still wanting to be behind a set of drums where I can hit things.

The point of this post was actually to talk about something I just read on Mason Dixon Knitting today. It was Ann's post from yesterday, she was talking about her vacation and the silk shrug she was working on and something called a slogalong. So being the cat curious person I am I followed the links and found out that they, the fabulous ladies at Mason Dixon, had started up a group for people who were stuck battling those fun knitting projects the seem to take forever. And I thought, well hey, I'm knitting this shawl that should be done about in time for the next ice age. It definitely qualifies. So I signed up.

I like talking to other knitters. Mostly I do this in person, but I've come to learn that their are an awful lot of knitters online. This should be a fun opportunity to see what other knitters are blogging about.

Here's progress on the shawl. It's still in the ramen noodle stage. It is my first big lace project and I can't even begin to count the number of little mistakes are in it. I understand that blocking will make it look prettier but it still looks like ramen. On the positive side, the yarn is a dream of softness. I've seen scratchier butter than this yarn. Which makes knitting it on Addi Turbo's ever so slightly stupid...

Maybe I should go by some wood circs. Hey, any excuse to go to my fave yarn shop.

Birthdays

The 4th was my birthday. Go me.

My Mom and my baby sister Quinn visited.

I turned 35. 35 is a hard age for women in my family. It's not quite middle age so you're not allowed to have your mid-life crisis yet but it's old enough that you feel you should have done more with your life and haven't. I am not having the best 35.

Today is my son James 15th birthday. I had 15 children running through my very small apartment. The cake and watermelon didn't last long. I've also desided that teenagers are loud and obnoxious, especially in large quantities.

I'm going to go mope and work on my lace shawl. It's the Icelandic Lace Shawl from Piecework that Knitting Daily has had up. I actually had the original from the July 1996 Piecework, but didn't start it until last week or so. Hey, I bought the yarn and needles for it 2 years ago. I'm knitting it in lace weight, oh so soft, Misti Alpaca, all in cream. The pattern calls for alot of color changes but I figured I would knit the whole thing in cream and after it was made up I would ombre dye it to give it a more subtle shading.

OK, I obviously care more about my shawl than my stupid birthday....