Weekend Knitting Report

I knit a bit on several different projects this weekend. It seems to have been the weekend for sampling lots of bits of stuff.

Saturday morning I spent madly cleaning up my house so that I could relax in the afternoon. Jenn came over to knit, & I got to see her Kiri progress in person. It looks fabulous! & the yarn is much finer than what I used for my Kiri/first "real" lace project. Jenn also brought me these lovely flowers. Aren't they just gorgeous?





Shortly after Jenn left, my sister-in-law arrived. We've been trying to get together for me to teach her how to knit for what seems like FOREVER. Look what she managed to do her Very First Time Knitting! (The cast on & first two rows were already done from my trying to teach my six year old to knit, but still. Amazing.)



Not only that, but I actually managed to still work on my own knitting. I totally was NOT expecting to be able to do that. It's not through any particularly brilliant teaching on my part either. It's just that my sister-in-law has been weaving & doing other handwork for years, so even though she had never, ever knit before, she was already familiar with yarn.

I knit a bit more on several projects this weekend. I'm over halfway through the first lace chart on Icarus. It's to the point where I sometimes have to concentrate too much to talk & knit at the same time, so I didn't work on it while Jenn was here. I'm really enjoying the lace pattern, though, & will probably knit it again in lighter yarn sometime in the future.









My besotted scarf, however, is to the point where I can easily talk & knit simultaniously, so I got farther into the third & last ball of yarn while Jenn was visiting.



I've also got colorwork mitts in progress for my son. I didn't end up doing anything more on them this weekend.









The garter stitch shawl that I'm working whenever my hands need a break from purling is coming along nicely too. I worked on it Wednesday night this week, when I went to meet up with some other knitters, including meeting Gwen for the first time at a local Barnes & Noble.







There was also another new project started on Sunday, but I'll save that for a future post. (Seeing as this has already gotten long. Plus I don't want to appear TOO yarn crazy...)

Saturday Sunrise

I'm going to have a busy day today, including people coming over to KNIT! (My reward for getting my house clean enough for people to come over.) So I decided to do my Saturday Sky pictures as early as possible. The one redeeming feature of the dark time of the year is that sunrise is late enough that I get to see it!





I was complimented recently regarding my pictures on my blog, & like the social clutz that I am, I didn't actually say "Thank-you for the compliment" , just that I'm not a professional photographer. I've been taking pictures about as long as I've been knitting, though, & much more consistently. While I did much less knitting with babies & toddlers in the house, I did take a LOT more pictures when they were little.

Plus I have a great camera, which never hurts anything. But if you want to see REALLY awesome pictures, check out CuriousH's flickr site, which I have linked on the side under other St. Louis stuff. Her pictures are just amazing.

Final Friday Fall Folliage 2006

A few stubborn brown leaves are refusing to fall, but the leaf show is mostly over for the year.







I have actually been doing some knitting, & not just taking scenery pictures. This scarf is now on the last of 3 balls of yarn. & this shoulder shawl/scarf is now onto the next chart. I'd get even more knitting done today if it weren't for the fact that I need to leave for work in about half an hour. Ah, well, I'll have a chance to knit quite a bit on Saturday, after the house is ready for company.

Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate! I have a lot to be thankful for this year, not the least of which is how much I've enjoyed getting back into knitting. It's been a real treat to discover the world of blogging & connecting with other knitters also.

I came across an interesting story on a local news site today, that I thought I would share. The article does a good job of illustrating how giving thanks crosses cultural boundaries, & how coming to a new land continues to be relevant in the twenty first century.

(Editted to add picture, since one of the ones I took this afternoon looked like it would fit perfectly. Hope everyone had a great day, & maybe even got some knitting done!)

Saturday Sky

With all the wind & rain that we have had in the past week, much of the fall leaves that were still hanging on last weekend have now dropped to the ground. It was a grey & overcast day for picking up bags for Scouting For Food, but at least it wasn't raining.

I've got several knitting projects going now, to replace the time I'd been spending on Hidcote. However, I'm also trying to get ready for the holidays. We're going to my parents' house for Thanksgiving, which makes that easier, but I'm having folks over to our place for a "Knit In" one week from today. (Those in my area -- you know who you are -- drop me an email if you are interested in stopping by. talesofyarn (at) yahoo DOT com)

Sit with me Wednesday

Due to all the rain we had here locally, there was no walking for me today. Even if it had been a gorgeous day, I wouldn't have been able to walk due to being home sick with a horrible headache & general ichy feelings.

After enough meds, though, I did at least feel up to knitting. So instead of walking with me, please feel free to sit with me while I walk you through a trick I'm using to speed up work on my Icarus shawl.

Here's a little background. A few months ago, one of my online friends & fellow Mommy Connection members asked me if I purled Norwegian style, since she knew that I knit Continental. After checking that site, I had to tell her that I purl German method, according to the naming conventions on that site, even though I had learned to purl in Norway. But after checking that site, I realized that I did already know what they have listed there as "Combined Purling". It causes the purl stitch to be aligned backward on the needle, which is good for deliberately twisting the purl stitches while doing ribbing, in order to keep the ribbing tighter.

This gave me an idea while I was working on my lace. Why not deliberately use combined purling on selected stitches of the purl back row in order to save the time it takes to slip when doing SSK? There was no way I was going to experiment with that idea while in the middle of Hidcote, but it works EXCELLENTLY for Icarus.

Look carefully at the picture below:




Here you can see an Icarus spine. I have just completed the purl row, & if you look closely, you can tell that the two stitches to the left of the spine's center are aligned backwards & already in the correct direction for the SSK. Then when I reach those stitches while working the following knit row, I can just knit the two together, without slipping & turning the stitches first. It saves a little bit of time & helps with the rhythm on the knitting rows.

The trick works very well in this case, doing the spine section of Icarus, because the SSK's are in a consistent place that is easy for me to find while purling back.

For anyone who is knitting Icarus, the two stitches that need to be purled with the combined method are the first two out of the five "spine stitches" that you come to when doing the purling back row.

Hidcote Garden Shawl, Unpinned

With the help of a chair as a prop, I took some pictures of my unpinned & completed Hidcote Garden Shawl in the common ground near my house.

Here is one corner held up, to show the detail of the pattern.


The fall foliage makes a gorgeous backdrop.



Hidcote nearly didn't fit on the chair, with as big as it is.

Here is a silouette of the center section.


& a closeup of the edge detail.

I met one of my friends at a local park on my lunch hour, so that she could snap a few pictures of my Hidcote & me together. It was such a bright day, though, that every picture without my sunglasses has me squinting as if I'm in pain.

It's certainly NOT a pain to wear this shawl. It's quite the most beautiful thing I've ever made, thanks to Miriam's clever pattern & clear directions. I'd like to take a minute to thank Miriam for designing this shawl. It truely was a joy to knit!

___________________

The Lacevember blog has a question up for it's members. "What are your ideal lace making conditions?"

I would start with a free day, with nothing on the schedule & the other members of my house happily occupied in their own pursuits. There wouldn't be any loud noise around, either from kids bickering, TV too loud, or noisy neighbors outside. I'd be sitting on my living room couch, with my legs up. My cats would be settled in around me, snuggled up & purring, but not in the way of my knitting.

In real life, of course, by the time the cats & I get settled in, someone would need me desperately for something silly, or a telemarketer would call, or someone would come to the door.

Saturday Sky, Second Edition.

The Saturday Sky was quite changeable in our area today. Here is what it looked like as I came out of my house to go to the St. Louis Knitter's Guild meeting this afternoon.



The clouds were starting to break up somewhat, & there were patches of blue sky.

At our meeting, we had an excellent presentation on short rows. I will definitely be trying them out on sweaters for myself in the future.

We end every meeting with a "Show & Share" segment. It's always a lot of fun to see what everyone else has done. Of course, I brought my own item to show this time. I even had enough sense of the dramatic to leave it all folded up until the big reveal.



(Mim, if you see this entry -- that's only Page 1, I promise! The first page of the Hidcote pattern has the description, the specifications (yarn/needles/notions) & most importantly, the URL for Mimknits so they can all run out & buy the pattern for themselves! I printed an extra copy of page one to leave with our webmistress so that she can include the link on the Guild site if she so chooses.)

& by the time the meeting was over, there wasn't a cloud left in the sky. Too bad the sun was starting to set by the time I got home. The angle of the sun made for some really well-lit trees in this picture, though.



Tomorrow: Many more Hidcote pictures, & the answer to the latest Lacevember question.

Gloomy Saturday Sky

Not such a pretty sky this Saturday as it has been the last few Saturdays. We have mostly been lucky with our weekends this autumn.



It was a cold & gloomy morning for handing out bags for Scouting for Food. It could have been worse though -- at least it wasn't raining.

If your household received a Scouting For Food bag today, please be sure to fill it up & set it out early next Saturday morning. At lot of food pantries depend on the influx they receive from this food drive, & the boys are always thrilled when there's plenty to pick up! (& if Scouting For Food is done at a different time of the year in your area, please participate then, if you can. I didn't realize until I went to find the link that Scouting for Food isn't always done in November.)

Bonus Saturday picture:




I found my red & gold together, just in time for Veteran's Day.

Pictures of Hidcote Unpinned will be posted tomorrow, if all goes as planned. I have been updating my links & my template, but I still have a few more to add.

Friday Fall Folliage

Also known as seasonal Eye Candy Friday.



Also in this picture, the new cap to our chimney. The previous owners didn't have the chimney capped at all, if you can imagine. Very strange.





I found a gold tree, but no red one to go with it, as those trees have already lost their leaves. Red & Gold would have been the perfect shots to celebrate the Marine Corps Birthday. In some ways though, it seems appropriate, given the news I just read.

Happy Birthday USMC! Happy Birthday to all the fellow Marines & former Marines out there, & a good Veteran's Day tomorrow to all my fellow Vets. I'll be praying for the families of all the Vets who are no longer here to celebrate. Here's hoping that the new Secretary of Defense does better by the troops than the one who's on his way out.

Walk with me Wednesday

I'm pushing the envelope in the other direction this week. These pictures are from the common areas near my house, when I went to take Hidcote pictures early Thursday morning. It was such a pretty morning for November, that I just had to share.













As always, you can click on the photos to see them larger.

Lacevember Contest Questions

The Lacevember KAL is having a group activity contest with Get-To-Know-The-Lacers questions. Here are my answers:

The knitting questions, or the usual suspects

How long have you been knitting? I first learned to knit 30 years ago, but I'm not sure playing around with garter stitch as a child should really count towards total knitting time. As far as "real" knitting of anything beyond a garter stitch scarf, it's been off & on for 18 years.

How did you learn to knit? Garter stitch I learned from my mother when I was about 9 years old. Knitting anything more complicated, including colorwork, simple increase/decreases, casting on & binding off, knitting in the round, steeking, purling, & following Norwegian sweater patterns I learned from my host mother, Ingeborg, when I spent a year in Norway as a foreign exchange student. I'm a self-taught laceknitter, but I had a good foundation to build on from that year I spent in Norway.

Favorite thing about knitting? Creating something totally unique, that cannot be purchased in mass market type of store.

How long have you been knitting lace? My first lace was Kiri, which I knit this past summer.

Favorite thing about knitting lace. Watching the pattern emerge.

The yarn questions, or flash your stash

Favorite lace yarn? So far, it's been Misti Alpaca Lace. However, I don't have much experience with different laceweight yarns yet, & am looking forward to experimenting.

Variegated or solids for shawls? Again, I've only knit two shawls so far, & started a couple more. Variegated looks better in some patterns than others, & I do plan to try it on a shawl in the future.

Favorite lace color? Green.

Technique, or show us your skillz

Circs or straights? Circs. I use Circs or DPNs for almost everything.

Favorite lace knitting trick? Favorite trick is picking up missed YO's or dropping found extra YO's & letting the blocking take care of any slight stitch tension variation.

Lifelines? If so with what? Nope. I like living dangerously, I guess. I've never used lifelines. I didn't even know they existed until after I completed my first shawl.

Fancy blocking wires, or just sewing pins stuck in your carpet? Combination. My blocking wire isn't fancy though. It's just stainless steel picture wire with packing tape over both ends to keep it from fraying or catching on my lace.

Pattern, or can you follow directions

shawls or lacey items? Shawls. I've made other items with an all over pattern of alternating K2tog/YO, but no other "real" lace with any distinct pattern.

triangle, rectangle, or circular shawls? Only triangles so far, but I plan to try rectangles & circles also.

Charts or printed instructions? I loved that Kiri had both. That was how I figured out how to read lace charts. Now I prefer charts.

Favorite lace you've knit? Miriam's Hidcote Garden Shawl.

Favorite lace you want to knit? It's a tie between Icarus & Mountain Peaks. I'm not sure which will be next.

Just Fun, yup that's right, just for fun

Favorite jelly belly flavor? None. I'd far rather have chocolate.

Tell me everything you know about Eric the Red..... See above -- having spent a year in Norway, & also studied Norse/Viking history since, I could go on for quite some time...

Coke, classic or with lime? None. I hate soda & always have. I'd rather have water, actually.

Holiday carols, sing along, or wish they would be banned from all public airwaves? I love Christmas Hymns & will sing along at every opportunity. Fake "holiday" commercial musak pumped out of store speakers, not so much. Any of it before Thanksgiving -- Ugh! -- makes me leave the store if they have it on before Thanksgiving.

What is the definition of irony? When your favorite yarn goes on sale at a big discount right after you've stocked your stash to the max.

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop? None. Once again, I'd rather have chocolate. I'm not a lollipop or tootsie roll person. My kids love them though.

Why is my cat always puking in front of my son's bedroom door? It's a love present. ;-)

What is your superhero power? Having answers to all my kid's questions.

If the laundry is 9 foot by 11 foot (just dreaming, that's a big laundry room), and the walls are 8 feet tall, and you are going to tile the entire room in tiles that are 3 inches by 5 inches, what color should those tiles be? Sea green & blue

What's for dinner tonight? Fish & chips & salad

What is clogging my children's bathtub drain? Long hair mixed with half melted bars of soap that were dropped in & left to see how small they would get. At least that's what's in my kid's bathtub drain.

________________

Coming soon -- Pictures of Hidcote Unpinned!

The word of the day is VOTE!

It's election day here in America. I was there 15 minutes before the polls were open this morning, with knitting in hand to keep me occupied. The cuff of the Pirate Mit is nearly done.

Our county has put in touch screen voting machines. I'd much rather be able to physically see on hard copy exactly what my vote is, so I went with the alternate of filling out a scantron sheet. Since they only had 4 touch screens in my polling place, & the line was getting long for them while the scantron booths were open, several people followed my lead.

My county's change in voting machines *might* make it faster to count the votes later, but it certainly seemed to be slowing things down a bit this morning.

Blocking is magic!

Blogger was down for maintenence yesterday when I wanted to do my blocking post, so I ended up just posting an abbreviated version in the time I had left after it blogger edit capability came back online.

Here is the Magic of Blocking, told in pictures:

Before:



After:



Before:



After:




My own Lucy cat (no relation to the other Lucy cat) was SURE that I must be doing very fun magic in that room, & was most interested in the goings on. So she camped outside the door for most of the afternoon & evening, until I finally let her in after the unpinning.

Hidcote is DONE! & currently blocking.

It turns out that I don't have the patience to wait 3 weeks to block.





Here are the specs:

Time to Knit: Started on Labor Day (first weekend of September) & finished the first weekend of November.

Yarn used: Two & a half balls of Misti Alpaca Lace. Approx. 1100 yards

Pre-blocking measurements: 66 inches wide & 26 inches deep at the point.

During blocking measurments: 78 inches wide & 42 inches deep at the point.

I really enjoyed knitting this shawl & was almost sorry to reach the end. I will probably knit it again in a few years, with a different color. For now I have many other shawls also planned & will likely start another one soon, since I am already missing laceknitting.

Binding off Hidcote

It looks like I'm going to finish my Hidcote Garden Shawl a little earlier than I had anticipated. Because I won't be able to block it for at least another fortnight, I was trying to keep Hidcote on the back burner & savor the last few rows. However, once I realized that I only had two rows left to go as of yesterday morning, I couldn't resist finishing them. I did the very last long, Long, LONG purl row yesterday morning, before going out on errands, & finished the very last row of the chart after going out to dinner last night.

Then I started the bind off. That was an adventure. This is only the second lace shawl I'd ever completed, & I had some questions on a couple details of the bind off. (Such as the fact that the instructions made it look like I'd be knitting the bind off on what would otherwise have been the purl row, & was I interpretting that correctly?) I sent Miriam an email to be sure I understood what to do, & she wrote back to explain that doing a bind off with knit stitches helps to keep it from rolling. Ah! The light dawned! (& it also occurred to me that I'd done the bind off incorrectly on my Kiri. Thankfully it still looks OK & doesn't roll at the edges.)

I had a bit of a false start when I began binding off. I knit Hidcote on size 3 Addi Turbo needles, but I didn't have any size 5 needles available to go up two sizes on the bind off. I tried with a size 6 initially & it was actually TOO LOOSE, if you can believe it. I have the opposite bind off issue from most knitters, apparently. So I switched to a size 4 needle for the right hand needle, & then the bind off tension was just right.

I ran out of steam at 11 p.m. last night & paused my bindoff just shy of halfway done. (For me, knitting after 11 p.m. frequently means frogging the next day, & I didn't want to run that risk.)

Here is a picture of my progress as of 11 p.m. last night. As you can see, the Addi needle is still in the stitches over the center point at the bottom. I still have quite a bit of the third skein of Misti Alpace Lace left, & expect to have no trouble finishing the shawl with somewhat less than 3 skeins used.



As soon as I got up this morning, I finished binding off all the way to the center point & took off the center point marker with much glee. (Though my six year old daughter will be sorry she missed seeing that. She was always asking me how I'm was going to avoid having it stuck in my shawl forever.)

It was a grey morning, with better light outside than by the window inside. I took Hidcote out to the back porth & let the bound off part of the edge hang free to get a picture. I'm amazed that so much fabric was captured on one needle, & that is only half of the shawl.



For anyone who wonders how I manage to bind off so loosely, I had my older son take this picture for me:



When knitting two together for binding off, I pull the needles apart a bit & knit not only "through the back loops" but also between those two needles. In other words, when knitting normally, I draw the yarn through at the bottom of the loop that's on the needle, down where there is space underneath. For binding off, I hold the needles apart to create extra space between them, & knit through that.

First November Saturday Sky

I'm going to have to start carrying my camera all day on Saturdays. I missed several potential good Saturday Sky shots today.

First shot missed:

*** Imagine a picture of clouds laid out across the sky like grey fiber batting waiting to be spun ***

Second shot missed:

*** Imagine a squadron of fighter planes coming in for landing ***

Third shot missed:

*** Imagine a close up of a jumbo jet taking off ***

Although I didn't take my camera with me, I did have something else cool happen. I ran into Shannon. I'd gotten a flier in the mail for a sale at Myer's House, so I went up to see what I could find. I got some yarn for a sweater for my daughter, & some yarn for me. & then I helped Shannon carry her bag out to her car, because her hands were full of spinning wheel. (A temptation I have thus far resisted. I need to knit MUCH more of my existing stash before taking the time to learn spinning.)

Shannon, remember that bright green yarn that I said wasn't so much me? Well, after I got out of the parking lot, I realized that it was the perfect color to make this for my older son. So I turned around & went back & bought some of that green & some more of the grey for contrast. In addition to the hat, I'm also making a modified version of these:



I couldn't resist casting on right away after I got home.

I also did manage to catch an interesting shot of blowing leaves after I went home for my camera. So there is still a real Saturday Sky picture to enjoy for today.



& here is a little bit of the fiber roving looking sky, though the clouds were starting to break up a bit & look more like "normal" clouds.