100 posts

So apparently this is my 100th post. If I'd been clever I would have had some sort of exciting knitting to show off. As it is I'm just plugging away at my plain red socks. I've added some inches and reached the calf increases but I don't think it counts as all that exciting.

I have also just cast on for my Lopi sweater. Since my gauge swatch needs to be done in the round I've decided to skip it and be willing to rip out the beginning of my first sleeve if I don't get the right gauge. Since I'm adding some colour work to the sleeve it should act a a pretty thorough swatch.

On second thought it seems appropriate that I am working on a sock and starting a sweater for my 100th post. Since I intend to keep posting it seems that works in progress fit better than something finished would. Maybe I'm more clever than I thought.

Mindless knitting

After working on the Mingus socks and the Raven shawl I needed something simple to knit away at. I also wanted to use up the two remaining skeins of Shibui Sock yarn I had laying around. When I bought this yarn I thought it was a semi solid sort of thing but it turns out to be a striping yarn. This makes it tricky to use in intricate patterns but perfect for a simple sock.

Since the point was to use up what I had, I cast on at the toe and found that one skein yields a mid-calf length sock. With the leftovers from Mingus I should be able to get a pair of knee socks. I'm planning to work a picot edging but I'm going to make sure I can get two full socks before I use up yarn on fancy finishing techniques.

As you can see in the pictures the stripes work out pretty well except for the increase section for the calf shaping. If I were feeling picky I would do all of my increases at once, rather than spread out, to minimize the break in the pattern. I am not feeling picky about these socks so I'm just letting them be.

I took the picture using my "new" metal sock blockers. I found the sock blockers at an antique store and decided that they would be useful to have around. Since there was a variety of them available I wanted to make sure that I got the closest match to my foot size. First I measured them against my forearm which I remembered is generally the same size as your foot. Then I remembered that I had a sock in progress in my bag that I could test out for size. I'm guessing antique stores don't usually get clients trying socks in progress out on their wares. It did result in a sale, though.

Enough about socks. I'm not sure if it is the arctic air mass, which is apparently bearing down on us as I type, or what but I found myself with a strong desire to knit and Icelandic Lopi sweater. I want something comfortable to layer over things when I'm at home and maybe substitute for a jacket on warmer days. I don't need soft, just warm and woolly. Thanks to Ravelry and the pictures at Camilla Family Farm I picked out this sweater to knit:

I think I will add a snow flake motif to the cuffs but otherwise knit as written. While I was looking for the right sweater I came across I great picture that puts all those little dog sweaters to shame:

If you want to knit it the info is available here. I guess that it is true that the yoke sweaters look good on all body types.

Raven details

Pattern: Irtfa'a
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber's Haida Laci
Needles: 3.75 mm addi lace circular and 3.5 mm addi circular
Cast on December 14, 2007 and cast off January 26, 2008.

For me this was a project of contrasts and contradictions.

The pattern is at once complicated and easy; the structure of the shawl is much more complicated than the basic triangular shawls I have made before but most of the lace motifs are very easy and differ very little row to row. The repetitive lace made for easy knitting that I could do while reading and such but there were times when I wished for a bit of a challenge. I am crazy and in love with the needlessly complex so I don't expect that others will have the same reaction to the pattern as me in this regard.

The yarn is the first variegated lace yarn I've used. I like the general look of the shawl that this variegation gives but I also think that the lace would be better served by a solid black yarn. If I ever knit this pattern again I will use a solid coloured yarn with maybe a bit more weight to it. Getting gauge required going up a needle size and I find the stocking net bits of the lace a bit more open than I prefer. It doesn't help that lace shawls belong more to summer wear and I keep dreaming of a nice warm winter shawl.

The variegated yarn did help to hide my edging fix, though. The point in the middle is the one where I attached the fixed edging to the edging already knit. It wouldn't pass the inspection of a knitting judge but it is other wise unnoticeable. I was actually planning on carefully blogging about how I did this fix but once I started working on it I remembered that my approach to fixing lace is very much ad hoc and seat of your pants and therefore not easy to take pictures of and explain. I like the results, though, even if I can't share the method.


I also liked the ease of spit splicing with this yarn. Keeping this in mind I was very careful when I was washing the shawl because I really don't want a felted lace project. I found that some of the yarn was ever so slightly felted in the skein, the darker portions especially. It led to some of the yarn seeming slightly thicker. However it also let me knit straight off the skein without worrying about the skein falling apart and becoming a massive tangle. I usually wind my skeins using my ball winder but this yarn comes in such a large skein that I knew I couldn't get it all in one ball and I didn't want to break it into smaller quantities.

Anyway, overall I liked this project and there are portions of it that I really love. What originally made me buy the pattern was the way it looks with the shoulder shaping.
It really does capture the top of a birds wing. I also love the pointy edging. It stands out beautifully in this yarn and really makes the shawl into something special.

Crowing

The raven/crow/Irtfa'a shawl is finished and blocked. I got the left edging finished yesterday and the right edging fixed this morning. It got wet blocked this afternoon and the poor cats lost their sleeping spot on the bed for a few hours while it dried. And now it is all finished and photographed. I am quite pleased with the results and have a lot to say about the yarn and pattern and process. However it is late so I will save my thoughts and pictures of the details until tomorrow.

T minus 20

At Meredith's prompting I set to work on the left edging of my shawl yesterday. I am now a mere 20 repeats of the edging pattern away from being done-ish. After I finish these repeats I just need to graft the two sides of the edging together, go back and fix the beginning of the edging on the right and then tuck in ends and block. I should have a completed shawl by the end of the month.

The left edging is going much faster because it lacks the p2togtbl that the right edging has. If this project were more portable I might have had the left edging done by now. Since I can't easily carry it around to school and such it is losing knitting time to a simple red sock I started when I finished the Mingus (Mingi?).

If I quit writing now I might get another couple of pattern repeats in before bed.

Fin(n)ished

Ta da, the Mingus socks are finished. I used Shibui Sock yarn and 2.25 mm DPNs. I'm really happy with how these socks turned out. All of the twisted stitches really make the pattern pop.

While I'm on the topic of socks, I found these while looking around Ravelry for something to do with my sport weight sock yarn: Finnish knee socks. As you may have noticed, I love knee socks and these look like they might actually stay up. They also look like they should go well with any number of skirts. Now all I have to do is learn Finnish... Actually I think I should be able to muddle my way through using the internet's translation abilities. It also helps that there is a chart for the cable and the legend should give me most of the knitting terms I need.

I won't be casting on for these right away because I still have a shawl to finish. In fact I had a couple of crows outside my window this morning reminding me that the shawl needs to be finished.

Ends in sight

So my plan was to work on fixing the edging of the shawl last night so that I could show off the results today. However I ended up working on my sock instead since it allowed me to multi-task (i.e. watch some TV at the same time). Then this evening I managed to turn the heel on the second of my Mingus socks and now I can't bring myself to set the sock down and pick up the shawl.

This happens to me when I'm reading a couple of books at the same time too. I will happily read some of one and then some of the other right up until the end is in sight for one of them. Once I can see then end I feel the need to get it finished and I will completely ignore the other book. At least I'm consistent.

While I haven't fixed the shawl yet I can at least share the plan for fixing it. The problem is that I missed the instruction for the beginning of edging that said to cast on stitches rather than cast them off. This was the result:


As you can see it looks a bit funny on the right where the edging begins. I would be tempted to leave it as it is and just try to hide it in the blocking but I want both sides of my shawl to match and I don't feel like making this same mistake twice. My solution is to cut the yarn where I bound it off at the beginning and reknit the first couple of repeats of the edging.

Before I cut my knitting, though, I wanted to make sure that my solution would work. I picked up the stitches along the mistakenly cast off edge and knit the start of the edging as instructed. It looks like it should work out just fine. (The shawl picture from my last post shows the trial run edging all knit up.) Now the plan is to rip out my trial run, cut the yarn and proceed to fix the edging properly. By the end I hope the mistake won't be visible, even to those who know it is there.