A Little Bird Told Me

Some time ago, I bought some Shaefer Trenna in Indigo from Little Knits without really any idea of what I was going to make with it.



Then I was browsing through Romi's designs the other day and found the Bluebird stole. Normally, I kind of avoid things that require me to repeat patterns over and over and over again, but the shawl is so perfect for the yarn that I decided I could suck it up. It's only the middle section that's repetitive.

This shawl held several surprises for me. The construction was somewhat different than I expected. I had seen that it started with a provisional cast-on and just kind of assumed this would be knit the same way Scheherazade was knit - cast on in the middle, knit to the end, and then pick up the provisional cast-on* and knit to the other end. Bluebird is done similarly, but instead of casting on in the middle, you cast on for one end, and then pick up the cast on, knit the entire middle section (which is like 36 repeats of four or six rows or something like that), and then knit the other end. Makes perfect sense. Totally flabbergasted me. It took me a while to work my head around to what I was doing (in fact, it only just now occured to me as I am putting this post together that my pictures are all technically upside down - the cast on edge should be at the top for the pattern to appear correctly). Fortunately conceptual understanding is not required, and I had only to follow directions, so no time was wasted with these discoveries.

The other slightly surprising thing for me is that the edging areas of this shawl are knit mostly on a reverse stockinette field. I found this a little confusing at first ("Wait...you mean I actually have to THINK on my wrong side rows?") but the effect is really quite beautiful, making the lines of the lace really pop.

Still, I completed chart A with some grumbling.



I should probably note that I nearly had a fatal error at cast-on which was narrowly avoided through the assitance of my back up stitch counter. I have the SO recount every cast on for me so I don't, say, randomly choose to ignore the existence of the ten numbers between 79 and 90.

Chart A complete, Chart B, which is to be repeated 4 times. I completed 2 before I had to quit for the night.



What happened to the Phoenix shawl, I hear you (all three of you) asking? The answer is that I did, in fact, work on my Phoenix shawl all day long on Saturday. I completed one 16-row chart.

ONE. ALL DAY. 16 ROWS.

Now, it is a fundamental fact of knitting that when you knit a triangular shawl that begins at the center back, you are essentially knitting along the longest possible line that you could knit. It's not so bad when you first get started, which is what makes, for me, the instructions "Repeat Main Body Chart 5 times" bearable. When you are first starting out there aren't that many stitches on the needles so that first three repeats are pretty much a walk in the park. Around repeat 4 it starts to get a little tougher, but you're past the halfway point and that keeps you going. Then you're like, sweet, I'm at the edging set-up, I only have to do the set-up and the edging and then the ending chart and I'm good! And in the back of your mind you kind of know that's a lot but you tell yourself that those charts are much shorter than the body charts anyway so you really think things are going awesome until you realize that the instructions say that you are to complete the edging chart 3 times (it's actually two times and then one more without doing the last couple of rows, but I'm rounding). And you think about how it took you ALL DAY to knit that one repeat of the edging set-up chart, which has the same number of rows as the edging chart, and you die a little inside, and you think about stopping to photograph your progress just to make yourself feel better, and you realize that there's no point because the shawl is so big at this point that it's scrunched up on the needles and it's just going to look like a pile of yarn anyway.

What's a knitter to do? For me, the answer is, start a new project. One that will fly by. One that will go really fast. One that DOESN'T GET BIGGER AS YOU KEEP KNITTING IT. One that's only 103 stitches wide and will only ever be 103 stitches wide, so that when you sit down to knit a soul-sucking 400+ stitches on your big project, you can take a break and zip out a few quick easy chart repeats that make you feel good inside before you go back to the never-ending toil of the Shawl That Would Not Die.

Please note that none of the ire that may be evidenced in the above paragraphs has anything to do with how much I like the shawl or how I feel about the pattern. The pattern is brilliant, the shawl is beautiful, and I like them both very much. All blame for this frustration must be laid at the feet of my most persistent lifelong foe, mathematics.

I do have some concerns that, as mentioned before, the number of repeats for the middle section of the Bluebird shawl might get to me eventually, but I'm hoping that the zippyness of the rows will enable me to get through that part. Besides, because of the way this is constructed, I can pretty much quit whenever it gets to be too much for me (but I won't, because I would like my shawl to be bigger than a post-it).

*I cannot seem to figure out the proper usage of "bind off" and "cast on." I tend to use the words seperately when using them as a verb - "to bind off" and "to cast on," and then hyphenate them when using them as a noun - "the bind-off" or "the cast-on." Also, I type yarnover as a single word when using it as a noun, and seperately when using it as a verb "to yarn over." I think we all need to agree on a standard - preferably, we need to all agree that my way is correct.

A Midsummer's Dream Under A Star-Soaked Sky*

Celaeno, the third shawl in Romi's 7 Small Shawls EBook subscription, is done! And here's how much yarn I had left.



SCARY. And also kind of awesome.

I love the color depth of this yarn, Fiber Optics Foot Notes in Sapphire Batik. It's very difficult to see in photographs or even at a distance, but the there are several different shades of blue used to lovely effect, mixed with the black. I almost wish I had a version without the black so I could enjoy just the variation in the blues. Because if its tight twist and possibly because if the heavy dye saturation it takes to get this color, it is a little firm, but the end result is very lovely.



Blocking was a bit of a challenge because I really liked the squishyness of the garter section and I didn't want to totally kill it, so I stretched it out enough to open the lace and then moved the wires for the top line of the shawl down as far as I could, to relax the garter a little bit without compromising the openness of the lace.



I especially loved the way the beads sort of wink out of the garter, and I felt like if I stretched the garter section out to be too open, the beads would look like beads and not like the little points of light I was hoping for.

I'm really, really in love with this project, but the beauty is really hard to capture. You can either see the beauty of the design...



...or the sparkle of the beads







...but capturing the full effect is nigh impossible, at least without a model and more patience than I possess.

I did get really bead-happy with this design. The beads are placed "randomly" throughout the garter stitch portion, and I littered the shawl with them. The beads are silver-lined transparent grey, and I'm so glad I went with those instead of a colored bead. They look exactly like the stars they are meant to evoke.



I'm not sorry. It's definitely got a very evening feel to it, and I can't wait to wear it out. I just need somewhere appropriately elegant. And, also, for the weather to cool off a bit. And I think I need to buy a little black dress to go under it. But, you know, once I get all that it will be perfect.

*This is one of my favorite song lyrics of all time, from a song that I'm otherwise indifferent to - Lonestar's "You're Like Coming Home."

Starry Starry Night

Not much of a show or tell this week, I'm afraid. I have been working religiously on Celaeno, but the first chart is 99% garter stitch so it's not very exciting to talk about or show. However, it is very exciting to knit, because beads are to be placed randomly throughout the garter stitch section. I attempted to randomly place beads myself, but despite years of evidence to the contrary, it appears I am inherantly unrandom. I downloaded a random number generator app for my iPhone, so I've been using that. I've been extremely liberal with the bead placement. I had so much fun for the first two repeats that I didn't even realize how heavily I was beading (I had my random number generator set out to max at 7) until I put it down and thought, wow...that's a lot.



I was watching Project Runway as I was knitting on this and I had a crisis of confidence about the "taste level" so I posted it to the Romi forum on Ravelry to see if I was maybe going a little overboard. The response was overwhelmingly in favor of holding the course, so I kept going. I've started spacing them a bit more as the rows get longer (and I run out of beads, and I actually like the way the blank spots give it character. I'm on the last repeat of the first chart - and on my last container of beads. Methinks I need to order more. A lot more.







I've been completely neglecting all my other projects, except Esplanade. I've reached the point where the ribbed brim is turned under and joined with the rest of the hat.



It's a fiddly but very clever process. Here's the inside of the hat, where you can see the hidden brim.



Very nifty, and now I have a big swath of plain knitting before I get to the crown decreases. Perfect for hockey knitting - the Caps have their first game on Wednesday. Unfortunately, I'll be at choir practice (also prime plain knitting time). Even so, there is a whole season of hockey knitting in my future, so it will be good to have some plain projects going. I'm thinking I will make another Esplanade in the reverse colors once this one is done.

Oh the knits you can knit

My beach weekend was fun, although far too short, especially for the length of drive we had to get there. Normally we go somewhere closer, but we were going with friends, one of whom got a deal on a condo, so drive we did.

Well. The SO drove. I knit.



And knit.



Then we stopped for lunch and switched places for a while. I drove for maybe three hours before I was too grumpy to take it anymore and we switched back. I knit some more.



We arrived just as I finished the last of the gusset decreases. I chose to work on this sock instead of this sock:



Or this sock:



Because I don't see the recipient often, and since she was going to be at the beach with us, it seemed to me a perfect opportunity to make sure I knit socks that fit. I was determined to finish at least the first sock before we left, so that I had something to measure the second sock against. Mission accomplished.



Yarn is Schaefer Heather in an unknown colorway. The person who is to receive this sock went to the Knit Happens closing sale, since it happens to be near her office, and bought yarn and gifts for all the knitters of her aquaintance. In return for two skeins of Schaefer Andrea, a beautiful little needle rollup, and a big bottle of Euclan, she asked that I knit her "rainbow socks" out of this yarn (which she also purchased). Seemed like a great deal to me.

Color isn't the best in these iphone photos, but these are in fact rainbow-ish socks. The red predominates but in between the red stripes there is blue, green, pink, and a little yellowy-orangey color. Not quite a full spectrum, but close enough.

Of course we visited a local yarn shop, and since there were two other knitters in the group (including my knitting mentor, she who taught me to knit without realizing what she was creating), it was a group trip. I didn't take a picture of the yarn I bought but I believe it was Mirasol Tupa yarn. I got two skeins in Sapphire and two in Viridian (I think - I don't have the yarn in front of me and foolishly did not immediately log it into Ravelry when we got back to the condo). I'm thinking of making a Textured Shawl and striping both yarn, so that each texture panel alternates in color. I hope that the two colors striped together will remind me of the ocean.

My knitting mentor was working on an Esplanade hat and I was so impressed by the cleverness of the pattern that I had her text it to me so I could look it up later. She in turn was quite taken with my Phoneix Shawl, so we traded pattern info.

One of my friends sends me yarn for Christmas from a handcrafting festival in Texas (I think it's this one but I'm not sure). Last year, she sent me two skeins of fingering weight, about 260 yards each, one white and one red. I've been unsure what to make with it as neither individually is enough for much, and striping red and white together can be dicey business (in my opinion). But, I think the Esplanade hat is perfect. I've already cast on for one using white as the contrast color and red as the main color, and I think I should be able to make a second one with the reverse color scheme. The yarn is very soft and beautiful to knit with, although I find it's not very tightly twisted, so I'm glad I went in a direction other than socks. I cast on last night (because clearly I don't have enough projects OTN) and knit the ribbing. Of course, I fail at following directions, so I forgot ot knit the two rows of stockinette I was supposed to do before the ribbing. The ribbing is hidden on the inside of the hat using an ingenious little trick involving a provisional cast-on, so I think when I undo the provisional cast on, I will knit those extra two rows of stockinette from that end before folding it up and joining it to the rest of the hat. Hopefully this plan will work. We'll find out.

But we probably won't find out too soon because Celaeno has been released! All other works in progress will be promptly ditched in favor of this shawl, which I have been waiting on for freaking ever.

Only one issue...it uses M1 increases heavily. I hate M1! I might just KFB instead, for the sake of my own sanity. I don't think it will make a huge huge difference in the look. I was so glad that it didn't come out while I was away, because I was so excited to make it I didn't want to have to wait at all, but tonight is my first choir practice of the season, so I probably won't get started on it tonight.

Oh, who am I kidding. I'll start - I just won't get very far.

Anyway, the other knitting I did while I was away was on the Phoenix shawl, and it doesn't look much different. I finished the fourth repeat, so I have one to go. My extremely dedicated sock knitting led to very sore fingers, especially my left pinky, so I switched to the shawl to try and use a different set of muscles. Next time, must plan better and bring projects that have a greater variety of yarn weights and needle sizes, so I can change up more effectively. But, even the change from a size 1.5 16" needle in the round to a size 4 32" needle flat helped. On the way home, we switched drivers more often rather than just swapping at the halfway point, which I found to be a great help in preventing both the aches and pains and the grumpiness of such a long drive. While it was the SO's turn to drive, I worked on the Phoenix shawl. I still love it, and I'm excited that I only have one repeat left to go. I do find Helen's Lace rougher than some other silk/wool blends that I've used, and after hours and hours and hours of knitting on it, one of my tensioning fingers is feeling a little tender. I wrap the yarn around my middle three fingers and then again around my index finger, so the yarn runs between my ring finger and pinky, and that spot is a little sore, so I'm trying to give it a break.

It's a little odd for me to have this many items in progress. I wonder if it's the fall weather, or just a general lack of discipline? I'm not going to worry about it, since it's not bothering me much at the moment. At some point, I will pass the magic number of WIP's that sets off my crazy meter and then I'll have to finish some stuff up before I go totally nuts. Generally speaking, I don't mind having multiple projects going that take up different types of knitting time. Mindless knitting that can be done while reading, slightly more intensive knitting that's still simple enough for TV, charted knitting to keep me occupied when the SO is playing video games. It's only when I get too many of the same kind going that I tend to really get jumpy. Starting so many socks at once was probably a mistake, but I think what will probably end up happening, is that the two that only have a little ribbing will sit idle until I finish the rainbow socks, and then be done each in turn. I'll just think of it as planning ahead, so I don't have to worry about spending time on the cast-on when I'm finished with the current pair.

Bonus post - I couldn't stand not being able to show the Phoenix shawl so I took pictures last night.





I am absolutely thrilled that the next shawl in Romi's Seven Small Shawls e-book subscription is due to be released next week. This is the yarn I plan to use.





Yarn is Fiber Optics Sapphire Batik. Her picture is much closer to the true color. My photos in no way convey what this yarn looks like in person because it reflects so much light. The colors are correct but they come off much darker in person, making it very midnight and very appropriate for a shawl designed to evoke the starry sky. There's a lot of color depth in the blues, too. I'm in love with it. I'm planning to use silver-lined grey beads on it similar to the ones shown, but these are size 8 and I need size 6, so I had to order them. Hopefully when I get back from my beach trip, I'll have my beads and the pattern release will quickly follow. I'm just dying to get started on this one!

Judgement Calls

I spent this weekend completely irresponsibly. I got a lot of knitting done, but I didn't photograph any of it. I thought about putting off this post until I took some pictures but...well. We all know how well that's worked out in the past.

Friday was pretty much a bust. I don't know if it was something I ate or what, but I felt awful all night on Friday. I really didn't get much sleep. So, I slept in on Saturday and spent the rest of the day on the couch - mostly knitting.

I have kind of abandonned my attempt to finish the featherweight cardigan and the Veronique cardigan. Not totally, but after being as frustrated as I was the last time I looked at them, I decided that they should not hold me back from casting on new sweater. So, I have begun the Simone sweater. I've finished the entire cowl and I'm currently increasing for the sleeves.

The beginning of this pattern presented me with a dilemma. The guage instructions were for a stockinette swatch on size 7 needles. As my faithful readers will recall, I got guage with size 9 needles, 2 needle sizes and 1mm bigger than the recommended size.

The instructions for the cowl were to start out on no. 10 needles. Now, it seemed logical to me that I should go two needle sizes up for this. The only problem is, the jump from 10 to 11 is not 1mm, it's 1.5 mm. An 11 is a full 1 mm bigger than a 10.5, despite the fact that every other needle size up until that point represents a .5 mm increase. I don't understand this. Anyway, it left me with a dilemma. The cowl was supposed to start on size 10, decrease to size 9, decrease again to size 8, and then decrease one last time to size 7 just before you begin the body.

I therefore had a decision to make, as to whether I would start with the 11 (too big) or the size 10.5 (too small). I chose to go with the 10.5. However, this left me with a problem, because I would go down as the instructions indicated from 10.5 to 10 to 9 to 8. But I didn't get guage with the 8, I got guage with the 9, so I need to end up with the 9.

I settled this by skipping one of the needle jumps. In the original pattern, you're only using the size 8 needles for three rows before you switch to the 7. So I just stopped decreasing the needle size when I got to the nine. If those three rows screw my guage so bad that my sweater doesn't fit...then I was doomed from the start.

Measurements on the cowl actually look pretty good; they don't exactly match the schematic but it's close. And, I figure there is at least a little wiggle room on the cowl, because it's the same size for all sizes of the sweater. Since there are at least three sizes larger than the size I'm knitting, and the cowl has to fit all three of those sizes, I'm thinking that I'm probably okay even if I'm a half-inch or an inch off (I think it's a half-inch, but I'm acknowledging possible optimism in my attempts to measure).

I was rather amused, because as I was knitting on this, my beloved SO was playing a video game on the couch next to me. Every time he looked over he would express surprise over how much bigger my project had gotten since the last time he looked. I had to laugh, because this is totally a function of guage. I rarely knit with anything heavier than fingering weight, or so it seems, and so this worsted-weight sweater appeared to be going at lightening speed.

I also worked on on my Phoenix Rising shawl, and here's where I'm really sorry I don't have a picture, because my love for this project cannot be described in words. The colorway I'm using is absolutely PERFECT for this shawl. It's very busy, but it truly does look like something going up in flames. The lace pattern is simple enough that the busyness doesn't really detract from it, and because of the way it slants back and forth, it truly looks like tongues of flame. The beads in the center pattern are somewhat obscured by the color changes, but they glint just like little sparks going up the center of a campfire, and the dimond pattern gives the impression of that swirling motion perfectly. LOVE. IT. It appeals to my artistic little soul.

I finished the 3 repeats out of 5 of the main chart. When I have multiple repeats to do for something, I always like to get past the halfway mark as fast as possible, becuase it's easier to maintain motivation when you're on the downhill slide. The flow of the pattern is actually pretty intuitive, so it's (fairly) easy to catch myself when I make a mistake.

We're going to the beach this weekend and we have a 10 hour (!!!) drive ahead of us. I will probably be required to drive for some portion of this trip, but I expect to have at least five hours of good knitting time there and back, plus whatever time I have at the beach. Normally I would not take a beaded project as car knitting, but because the amount of beading in this project is really quite small, I might take the chance. At the least, I will probably take it and some backup knitting in case I find it doesn't work out.

I'm also thinking it's time to get some socks going. I kind of gave up socks for the summer. I think this was mostly because I was knitting charity washcloths for a summer project, and washcloth knitting took the place of most of my sock knitting. I also haven't been carrying my knitting around as much since I switched out of my Jordana Paige bags and into my smaller summer purse. I'm not sure what else to take. It's not really cold enough to make carting a sweater around desirable. I'll have to put some thought into this. I don't want to go on vacation and run out of knitting!!! Especially not before the car ride back...no one wants that.

Sweater Woes

Well. Clearly I shouldn't have vowed not to post until I could come back and say that Veronique was blocked and seamed, because it didn't get done that weekend as I had anticipated. True to my word - no blog post last week. Sorry about that.

I did block it that weekend, but when I pinned it together to seam it, it became apparent to me that I had indulged in some reckless optimism as to the length of the second half. It fell at least an inch short. Don't ask me how I looked at it and said "sure, it matches" because all I can figure is that I was sick and tired of knitting stockinette in laceweight mohair and therefore, in the interests of sanity, declared myself done early.

So I unpinned it and this weekend I knitted the extra rows I needed and seamed it. The seaming wasn't as painful as I thought it was going to be, and I think I did a reasonably good job. I tried it on and decided I didn't need it to be much bigger than it was, so I knitted as few extra rows and did the bind off. Now all that remains to be done is the sleeves.

One problem, though. I...don't like it very much. I'm hoping that some of the problems I have with it will work out once I have knitted the sleeves and blocked the whole thing one more time, but I'm just not a fan. The sleeves are my big worry. They just don't look or feel like they're in the right place. Part of this is because of the garment itself - the shrug is basically a circle with sleeves. My hope is that once I take out the provisional cast on and knit the sleeves, they will orient themselves properly and the weird fold of fabric I'm expriencing at the front of the shrug will go away. It may be (and I hope it is) that the cotton I used for the provisional cast on can't move or stretch very well, and that's why things look odd. But I'm not sure, and let me tell you, nothing sucks the motivation out of a project like the fear that you are not going to like the end result.

I do think if I were going to knit it again, I would go up a needle size. The fabric seems denser than it should be to me, which probably also contributes to the chunkyness I feel when I put it on. Again, I'm hoping that blocking will help. I didn't really stretch it last time but I may have to, in order to open it up a little more. Of course, amount of stretching possible will now be limited because of the seams, but whatever - I'll worry about it when the sleeves are done.

Speaking of sleeves, I have been working on the sleeves of the featherweight cardigan, but not very much. Sleeves are boring. And frankly, I'm not sure how much I'm going to love the end result on this one, either. There's nothing wrong with the design, I just think that maybe the bind-offs I did on the collar and the hem that I thought were plenty loose, may not actually be all that loose. I worry. I'm a worrier. I really should just suck it up and finish the sleeves so that I can like it or not and move on with my knitting life. It is a little disheartening, though, to think that I'm unhappy with all three sweaters I have knitted. I'm excited to start Simone and I'm really hoping it will break my crappy sweater trend.

When I blocked and measured my swatch, it turned out that I hadn't gotten guage on either needle size. The recommended needle size is 7. I swatched 7 and 8, and my guage was too tight on both. Since neither panned out, I knit a third swatch, this time with a 9. Wash, block, measure. This time my guage was huge. I couldn't understand it, especially since I had measured before washing and I was right on. And I wasn't off by a little, I was off by two whole stitches. Then I thought for a second, and gave my swatch a vertical tug. Problem solved. Gauge was perfect. See, when I knit the first swatch, I made it very generous. This second swatch I cast on the same number of stitches, and I knit until I ran out of yarn in my swatching ball, which gave me a swatch that was wider than it was tall. When I blocked it, I just laid it flat and patted it into shape - by smoothing it width-wise. I think if I had smoothed it vertically instead, I would have still had guage. This sweater will hang vertically on my body, therefore I deem the vertically stressed number to be more accurate than the horizontally stressed number. Therefore, I'm not knitting another stinkin' swatch.

Of course, because I am me, I haven't gone all this time without starting another lace project. I'm working on Phoenix Rising in Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace. The color is called Maple Grove, but it absolutely looks like flames to me. I picked the perfect firey beads to go with it and I'm in that wonderful phase at the beginning of the project where the rows are really short and so it feels like you are absolutely flying through the charts. Hopefully I'll have a post with pictures next week, it just turned out when I went to upload that I hadn't taken pictures of any of the things I thought I would, so I'll have to fix that before the next post.