On a roll

I finished Fiori this weekend! As usual, FO pictures will come at the end of this post, but I'm feeling pretty good. This is shawl number 4 for the 11 in 2011 challenge, which makes me feel like I'm ahead of the game. I've been aiming to finish about one shawl per month to make the goal, and this is the second one I've finished this month, so I have a little bit of a buffer now. I'm not resting on my laurels, though. I know myself well enough to fully expect I will need that buffer before this whole shebang is over. But, I am nearly done with the Prayers of Love shawl I was working on for my charity knitting group, and I'm at the halfway point of the second Taygete shawl I was working on, the blue one made of the souvenir yarn. I think I may try to finish the Prayers shawl this week, and though it's made from a worsted weight yarn, I am well over the minimum yardage requirement at this point so it will count towards the challenge.

Meanwhile, with Fiori off the needles, I finally cast on for the January Pins & Lace pattern, Spanish Moss.



The yarn is Yarn Chef Spun Sugar in Wild Sage. It's really beautiful stuff. I couldn't find my crochet cotton so I used some leftover yarn from my Taygete to do the provisional cast on, and it goes so nicely with the Wild Sage! I've only got about two and a half repeats done out of 28, but I keep stopping to admire it. I know, I know, I always say I won't knit things with 8 billion repeats, but I can't help it. It's pretty. And you know how I like to knit rectangles after a long stretch of knitting huge things.

This also has the honor of being the first project I knit on my new Signature Needles. They were a valentine's day gift and I haven't had the chance to use them much, since I didn't want to change needles on anything in mid-project. I really enjoy working with them. I have the stiletto tips and while I was thrilled about the pointiness, I was a bit worried the longer taper was going to make my knitting even tighter (trust me, I do not need help knitting tightly). But, because of the way I knit I don't think it's actually going to be much of a problem. My stitches are definitely falling securely on the body of the needle, and not just on the tip.

My poor Sea Turtles shawl design has really been languishing. I still plan to get to it, I just got stalled a bit with some road blocks and really, I am feeling so satisfied with all my other projects that it may just take me a little while to get back around to it.

I also have some new deadlines to worry about.



We're going on vacation to Alaska in May, and I'm so excited about it. I've wanted to go to Alaska for ages and I'm really thrilled to finally be getting the chance to go. Since I was so happy with my Yellowstone Shawl project, I decided I needed some vacation knitting for Alaska as well so I could end up with similar memories.

The four yarns above will become my Alaska shawl. I went for Handmaiden/Fleece artist yarns again, but this time I got FA Merino 2/6 instead of the Handmaiden Casbah. I love the Casbah but it is pretty pricey and I don't want to spend all my trip money before I even get there. From left to right the colorways are Aurora, Forest, Glacier, and Ocean.

For the pattern, I plan to use the North Star motif from Arctic Lace as the center panel for a sort of Faroese shape. I'm planning to make the whole thing in garter stitch, so I have to swatch the motif and see if I like it in garter stitch, or if I'm going to have to change my plan and either make the center panel in stockinette, or do the whole shawl in stockinette. I liked having nothing but garter stitch to knit for the Yellowstone shawl because it meant I could knit away without having to look at what I was doing, so even though I was knitting through the whole trip, I didn't miss anything. I was also able to knit while doing my pre-trip reading, which I plan to do again.

I'm complicating things a little on this shawl by adding in this north star motif, but I think it's worth it. The center panel won't be all that wide, so I won't have to pay attention for very long at a time. There's also a large version and a smaller version of the motif, so I will need to see which one I prefer for this project. If possible I think it would be awesome to get some fingering weight quiviut to edge the shawl with, but that may be too much to ask. We'll see.

I'm not sure exactly when I'll get started on that. I'll probably do the swatching fairly soon, but I'm going to wait until April at least to get started on the shawl proper. I want to have plenty of knitting still to do when we go on our trip, which won't be until towards the end of May.

And now, may I present, Fiori.



Someone asked me on Ravelry whether the yarn was truly as golden as it looks in the picture. I think it is, and it isn't - if you look at the preblocking picture, it's definitely yellow.



But, stretched out and with the light from the flash reflected off it, it certainly does look gold. I'm expecting the end result to be a sort of combination of the two - it will be more golden than in its unblocked picture since it will be more sheer, but only where the light hits it at the right angle will it really look as gold as it does in the picture.



Happy sigh. It will make a lovely spring shawl, if only spring would make up its mind to hurry up and get here! I'm already thinking through my wardrobe to figure out what I can wear under it.



The end result is about six feet wide and maybe a little over 3 feet tall.



I've wanted to make this shawl for ages, it seems like, and the end result has surely been worth the wait! I can't wait to unpin it and see how it looks up off my drab grey blocking mats. They don't seem to play nice with the camera, so I will definitely be back with more pictures when it's dry and unpinned.

Derailed

I planned to finish my charity shawl on Friday night.



Still not done, although it is much farther along than this picture shows. Somehow it got left out of my usual Sunday night photoshoot. There are now 7 hearts in the spine panel, leaving me with only the edging chart to do - one last row of hearts that goes across the entire bottomof the shawl as well as the spine. It's something along the lines of 30 rows. The group meets tomorrow, which means that if I really cranked tonight, I might be able to complete it - but I probably wouldn't have time for blocking & finishing. I feel a little bad, because I probalby could have finished it over the weekend if I'd tried, but - I had other plans. Not that those plans turned out to matter.

You see, I planned to finish Fiori this weekend, but instead I spent a large amount of time on Saturday working on this.





This is a second Taygete that I'm knitting out of Mirasol Tupa in Sapphire and Viridian. The rows on Fiori are so long, that I became convinced that my quest to finish it this weekend was futile, which depressed me and made me avoid it. Even though I have a billion things I want to knit and even though I have been working so hard to get some things off the needles, I hauled off and cast on anyway, and then I just couldn't stop. Romi provides a percentage system in the pattern for sizing, making it easy to sub yarn weights. Tupa is a DK weight and I'm knitting it on size 6 needles because - well, those were the only ones I could find. I may try to switch up at the lace section but for the garter the sixes are working fine. As of this picture, I have about 10 more grams to use up before I switch to the decrease side. I may use a little less, just to be safe, but I'm not too worried. I'm more concerned about the colors. This is souvenir yarn I bought at the beach during our vacation last October, and I had wanted to use the turquoise (it's officially sapphire but it looks turquoise to me) as the main color, but the viridian has been so totally overwhelmed by the turquoise, that I think I'm going to do the lace in the viridian in an effort to balance things out. The viridian is a weird color - depending on the light, it looks dark blue, grey, or purple. I love this about it and want it to show up more and I think using it for the lace will really help. Using the turqouise for the picot may bring it back into the limelight somewhat, but I don't think I'll mind. I am still, after all, shooting for a brighter shawl than the last one.

Sunday, I reconciled with Fiori and got this far.



This is about halfway through chart H (maybe just a bit shy of it - I can't remember). I'm impressed that I got so far and it makes me kind of annoyed that I gave up so easily on Saturday. I might not have FINISHED if I had kept working on Saturday, but I probably would have got through chart H and then there's only one chart to go. Sadly, I'm a bit booked up this week, but I fully expect to be done with this next weekend. (Wait. What was that. Did anyone else hear the sound of doom at those words?)

I'm exicted, Fiori is a big shawl and I will feel so accomplished to be finished with it. It's so beautiful, and in such a springy color, that I'm just going to die of happiness when it's done. The Man has instructions as to how to distribute my stash, just in case.

I planned to share my blocked Taygete earlier this week, but though I blocked it, I didn't get around to photographing it until yesterday.



It's 7 feet in wingspan, and something like two feet along the spine.



This caused me some issues in photographing it. It was a challenge to get all of it in the frame without showing too much of my messy house. The ant trap is a seasonal feature. This is right about the time they show up every spring, and now that I have no pets to worry about, I can put out the traps with impunity. They smell like peanut butter. Ella persisted in finding them even when I wedged them under the couch to try and keep them out of her reach. I had to resort to squashing every ant I saw and let me tell you, that is a time-consuming process and not at all good for one's shoes. I tried using black pepper once, but that didn't end well. It worked okay, but cleaning it up later was a total disaster.

But I digress.





The observant among you may note that this stitch pattern is the same one I showed in my sea turtle swatch before.



Clearly Romi and I are soulmates.



Many thanks to The Man for his photographic assistance. I assure you, I am just as tired as I look in these photos. I didn't do much else for the rest of the day. DST is not my friend.

Behaving

I located the little towel from my last post and finished it.



It's the broken checkerboard pattern from the Vogue Knitting lace stitchionary with the daisy chain edging from the same book.



When I saw how much yarn I had left I was tempted to continue knitting it, but I just finished out the repeat I was on, added the edging, and put the rest of the yarn aside. I might have enough to make a small washcloth to go with it. But I feel better being able to mark this project as completed!

I finished Taygete. That's shawl #3 for 11 in 2011! It needs blocking, which I didn't get around to this weekend, but it's done done done.







Sorry, my fingernail polish clashes with the shawl terribly, doesn't it! It's not that neon in person, I promise, and it's more hot pink than orange (the polish, not the shawl, though the shawl is also not orange).

I moaned about the picot border but it was actually kind of fun, and it's easy to see your progress, which I like. Plus there are lots of little small goals to achieve - okay, I've made it to the center point! Okay, I've made it to the next corner! All that's left is the top edge! I left my safety pin markers in the center stitch on both the point and the long edge, so I was able to note when I passed the halfway mark of the top edge as well. It took me The Devil Wears Prada to get the first two sides done and then I finished the third while watching some episodes of Big Cat Diary. Love that show - if you have Netflix it's available on Instant Play.

I have been very faithful to David's scarf as my lunch and travel knitting, so progress is being made there too.



It's about 3 feet long and stalled, since I left it somewhere on Thursday and will have to go back for it.

I spent most of my knitting time working on the long neglected Fiori.



I am unreasonably amused by the egg crate texture on the back of the shawl right now.



Hee hee.

I'm halfway through my fourth repeat of Chart E. The pattern calls for 5 repeats, but I think I'm going to stop at 4. I like my shawls generously sized but the photos I have seen of completed Fiori's make me think I will be perfectly fine with 4 repeats. I'm also using less yarn than the pattern calls for, so that gives me extra incentive to stop early. I almost never knit things to the smaller options - given the choice between shawlette and shawl I feel like a wuss if I don't go for shawl - but I'm going to grit my teeth and make an exception this time. I'm hoping I can finish the last half of this repeat tonight so that I can go on to the next one and hopefully have something more interesting to show this time.

I feel quite virtuous, having stuck to my commitment to get some WIPs off the list before casting on for the sixteen million other things I want to knit. Once Fiori is finished I think I will be justified in casting on for Spanish Moss, which I would really like to get moving on before the April pattern comes out!!

The one thing I have not made any progress on, however, is my Sea Turtle Shawl design. I worked out the charts for the triangle patterns several weeks ago but I just haven't wanted to knit it. I've been a little frustrated with the yarn I had and so I haven't done my triangular swatch.

But, WEBS had a sale on Jaggerspun Zephyr this week and I got this.



It's, um...orange. The label says copper, but yeah - I pointed it out to David while it was lying on the ottoman amongst a pile of other yarn and he said, "The orange one?"

I keep telling myself this is okay because a) if you really screw with your camera filters sand is almost orange, right? okay, in the desert, not in the ocean, which is where turtles live, BUT IT'S STILL SAND OKAY b) Zephyr is a really common yarn that isn't hard to find and can be found at an economical price, so if I put the pattern out for sale eventually as I hope to do, people will not go crazy looking for this yarn c) it was on sale so I was able to get enough that I can comfortably swatch the yarn AND knit the shawl without worrying about running out of yarn.

But it is not really okay. I don't like it for this shawl (although I think it would make a great Tibetan Clouds shawl, so it won't go to waste at all). I AM going to use it to swatch, though, so I can decide if I like Zephyr for this project, and if I do I will look at maybe Mushroom or Suede instead.

It may be a little silly to fret this much about it, but I don't want to hate knitting the design because I don't care for the color, so I'd rather do what it takes to make sure I like it.

The non-lace items on my WIP list haven't gotten much love, I'm afraid, and they're all kind of a long way from completion so I don't have as much 'finish it up' motivation. I do think I need to find them all and put them where I can get to them easily so I can work on them when the mood strikes me. I have the Umaro blanket next to my bed and I'm working a row or two on it in the evenings, after I go upstairs but before I really settle down to sleep. I bet if I really put my mind to it I could finish the Simone sweater in a couple of weeks of faithful knitting, but that would mean putting down the lace. DON'T TAKE MY LACE NOOO. Besides...the weather is warming up and I probably won't get to wear it this year at this point. No need to hurry.

I still have Galadriel's mirror sitting here, barely started, and I'm undecided as to what to do about that. Should that be my priority when I finish Fiori? Or should I go ahead and get started on the In Dreams mystery shawl? I'm now three very heavily beaded clues behind. I've been looking at spoiler pictures and they're all absolutely stunning (you can check out Pink Lemon Knits, she's working on one) but oi...the beads.

Really, these two are not mutually exclusive, one being beaded and laceweight and the other one being nonbeaded and fingering weight, so I'm comfortable working both of them at once. I'll have Spanish Moss as my nonbeaded easy peasy laceweight shawl and between the three of them I should have my lace knitting bases covered, but not overwhelmed.

Of course, there is Asterope, the next installment in the 7 Small Shawls book, but those have been such fun, speedy knits, I'm not really worried about it. When it comes out I will drop everything I'm working on like a hot rock, knit merrily through it with the rest of the Rominettes on the Rav board, and then go back to what I was doing as if nothing happened.

Of a Tuesday

I always try to post on Mondays because I usually make the most progress over the weekend, but I just needed an extra day to recover from my marathon of a weekend. Lots going on, not all of it knitting related. I've noticed lots of familiar faces from the Romi Designs Rav Group showing up on the blog - hi guys!! Much love to all my readers. It makes my day when comments pop up. For a long time it felt like I was just talking to the ether, and now there are real people out there!

But that's not what you came here for, right? On to the actual content.

I met Romi!!!!!



I am thrilled to report that she is as sweet and intelligent in person as she is on the internet. I took Romi's Shapely Shawl class on Saturday morning at Eleganza Yarn's Indie Artist Celebration. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot, and I can't wait to have a few minutes to study the handout, too. It has a list of additional resources that I will be excited to check out. If I ever manage to get my Sea Turtle Shawl designed, then I do plan to look at some of these other shapes for any future designs. I loved that Romi does not limit herself rigidly to working only with stitch patterns that fit into what she wants to do - if the shape and stitch pattern don't necessarily work together, she fixes it so that they do. I hope I have that kind of confidence some day. I will never have that kind of math skill, but I have Resources. Which is to say, I will make my man do the math for me, or at least check that I did mine correctly. I COULD figure it out eventually on my own (it's not that the little wimmins cain't handle them big numbers), but as he likes math and I don't, it works out just fine this way.

I also met lots of nifty people, some of whom I already knew from the Rav boards, and some that I didn't know at all. It was tons of fun. However, I am exactly as tired as I look in that picture. It had been a long week and Saturday was an early start. Totally worth it, though.

There was a market with Indie artists, with a large variety of stuff available (but only a few things I was really interested in - I'm picky). I bought yarn. There should be a photo here, but I forgot. That happened a lot this weekend. I carted my heavy camera around all day and I think I used it...once. If that. I bought a skein of yarn in a colorway called Minister of Magic, and it is one of the sparkly yarns with silver in it that I have seen used so beautifully elsewhere. I think, after some searching, that it was from Shelby B's Designs.

I also bought a skein of sock yarn from Wild Hare in colors I never buy. It's sort of a pinky yellow orange melon mix. It looks delicious, it makes me think of pink lemonade and other yummy summer drinks (Jeanne, I want you to know that my selection of this skein is entirely your fault). I feel like I have been in a color rut lately, working mostly with dark and muted colors, so I am trying to get a little bit out of my comfort zone and get some brighter tones to mix in. I think it's the influence of February. I'm tired of winter wet and dreariness and as beautiful as my yarns are, they are just not lightening my mood enough. This skein is definitely out of my comfort zone but it made me giggle, so into my bag it went.

I really wavered on a couple of other things but my yarn budget is limited (my car tires didn't pass inspection and unexpectedly had to be replaced, and I wept) and I don't really *need* anything at the moment, so I tried to be restrained.

I cast on Bitterroot in Romi's class with a mohair blend yarn from Kid Hollow Farms that I bought at MD Sheep and Wool a few years ago, but I didn't get very far before I decided that I just wasn't feeling it. I love the Bitterroot design and it's been on my 'to-knit' list for ages, but I just didn't like it in the yarn, and to be honest I liked Romi's sportweight sample so much I am thinking about trying it in something heavier. I ended up putting it away and pulling out Taygete to work some more on it.

I've been working pretty faithfully on Taygete. You see, there's this thing about knitting - when you work on something, it gets finished. Since I'm feeling a little bit of WIP overload, I'm concentrating on finishing some things, which means working on one thing at a time until it's checked off the list. It's been really easy with this project since it's so much fun (I know, I know, there were mistakes, there was ripping, there was fudging, but I'm still having fun). Last night I realized when I went to take a picture of my progress that I had made a slight tactical error. I finished the lace portion on Sunday, and then I spent yesterday picking up the stitches around the edge. The problem is, I didn't take a picture before I started doing that, and now that I have the edges all picked up and I am, essentially, working in the round, it's impossible to unscrunch the things on my needles so that you can see what it actually looks like.



Oops. I guess you will have to wait for the grand reveal when the whole thing is done. All I have to do is the picot bind off.



Yeah...that might take a while. This will be my third shawl for 2011. I have sort of had the mindset that I need to finish one shawl per month in order to make the 11 in 2011 goal (that leaves me a little wiggle room at the end of the year), so I feel quite ahead to have the March shawl finished this early (I mean, it's not done yet, but hopefully it will be done by the end of this week.

I plan to focus on Fiori next in my effort to reduce my WIP numbers. Although it has not escaped my attention that Spanish Moss would be a much faster knit...

I have been a little obsessed with Alaska lately, I would dearly love to visit there, and at the beginning of the year I got an Alaska calendar to hang on the cube in my office. For the last month I've been looking at this:



And now today, I turned over the March page, and I'm looking at this.



Ahhhhhh...much better. (The first picture is Barry Glacier in Prince William Sound, the second is from Harbor Mountain in Sitka Sound.)

Spring is coming (soon to be followed by the oh please kill me now heat of summer, but I'm still looking forward to spring, however brief its visit).

The Effect of Social Knitting on My Project List

Otherwise known as, How I Got Into This Mess. This WIP report brought to you by peer pressure. If you can call it peer pressure when really it's just that you can't stand to see other people have fun without you.

1. Taygete

I have dropped everything every time one of the 7 Small shawls series was released, and this one is no exception. I don't mind so much, as these are mostly quick knits in sock weight yarn and are a great relief from lots of big lace projects. But, let's face it, I started it because I didn't want to be left out. If you're knitting these shawls and you're not on the @Romi's Studio group on Ravelry, you're missing out. We're having so much fun.

2. Umaro blanket

I'm knitting this one because the yarn was a great deal and one of the few knitters I know IRL is knitting it too. I've been neglecting it for some of the other things, so she is now way ahead of me. Since she intends to knit two, I figure I am still ahead if you look at percentage complete. Not that anyone's counting.

3. Fiori di Sole

I've been planning to knit this one for ages, but I started it because others in the Romi group were working on it, and as they've left me far behind, it's languished in favor of projects that I could giggle over with others.

4. Galadriel's Mirror

Okay, I have no one to blame for this one but myself. I knew I was too busy to knit it but I cast on anyway. Now it's sitting there with cable caps on because I needed the needle tips for Taygete.

5. Prayers of Love Shawl

Started for charity knitting group. Had immense fun at the group. Group only meets once a month. Therefore, it languishes. Bad knitter.

6. Simone

Poor Simone. It's a lovely sweater, not hard, enjoyable to work on. And I've dropped it like a hot rock for all these lacy shawls and social projects. It's going to be totally useless within the next month, as it will be far too warm for spring wear. Hopefully I can finish it in time for next year.

7 & 8. Socks

I have two pairs of socks OTN, one for me and one for my honey. Unfortunately I hate the yarn I'm using for his and I'm not sure I will ever finish them. I may frog them and hide the yarn in the corner of my closet that I hope the moths go for first.

9. #2 of the matching set, the scarf.

Slowly but steadily making progress on this one. It's my carry-around project. It grows at an impressive speed when I work on it, but given that it's a scarf, it still takes forever.

10. Cotton Towel
I could finish this in a day if I could find it. I just knit it as a little something to try out my new stitch dictionaries, and then I got to where I needed to put the second end edging on it, and put it down, and I just haven't gotten back to it. If I can find the stupid thing I may just go ahead and cast off without edging the other side. It'll make me feel good to mark it as done.

11. Follow the Leader Shawl

Does anybody even remember this?



I marked it as frogged, though I haven't actually done it yet. I need to just face it up and admit that I hate the color of this yarn. Anybody want to take it off my hands? It's Rio de la Plata sock yarn in Paris Rain from the Yarn Market Impressionist series. I have two skeins (one obviously already wound and partially knit from, the other in the skein). I'll send it to anybody who wants it, so for the love of wool, please liberate me from it. I would much rather see it go to a good home than have it hanging around my house like the proverbial albatross. In fact, I should really cull my closet and find a way to foist all my other bad decisions on others.

12. Sea Turtle Shawl Design

My design class shawl is obviously going to be a longer-term project since I have to do more than, you know, knit it. Right now, I am having issues because I'm just not enjoying the yarn. I'm trying to decide what I should use instead, and nothing is really striking me. I like the sandy color of the yarn, rather than the more traditional green color that everyone seems to like for turtles (if you look at the pictures - they're not really all that green), but I guess I'm open to more tropical colors. I want something that's not too dark or too variegated so that the lace will show up. I don't think I want to use 100% silk. I'd love to use Handmaiden Seasilk or something similar, but I haven't really found a Handmaiden color that I like (plus, $$$) and it seems like not that many people carry seacell blends. I was thinking maybe about Schaefer Audrey, I really enjoyed knitting with that, but I'd like to have two skeins just in case I needed the second, and that makes it a little pricey, though I do like their Almond color. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has them.

That's TWELVE active projects (Well, 11, since I have decided to frog the one, but as I will be casting on Bitterroot for my CLASS WITH ROMI on Satuday, we might as well stick with twelve). And I haven't even started the In Dreams shawl. That is a huge number of WIPs for me. And I do not like it. Clearly I need to quit my job and become a knitting hermit so that I can accomplish all that is set before me. I will wall myself up in a little cell and you can pass me yarn and pizza through a tiny window.

Fudge

As usual, business first, fun second. I have been working along on Taygete and let me tell you, it has become clear that she does not love me as much as I love her. If I were the Yarn Harlot I would have a bunch of pictures to go along with my tales of woe - pictures of piles of spaghetti yarn, pics that show how high I soared, and then how low I was forced to go. But I am not the YH and I do not have the self-control to stop in the middle of my agony to document it through photography, so my tale of woe is entirely text based, up until the happy - well, middle. It might be nearer the ending if there was less woe.

As you recall, I made a happy start on Taygete last Monday when it was announced, and though work and life interfered and slowed my progress to a stall. I was full of happiness and enthusiasm, for what I would do with this wonderful, wonderful shawl.

I was slightly confused, however, because the pattern uses YO increases on contrasting colors for the shaping, and Romi's instructions for what to do at the end of this triangle contain the following:
Note: loops formed along the shaped edge of the shawl will be in MC, although the YOs have been worked in CC. The loops do not fall directly below MC rows.

My loops were clearly in my contrast color, but for some reason, I paid no attention and kept on going.

Then someone made a post on the forum that stopped me in my tracks. I didn't think much about that actual post, but it led to a discussion that revealed to me that despite the fact that Romi's instructions very clearly say to knit the first CC row and then increase on the second CC row - I had been doing exactly the opposite. Therefore, my YO increases were on the wrong side of the shawl.

Now, I am sure there was a way around this. I am sure that this situation could be fudged. There is only one problem.

I do not fudge. A fudged shawl is a shawl I will not wear, or even look at. A fudged shawl fills me with the rage of a thousand suns. I do not fudge. I frog.

And frog I did. The shawl starts at only a few stitches, and I had increased up into the mid-40's, but I frogged it anyway. I was pretty good humored about it. I had no one to blame but myself. It's simple garter stitch anyway, no big deal. I discovered this on Friday, so I had all day Saturday to make up ground. I'd be past that spot in no time, right?

So I knit merrily along and I was doing really well, back up into the low 40s. I was quite satisfied with myself, it wasn't even noon yet, and I was thinking about putting Taygete down when I got back to where I had been, and spending some time on the sadly neglected Fiori, when someone else posted a question to the Rav forum about the number of stripes v. the number of stitches you should have on the needles at any given time. Seemed like an easy thing to figure out, so I did the math. Already embarrassed by my previous foible, I went back to count my stripes and make sure that the answer I was giving her was correct and there, way down at the tip of my shawl, I saw - two sets of CC ridges in a row. My CC and my MC are so similar in this shawl that I have gotten confused a couple of times, but I thought I had already caught them all. Not so. I frogged again (this time with less laughter and more grumbling). This took me back down into the low twenties.

I knit like a woman obsessed, determined that this simple little garter stitch shawl was not going to beat me, not going to be the boss of me. I knit and I knit and I knit and I finally got back up to where I had been. Then I had dinner, took a break to block Sevillano (more on that in a moment), and sat back down, thinking I might be able to make it to the center point of the shawl before bedtime.

This proved to be a slightly ambitious goal. I had just decided to give in for the night when I stopped and counted my stitches and my stripes. Then I counted again. Then I gave them to my boyfriend and made him count. There was no escaping the sad mathematical truth. I had one too many stitches on the needles.

Absolutely floored, I stopped and looked at the shawl, desperately seeking the traitorous little yarnover that must have slipped in there somewhere, wondering if it was somewhere where I could just drop it or if I was going to have to frog back again. And there was...nothing. absolutely nothing. I could see no stitch out of place. Everything looked fine. Nothing stuck out. I couldn't find anything. Finally, waaaaay down the shawl, about the length of my hand up from the tip (the entire shawl being about the length of my forearm at this point and wider than the length of my hand), I saw a little jog, just a teeny little kick out in the previously straight line that was the non-increase side of the shawl. I felt a sinking in my stomach. I was sure that was it. I inspected the stitches and the row closely and came up with nothing. I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't see the extra stitch.

I went to bed. A few hours later, I got up and I went downstairs and I picked it up and looked at it again, and there, in the dark of the night, I made a decision.

I will fudge.

This shawl's construction makes it very important that you have the right number of rows. The right number of stitches isn't that important. I decided to continue, since there was no problem with my rows, and somewhere on the other side of the shawl I will just randomly decrease an extra stitch. The little jog from the addition/subtraction of the extra stitch will not be noticeable in the finished, blocked product (and probably really isn't noticeable now, except to me and the people I keep obsessively pointing it out to, and let's face it - they don't care). I mean, really - can you see it?



It's on the right hand edge of the shawl. I'm sure you can, now that I've said something about it, but otherwise, you totally wouldn't know. (Lie to me people. I'm a woman on the edge.)

I think part of the reason I'm having issues with this shawl is that the colors I picked match a little too well. Though they are distinctly different when separate, there is pink in the purple and purple in the pink, and as you can see from the picture below, there are times when they stand out significantly, and times when they blur together. I've decided I like the effect, though, it looks kind of antiqued. Not as graphic as the people who are doing more solid, heavier contrasting colors, but I've always been a low-contrast kind of person (I present as evidence - just about every beaded item I've ever knit).



It's very humbling to get my butt kicked by this simple little garter stitch shawl that I should be able to knit in my sleep. Fortunately, I now have this to remind me that I do not actually suck at knitting.









Pattern is, of course, Sevillano from Romi's pins and lace club - now available to the public for purchase!. Yarn is Schaefer Andrea in colorway Barbara McClintock. This was a match made in heaven - couldn't have been more perfect! I did two extra repeats of Chart D and had about 26 g of the yarn left over.

Oh, the Knits You Can Knit

You guys. I'm having so much fun. Romi's 5th Small Shawl, Taygete, is out and it's a blast. You remember, I got this yarn last year in anticipation of the shawl release. It took a little longer than we expected for the release because Romi wanted to make sure she got the sizing instructions right, and we finally got the pattern on Valentine's Day. Despite the fact that I already have way too much going on, I started. I can't stand to be left out.



That's a crappy iPhone pic, I know. Colors are truer in this pic:



So just kind of use your imagination to merge the two.

I love this pattern. I normally hate stripes, but that's usually because I hate weaving in ends. No ends here! This is a two row stripe pattern so you actually carry the yarn up the sides of the shawl. Romi uses yarnovers at one end of the rows to increase and make the triangle. Those yarnover loops will be picked up later to knit the lace border. I HATE picking up stitches and I love that Romi has included this detail to make the picking up part absolutely painless.

And, here's the best part, to my mind - this thing is never more than 70 or 80 stitches wide. No huge long rows (at least, not until you get to the lace part)!! I'm so excited about this I can't stand it. I hardly ever knit anything twice but unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong, I think Taygete may be my go-to pattern when I need a quick gift for somebody.

I was thinking, too, that it would be awesome to get a skein of black sock yarn and a skein of Noro sock yarn and stripe those - wouldn't that just look fab?? Oh! Oh! I think I have some mini-mochi in my stash!! Oh, the possibilities!!

I love getting jazzed about a new project - even though I have a bajillion things on the needles. In fact, I started a new shawl last night for my charity knitting group. Somewhere I have a simple shawl that's almost finished, but I couldn't find it yesterday, so I just grabbed a bag of charity yarn, printed out a free shawl pattern (rav link), and threw my needle binder in my bag. But, I have so many things on the needles that I didn't have any needle tips in the right size available! I needed 9's and all I had was 8's and 10.5's. I cringed a little but went with the 8's, figuring the 10.5's would be overkill. Anyway, it's a cute, fun knit in worsted weight and I vow I will finish it by the next meeting in March. I go, I knit, but I never actually finish anything, because I am a selfish, selfish little knitter. Maybe I can make a few dozen Taygetes to donate!!