Exciting knitting

I have a lot on the needles right now. So much for my resolution to have 2 things on the go at any one time - a lace project and a sock project. But I'm really enjoying almost everything I'm working on, with the exception of the test knitting project. The yarn for that is simply awful, and I am getting to the point where I simply can't work on it. I really should just frog the whole thing and start over in a different yarn - something animal instead of vegetable this time. Warning: doing cables with very splitty yarn is not a good idea! Said splitty yarn is very gorgeous however, so  I've been using it for other things. I decided to try it out crocheting, and found it to be surprisingly easy to work with. I actually finished this scarf, called Queen Anne's Lace (ravelry link) at the beginning of April, and was so pleased with it that I'm considering making another. I have enough yarn for it, certainly. It reminds me of ocean waves, with the blues and the greys seeming to crest together.

But I digress. What I'm really enjoying making is my second pair of socks, after the first turned out so well. I've chosen a pattern from Knitty called Spring Forward, a lacy sock that is proving easy and fast to knit. I'm breaking one of my sock rules and using a luxury yarn - merino and silk - with no nylon in it. Nylon is supposed to make the sock wear better and last longer. Heaven only knows how well these socks will wear, but I'm really enjoying making them. Pictures to come later, when I'm done with one of them.

Another surprise on my needles was a KAL called Morganna. It's a shawl designed by an Irish woman, and I bought the pattern as part of a charity drive to raise money for the Japanese disaster. It's a little slow going, since the rows are over 300 stitches long and there is cabling involved, but I love the yarn, a Blue Faced Leicester. It's a little darker than the picture shows, and will make a lovely shawl.

I'm making a long visit to my parents' home starting next month, and have planned out what I will be taking. I've put the patterns on my new Kindle, for ease of having them all in one place without papers getting all messed up while travelling. The Kindle is great for that kind of thing. I have one shawlette to work on, and several pairs of socks - I'll most likely take the lace project I started awhile ago. It's a stole that's knit in the Orenburg tradition, and while it's dead easy it's going to be absolutely gorgeous. You can see, even unblocked, how intricate it's going to look. I think the cobweb yarn that I picked rather because I liked the colour and the yardage was right is going to make another impact I hadn't thought of in making it look more delicate and airy. This makes me happy.

Gee, you think I like knitting lace? Oh yeah.

Dye

I was winding a ball of yarn from http://www.thenaturaldyestudio.com/ and when I looked down at my hands after finishing, one looked like this! It was highly amusing. I was able to wash it right off; I think it's probably the bit put on to keep the dye from washing right out, since the yarn is much lighter in colour than this.

Sock!

After being stuck on how to do the heel gusset for my first sock, I asked on Saturday at my bi-monthly stitch'n'bitch session at Get Knitted. Turns out I was simply reading the directions and making them more difficult than they really were - shows how well my brain works sometimes I guess. Once I found where my error was, I was keen to get started again on it. 

Cue me sitting down and working like a mad thing on my knitting this week. I didn't sleep much at night, and one of the few things I can do in the wee hours of the morning is knit, since it's quiet. I knit so much my hands started hurting rather badly, so I would switch to crochet for awhile, and then knit some more the next day when the hands had recovered. In this way, I've got a lot of my Juliana Wrap done on the hook and have finished the first half of the socks as well. The yarn is YarnAddict Merino Plus Twist, a combination of mostly merino wool plus some nylon to give it a little durability. It's apparently the best mix for socks. The cuff is a "knit through the back of the loop, purl" rib, and I found the twisted knitting a little tricky to do considering the fuzziness of the yarn, but once I got to the main part where you knit straight, it ceased being a problem. 

I'm really, really pleased with how it turned out. There are no holes in places where holes form easily if you're not very careful, (in fact, there are no holes at all) and I even found grafting the toe with the kitchener stitch to be rather painless. Given all the moaning people do about this particular finish, I was a little hesitant to try it, but my book on socks gives a good description of how to do it, so I just followed that and figured it out in no time. 

I made the smallest size, and they're a snug fit, but they do fit, thanks mainly to the ribbing. The yarn itself has no give at all really, but I found the sock to be comfortable, and look forward to getting both complete so I can wear them. I've cast on the second one and hope to have it done in a week or so - a lot more quickly than it took me to finish the first one! 

Tons on the go

One of my favourite designers, Anniken Allis, has written a new pattern to sell for a charity she's continually raising money for called Shelterbox. She asked on her blog for test knitters, and I thought it would be a good chance to try it for myself. I volunteered, and did so in a timely enough manner that I am now an official test knitter for this new pattern. It's essentially a long scarf that will be sewn together (or can be joined with a three needle bind off at the end instead) to form a type of cowl. So that will be my top priority for the next few weeks.

Other than that, I've got a lace project going  - very slowly - that I'm really enjoying. It's simple, just yarn overs and knit two together, but knit with cobweb yarn so I have to pay close attention to what's going on. I chose the yarn to reflect the name of the pattern. As something that's supposed to look like a body of water, shades of blue seemed appropriate.

I'm also working on my first pair of socks. I've got past the heel turn, but am stuck on where to pick up stitches for the gusset. Luckily, I had the foresight to get a book on making socks that looks like it will help. All I need to do is get my brain in gear so I can figure it out.

I was given some lovely yarn by a friend at Get Knitted Knatterers, and wanted to start something immediately with it. I have enough to make something large, and chose a vest pattern that ties like a corset at the front. It's bulky yarn, so it will be a winter only thing. It's knitting up really pretty. Mostly though, I've been doing crochet. I decided I wanted to learn how to make a granny square, and so I took some yarn I got for my birthday (the blue) and the wool I got in Columbus, and went to work. This is the first of what will be many.

I also finished a cape that I made in chunky red, and took two more balls than I thought it would. A long time in the finishing, because I had to get more yarn each time, which took time.

Nupps

I have been interested in lace knitting practically since I started. At first, I thought it was the epitome of the art; something difficult to aspire to someday, when you are really, really good. And then I learned it was really easy, or could be easy, and dived right in. Then I jumped right out again, looked up how to do a yarn over, and dived back in. Really, once you have yarn overs and the various kinds of decreases down, you're set - at least, for the most part.

Follow me here as I change the subject for a moment. According to a book I'm reading, three regions of the world have put their mark on lace knitting: the Orenburg region of Russia (round about the Ural Mountains), the Shetland Islands, and a particular little town in Estonia called Haapsalu. It travelled around to other parts of the country, but this is where Estonian lace really took on the characteristics that make it some of the most beautiful and complicated lace in the world. This is where nupps come in.

"Nupp" is the word for knob or button and looks exactly that. They were originally made because the shawls were sold by weight, and the nupps added weight to the shawls, so they could be sold for more. They also show a piece of lace is handknitted, since nupps can not be duplicated by machine. They're a tricky technique to master. It involves knitting into the same stitch at least 3 times, with  yarn overs in between, and then knitting all those stitches together back into one stitch on the following row, usually a purl row. It took a bit of experimenting until I got it at all, and not all the nupps in the pattern are exactly right.
Still, I can't be more thrilled with the shawlette as a whole. After washing and blocking, the openwork lace pattern is really visible and quite stunning, and the nupps have even settled down into being little balls instead of going in every direction like some of them were after knitting. You can see them in the picture, to the left of the openwork bit in the middle. While they can be tedious to make, at least now I know how, which is good, since there are other shawls I have lined up in the near future with this same technique.

The full shawl. Click to see a bigger (centered) picture

A comedy of errors

I was in Get Knitted, my LYS, hanging out with other knitters and enjoying myself, when I spotted a sample hanging near where we were sitting. It was a shawlette that had been crocheted, and being new to crochet I jumped on it and drooled over it and ascertained that it was a free pattern if you bought the yarn, and had been designed by one of the ladies at the store. Win. So I went and looked at the pattern, which called for 5 balls of Sirdar Big Softie, and got those, and proceeded to go home that afternoon and start.

I got through the first 9 rows fine (there are 12, plus a finishing), then hit a snag. I was having trouble with the instructions for the beginning of row 10, so I decided to wait till I was next at GK, and ask there. That was over a week away, so I put it away for a bit. I took it along and got things sorted out, and then next time I went to work on it at home, I ran out of yarn.

Yeah, it called for five, but I'm going to end up using seven. Bummer. I got on the GK website and ordered some more, paying almost as much for shipping as I did for the yarn. It's cheap yarn, you see. Then I got the yarn and couldn't find my hook. When I realised I was running out of yarn, I had decided to skip the 12th row and go straight to the finishing row, since they're essentially the same and I don't need 2 rows of picot edging. I finally found my hook (the next day) and went to finish. And ran out of yarn again. Bloody hell, they're long rows, but still. I've decided to wait until I'm next at GK to get more yarn, since I really can't be bothered to order more and pay more to have it shipped when I'll be there the first Saturday of February. I've tied off what I've done, and taken pictures and will pretend it's done, since there' only a few inches of edging left to do, but I won't wear it until I've finished. I still need to put a button or something on it as well, since I don't like the huge flower they've used to fasten it.

A New Year

This last year has been my first full year knitting, and I've made a lot and learned a lot. The only thing I don't feel comfortable doing is colourwork, although the only sock (well, stocking) I've tried my hand at turned out to be a rather complete failure. This year, I want to get through the large number of things I've queued, using up in the process the large amount of yarn I have stashed. If you've seen my Ravelry page, you might have noticed that I'm a horrible yarn addict, and have spent most of my spending money the past year or so on yarn. Lots of it. My plan therefore is to not buy nearly as much this year, but do the projects I've lined up to use it instead. Most of the yarn in my stash has a project attached to it, so by doing the projects, I'll get both more experience, make things I want to make, and free up room to buy more yarn later.

Ahem. :D

My plan is to do more lace stuff this year especially. I have a lot of shawls I want to make, and a lot of laceweight yarn. Since I haven't actually made a lace shawl yet, having done both lace and shawls but not the two combined (at least, to the finish), this will be a good thing. I actually have one started from some green yarn I picked up at Fibre Flurry, to go with a green skirt my mother made me, but I've put it on hold until I finish a cardigan I'm also working on. This cardi promises to be a quick knit, so I'm hoping to finish by the end of next week.

Although there are many things in my queue on Ravelry, my primary emphasis will be shawls and socks. I want to finish at least four shawls of varying sizes - the one I have on the needles now is a shawlette, but many I have use about 1000 yards of yarn - quite a large shawl. Wish me luck!