Blockhead

I spent a pleasant afternoon putting the final touches on the 2 finished lace projects. Below is the swallowtail shawl before it is "blocked".
using the stainless steel welding rod for blocking wires, this is how it looks pinned out, this blocking step is necessary for getting the points to really show on the bottom edge of the shawl.

the whole thing pinned out on the guest bed, it was so hot today it only took about 15 minutes to dry.

finally, the finished shawl, lovely!because the shawl dried so fast, I also had a chance to block the Branching Out scarf. The shawl is made of wool so it was pretty stretchy and did get bigger after blocking, whereas the scarf is silk and didn't get much bigger pinned out, but it should lie flatter and show the pattern better now. Before, notice how it's kind of rumply.
now, pinned out the pattern is flat.

While I was in the house enjoying the new bedroom fan and AC, Craig and a contractor friend of ours was outside sweating over the new pergola.

getting everything nice and level, under strict supervision

about 75% done and looking good!

news from the knitting front

Oh, how I love t0 get fun packages in the mail, recently I got a yarn winder from Knit Picks and a super cool swift from a custom woodworker on an Etsy website, Hornshaw. This swift is really beautiful just by itself, that it actually has a function and performs that function well is a bonus.

I have 3 projects on the needles at the moment.

Swallowtail shawl

Still working on the shawl, I'm having a really hard time with the final pattern of peaked edging. I keep messing up the stitch count and every row is more than 200 stitches long now, so tinking back is excruciating. I have to start putting in stitch markers for the pattern repeats and lifelines every other row.

Kazak Star Bag

the next project is really an exercise in learning continental style knitting (where you hold the working yarn in your left hand). A while ago I purchased a kit, Kazak Star, from the local yarn store for making a small, felted bag. The wool has a good thickness and feel, the overall bag will be felted so variations in tension will be erased in the felting process and finally there is a small amount of fair isle pattern in this bag, which calls for 2 colors of yarn. The fair isle part will be good for practicing holding one color in the right hand and the other color in the left hand (this looks like the best method if I can actually manage it). So far I'm only working on the back of the bag which is just stockinette for 62 rows. Good for practice.

Branching Out Scarf

and finally my friend, M, encouraged me to do a knit along (KAL) lace project with her, so we are making the Branching Out pattern scarf, which has most of the common lace stitches and is still pretty good for relative beginners. I must say 25 stitch rows really are much easier to follow, fix and "see" the pattern than that darn swallowtail. I'm having fun with this project and I simply love, love, love this yarn, it's a deep, rich ruby colored silk with integrated beads. The picture doesn't do it justice as the color is richer than shown and it's got that beautiful silk sheen to it..

Beading the Swallowtail

I finally finished all 19 of the budding lace repeats on the Swallowtail shawl, whew! Jardee ran out of yarn on hers, so purchased another skein of yarn of the same dye lot from my local yarn shop (LYN), Spin a Yarn, for insurance. I just learned she ran out of beads too, aargh, I guess I'll just watch my supply and hopefully beads are not like yarn in that the color varies by dye lot.

Now I get to do the exciting Lily of the Valley pattern, adding the beads as needed to represent the little flower buds in the pattern. I feel like a magpie who just really likes sparkly things! As an odd side note, the beads have a strong peppermint smell and taste (sometimes I have to use my teeth as a third hand) due being stored in a little breath mint tin : )

Swallowtail progressing

I've been making good progress on the swallowtail shawl, one might almost say it's been swallowing all my spare time. It is really kind of addictive.

As of Saturday I've made it to row 8 and still have all the hair on my head, have ripped and made wonky repairs on many rows, but the good news is I’m learning and understand the pattern now. My goal at this point is to complete at least 1 budding lace repeat without errors : )


As the rows get longer (this pattern starts from a 5 stitch row and expands every row thereafter to create large triangle), the prospect of ripping back one or more rows is getting more unattractive, and so I have been trying to make repairs where I can. After the umpteenth repair where I just kind of bumbled along adding/deleting stitches somewhat randomly to make the stitch count match, I've started really looking at the pattern after every right side row, marking where the mistake is with a safety pin, then fixing on the wrong side row (all purl stitches).

I finally hit on the bright idea of photographing what the correct stitch should look like in order to recreate it from the wrong side (WS) row. Above is what a correct yarn over looks like just before purling on the WS row.

this is how the pattern looks after correcting the yarn over and purling through. I cannot express how happy I was to catch the mistake and actually fix it so it looks perfect!

I am finding this pattern pretty addictive, it's kind of fun to do the pattern correctly, but even more compelling is if I do find a mistake I feel like I have to complete at least 1 more row in order to fix it before I forget there was a mistake.

New year, new project

To start the new year I am starting a challenging new project. It will be a beautiful lace project using a pattern loved by many on Ravelry, the Swallowtail Shawl designed by Evelyn Clark. The pattern can be found as a .pdf from this site, Portfolio - Evelyn Clark. I will also be making a couple of popular modifications, using beads instead of knitting the nupps in the Lily of the Valley pattern and doing 19 repeats of the Budding Lace pattern instead of 14 to make it larger (thanks to some help from MintyFresh for the modification math)

8/0 venetian beads, to be added as needed with a size #13/14 (0.90mm) crochet hook.

Material list:

• Malabrigo lace weight yarn (100% merino wool)
• size 5 knitpicks circular needles
• split stitch marker
• concentration
• focus
• patience, patience, patience

Using the knit picks needles is working well for 2 reasons:

1. they have nice sharp points which makes it a little easier to get into this really delicate yarn and,
2. bonus benefit of making it super easy to insert a lifeline (this is a piece of string or waste yarn inserted through any row that makes it much easier to unravel stitches when the inevitable mistakes occur). Check out this great tutorial video on how to do lifelines with and without the KnitPicks needles for more details.
   
   

   this is a nice weight lifeline to use for the lace weight yarn and it is pretty easy to thread through the KnitPicks needle hole
   

More helpful hints from my knitting expert friend, Jardee:

1. use the charts, not the text and note that the symbols sort of represent how the finished stitches look (for example a yarn over is represented by a circle (hole) and the right slant symbol is a right slanting knit 2 together decrease)
2. put in a lifeline after every pattern repeat (for example, this shawl uses the budding lace pattern (a 6 row pattern) 19 times, so put a lifeline after every 6 rows).
3. Tie a loose knot in the lifeline after insertion just in case the lifeline snags on something, this will prevent it from accidentally coming out.
4. use 3 lifelines; insert at repeat 1, at repeat 2 and when you insert the lifeline for repeat 3, check everything looks OK and then remove the 1st lifeline. This is the most conservative lifeline strategy, but I will definitely follow this for my first lace project.
5. use a sticky note to cover the rows above where you are working to make it easier for the eye to follow the current row, the pattern and not accidentally start on the next row.
6. how to use a crochet hook to insert beads instead of having to pre-string all the beads. See Jardee's great little instructional video below (this is her first video tutorial, doesn't she sound like a pro!)