New Lace Project

This past Saturday, I was sitting and knitting with a friend at Starbucks.  She had found many skeins of Handmaiden Sea Silk at a second hand store for about $4 per ball.  Having these, she and I were looking at patterns on Ravelry. The more I helped her search for the perfect pattern, the more I wanted to cast on with her! I have plenty to work on already, but what does that matter, right? While our favorites differed, I added several free patterns to my library. My favorite was the Gwendolyn shawl.

Having a new niece and nephew born earlier this summer, I have been spending most of my knitting time knitting for them. Each of the babies were given 2 hand knit sweaters at their respective showers. Then, I had some gray yarn left over from a sweater I made for myself and decided that it would make a great winter sweater for my tiny little nephew.  There was still plenty of yarn remaining, so I cast on for a sweater for his older, 5-year-old brother. The sweaters don't match exactly, but will look so cute together.  On Saturday, I finished the larger sweater to a point where there is probably only 1 hour of knitting left to be accomplished.  Saturday evening, as I was preparing to leave for book club, I turned back to my favorite lace pattern of the morning and gathered what I needed to cast on. I finished a little over 1 repeat of the pattern while discussing The Presidents Club. The pattern is more intricate and difficult to memorize than I expected, but I have finished two and a half pattern repeat as of today.

November Malabrigo Kit

Last Thursday, I received the latest installment of the Malabrigo Projects club from Eat Sleep Knit. There are 2 skeins of Lace in Applewood, beads and a shawl pattern that uses both. It is beautiful, and yet not a typical color choice for me. I am sure to use it and love it any way, though! I am rather excited to find something to knit with the yarn. I will probably not knit this pattern as I have already made 2-3 projects with the same or similar motif as the one the designer chose for the center panel. Frankly, I am tired of knitting it and I still have about one third of my current project left! (This current one uses a different stitch pattern of which half of it is the one in the new pattern.) I do love it, though, and know that ESK has created another big hit.

Stash Enhancement

Back on August 31st, I told you about a sale at my favorite LYS, Village Yarn and Tea. That day, I also purchased a skein of Araucania Lonco Multy in a beautiful variegated orchid color. It is 440 yards. I started searching Ravelry, almost immediately for the best pattern and easily narrowed it down to a pattern from "Victorian Lace Today" and Zetor. Both were shawl patterns. When I finished my Fan Shawl, I had those needles, the ball of yarn and both patterns with me. (I usually take the bus from work to my father-in-law's house on Fridays and this Friday was typical.) I began to work with the pattern from VLT. The needles I had were too large and so I was unhappy with the way that the pattern was working. I frogged what little I had knit, and cast on for Zetor. BEAUTIFUL! The Saturday after I began the shawl, I was at VY&T with my friend K (like usual) and she found some black beads on clearance that were just perfect for the shawl. So, I purchased them and added beads to an already wonderful knitting pattern. I loved knitting the pattern so much, that in a few days I had the entire shawl finished. I did wait almost a week until I blocked it. Blocking, as always, really made the knitted piece shine.

Silky Fan Shawl

Last Friday, I finished knitting the main body of the Malabrigo Shawl. I took all but around 2 yards of the 5 skeins of Silky that I had from Eat.Sleep.Knit's Malabrigo Projects Club. To knit the border, I dug into my stash and pulled out the remaining 1/2 ball of Silky from a club shipment earlier in the year. I love the raspberry color with the gray. Blocking this one was difficult and I am still not completely happy with the results. As you can see, there are points where it should be round. I may need to re-block it and not use blocking wires. However, I was trying to get some good stretch to it and felt like I needed the wires for that. The shawl is soft, lovely and warm. It will be a great addition to my fall wardrobe.

Latest Shawl

When I get really tired of my current stealth project, I have been working with the yarn from last month's Malabrigo shipment. I am knitting the Fan Shawl from Crystal Palace with Malabrigo Silky. It is a free pattern that I found on Ravelry and is very fun to knit, while still being simpler than the said stealth project.

Here is my finished Mia Bella Shawl. It is lace weight with many, many beads around the edge. I made the version that is just a little bit more than half a circle and absolutely love it! I have been wearing it several times a week. It is great for cooler, summer mornings. (I have just adjusted my work schedule and am now arriving at work at 6:30 AM, so I often need just a little something!)

Malabrigo Shawl for May

Eat.Sleep.Knit's May Malabrigo kit contained 3 skeins of Silky Merino in raspberry. The resulting shawl is lovely and was a fun, quick knit. Over half of this one was knit during Friday's driving on the LYS Tour. Showing this off to all my knitting and non-knitting friends is a joy!

End of the Parade

Here is another finished project: Clustered Leaves Shawl. I made it from 2 skeins of Brown Sheep Cotton Fine that were gifted to me by one of my secret pals. I didn't like the result of trying to knit a sock with this yarn, but it made a lovely shawl! I ran out of yarn before finishing the lovely border, so I created my own, narrower one and loved the effect. I plan to give this to my MIL as a belated birthday gift. (DH gave her his gift on her birthday so she was not forgotten. I usually make her socks, but she is still in the hospital after many months and they prefer her to wear socks with rubber soles to keep her from slipping.)

Kauni Shawl

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for the Kauni Shawl KAL on Ravelry. I had heard about the pattern, Revontuli, from a fellow knitter on the Seattle to Portland Yarn Train. When I checked the pattern out later on, I found that it was very pretty, yet simple. I also saw where someone else had made all of the increases as yarnovers, instead of doing most of them as make ones. This simple change makes the pattern much lacier and far simpler to knit. If I remember correctly, the point of the knit along is to finish by March 8th and I was a little tired of my current sweater project, so I cast on last Saturday evening. By Sunday night, I had just about 20 rows left to go and finished on Monday afternoon. The picture above is from while it was drying. I’m not sure if is the cold that I had, or the lanolin in the yarn, but I found it difficult to breathe at times while working on the shawl. The yarn is rough to knit with, as well. When I was almost done, I wasn’t sure if I would ever wear the shawl, or just give it away. I finished any way and set out to soak it for blocking.

Because of my difficulties with the yarn while knitting the shawl, I took a few extra steps when blocking. Usually, I just soak it in a wool wash, spin and pin it out to dry. Instead I spent extra time to do the following: I partially filled up my top loading washing machine with “hot” (really just very warm) water and added some regular, scent and dye free clothes washing soap. I allowed the mixture to agitate for a minute or so and then added my shawl, pushing it under the water. I left this in the machine, which I had turned off, for about 30 minutes and then restarted the machine on the spin cycle. Once the excess water was removed, I pulled the shawl out and repeated the above process with cold water and fabric softener. After the rinse, I pinned the shawl out on the floor of my sewing/craft/computer room.

After spending the extra time to soak this shawl twice, the project smells and feels so much better, that I will probably wear it and not just give it away! Whoohooo!!