Spring Street

So the sun is actually shining today. There are birds singing. Okay, not here, but you know, they exist. The grass is getting green, and you know what that means - paying the people to mow my lawn again.

What I'm saying, basically, is that it's almost summer, and thank whatever gods may be for that!

Since I work in the school system, my work ends on June 3rd, and I get a few weeks to myself. Of course, I'm working summer school this year, but that's like 6 hours a week for five weeks. So this is going to leave me a lot of time for the knitting, spinning, and drinking. Also, SSK! WOO! I was too late to get in last time, and didn't have the money anyway, but this time, I will be there!

In the last forever since I posted, things have happened. Projects have been started and finished. I've basically stopped taking pictures of finished projects except for dyed fiber for my Etsy shop. That's going swimmingly, by the way. I love dyeing fiber, and apparently other people like dyed fiber. I figure it's a match made in... you know, somewhere with sheep and happy spinning people.

I made this for a swap:

It came out great, and I kind of want to make one for myself. Except, you know, toward the end it made me want to cry and throw it across the room in that special way that lace does. (have I posted this picture before? I'm just so darn pround of it...)

This pile of green is now an actual sweater that I have not bothered to take real pictures of. Or make a Ravelry page for. (That's two horribly composed sentences in a row. Count them, two! Wow!)

It's a Calligraphy Cardigan, in Madelinetosh DK Twist malachite.

Yes, that makes it the most ridiculously expensive, yet plain sweater I've ever made. But it's so pretty, and SO warm. Just in time for summer!

The Harry Dresden Fiber Club, heretofore unheard of in this place, is about to start its second incarnation. I'm pretty excited about it, since I really quite like the way the first one went. It's a little club, but so far that's allowing me to make sure all the details are perfect. Also, with work and school, a small club is all I could do, unless I want to go for an exended stay at the funny farm, which is neither funny, nor a farm. So, no sheep.

Graduating college (for now) on May 18th. Should be excited about that. More relieved, really. And not looking forward to school: the empire strikes back. I really do want that BA, though. The AA just feels a little like it qualifies me to flip burgers. No offense to anyone happy with their AA. I'm just a whiner who will never be happy with what she has. I could seriously have a Doctorate and be whining that it really should be two.

Anyway, before I let my rant take hold and go on about how a 33 year old woman should be finished with school years ago, I think I'll shut up and go knit for a while before tackling the last of my Statistics homework.

Miss me?

Okay, I'm sure none all of you have been wondering what I've been up to in the last month, so I figured I had better check in.

The shop is open and has been doing quite well, thanks to the awesome Beck - aka Lemonhalf on Ravelry, and Leslie - aka udontcallmeles. Beck not only made my awesome logo, but she's been one of the most supportive people ever. She even pointed out that I should have a presence on Ravelry so that people could enter their fiber in the database. Leslie kindly ordered something from the shop on the very first day, and then told everyone that I dye lovely fiber. Twice. The two busiest days the shop has had, can't imagine why...

Okay, enough shameless shilling.

In the knitting world, what have I been up to?

Well, there's this:

The Raspberry Dream Stole, by Dagmara. It was for the Schmutzerella swap, and while there were a few issues with my comprehension of the translation, it's a great pattern, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to knit a beautiful lace stole. And doesn't mind k7tog. I recommend doing at least one, probably multiple extra repeats of the lace pattern.

Then I made a few pair of socks, nothing amazing or admirable, just everyday wear socks.

Which brings me to the fact that I needed to make some non-pink socks. So I did, out of handspun. But I haven't taken pictures yet. Maybe I'll have that for next month...

Anyway, last and never least, I'm 3/4 done with my 2nd Camp Loopy project, and have bought the yarn for the third:

And wit the yarns, I will be joining the cult of the Color Affection. I would be ashamed, but... I like Vera Valimaki patterns, and I won't apologize for that. This will be my third pattern from her, and I expect to make more in the future. She is awesome.

The low road, it is where I live.

So I tried, really I did, to give my Pogona a highbrow name that reflected the source of its pattern. But as it knit up, the thing that kept running through my mind was that the specific hues were reminiscent of a cartoon that was on when I was a kid. I wasn't allowed to watch cartoons, but it didn't stop me from knowing of them, and well... My poor Pogona, named initially with the best of intentions, is now my Rainbow Brite Shawl, simply because I cannot think of it by another name any longer.

Here's where it is right now:

And I'm quite pleased with how it's going. As stated in the project notes, I found a missed YO early on, so my reverse stockinette sections are 19,19,18, and 19 stitches. Normally, I would have flipped out and frogged all the way back to the missed YO, but frankly, I can't be brought to do something so nutty just now. I mean, really, is anyone going to notice but you and me? Not a chance. Do either of us care? Didn't think so.

I'm planning on doing the whole violet section in garter, even though it'll be a little more garter than called for in the pattern. I just think it'll look better that way.

As for spinning, I finally finished the nearly month long project that was sucking up all of my time. First, I got myself some merino, 8oz. Non-superwash, because yes I am insane. And then I did my first acid dye job. Basically, since I had no previous experience, it was a matter of dumping a bunch of dye in with water, immersing the already wet fiber into it, letting it heat up, adding vinegar, and letting it cook for a while. (I did wear a mask and gloves, for anyone worried that I'm either stupid or suicidal) Then I let it cool on its own, put it through the spin cycle in my washer, and let it dry for a few days. And then, still being insane, I decided that I would spin it as thin as I could, and two ply it, trying for a lace weight. Somehow, I succeeded. I've spun up only the first 3.6 oz, so I have a lot more, but what I have so far is 700 yards of my favorite yarn ever.

Here it is, please love it as much as I do:

It's far from perfect, there are definitely thicker and thinner parts, but I adore it like I want to knit with it right this minute and I should drop everything to do so and let's see how long I can make a horrible run-on sentence... Anyway, it's super soft, and it bloomed like crazy after washing, and I'm disgustingly proud of it.

Anyway, off to knit some more. Hope you've all had as good a week as I have!

It's a good thing elves are immortal...

At this rate, my Evenstar Shawl might get finished before the entire species becomes extinct. Wait, maybe not.

I started strong, what with the choosing and buying of items to make the shawl. Then waiting for them to arrive is always convenient for me, since it involves me doing nothing but whining about how I can't start the project yet. Then, when all had arrived and the time came, I pounced! I pulled out my size 4 DPNs and made the called-for swatch. Yeah, I jumped up a needle size from the recommendation right away. That's how this tight knitter rolls. Oddly, the swatch came out a teeeeny bit smaller than guage. So this left me with a choice. Do I knit it on the 4's, and end up with a slightly smaller Evenstar? Or do I go up a size, and risk making a very expensive mess?

This, as always, is where things always go ugly for me. Technically, both answers are right. According to my math, making them on a size 4 would make the shawl something like 58" in diameter instead of 60". Using a size 5 will make it a little bit more than 60". Is either bad? No. Can I make this very simple decision that makes no difference to anything at all? Nope.

So here's what I have, and have had for about a month now:

More than 100$ in yarn and beads, a lovely swatch, and a beautiful project bag that is languishing with no knitting being done.

For anyone who knows that they could do better than this given the same lovely items, here's where to get them:
Evenstar pattern, by Susan Pandorf
Silk Thread II in the colorway Ravenscroft, by Blue Moon Fiber Arts
Metallic Teal Green Iris 8/0 beads from Earth Faire
and last but most definitely not least,
Gorgeous black and toile project bag from Buttermilk Cottage on Etsy

No, you can't have mine. I am getting out the size 5 needles, and I am casting on for the actual shawl tomorrow. Then I'm going to stamp my little (shuh, size 10) feet and complain that I should have used the 4's, and it still won't make a difference.

As a side note, Susan's bags are AMAZING. I have two bags and a matching case for my DPNs, and one of the bags has been used as my everyday purse for a few months now. Also, Susan the person and business owner is a lovely human being to deal with. She made my first bag as a custom order with exactly the fabrics I wanted, and in this era of nonexistant customer service, she has been accomodating, kind, and all around wonderful to do business with.

For the record and as always, I am receiving no kind of compensation for shilling talking about any item or business. But go buy a bag from Susan anyway.

Anyway, I did promise last week that there would be an update that included a Loopy Ewe order. And the order was made, sent, and received. Why am I late? I am a klutz who tried to kill myself by doing a faceplant on the ground in the garage. Fortunately, I am again walking and no longer dizzy and lacking in focus... well, no more than usual.

So here are the lovelies from the Loopy Ewe:

Handmaiden Sea Sock in Topaz, Malabrigo in Aguas, and String Theory Caper in Periwinkle. They are all lovely and will make beautiful socks. Yes, I am going to make socks out of them. Yes, I think that would be considered a crime in some countries. In this house, though, we call it 'YAY, SOCKS!'

Shipwreck!

OMG, look, it' me! It's a good thing I don't blog for a living, I'd be broke. School has been nutty as ever, but I have no complaints. Amazing, no?

What I have is knitting. Yes, knitting. Since my last blog post, I recieved my first gradience set from the Unique Sheep:

It's the Eos base, colorway Jack's Beach. It took about three weeks between order and receiving it, so order early, but it's well worth a little wait if it isn't available in your local LYS. Eos is 50% Merino, 50% tussah silk, and it's absolutely wonderful. Given the color options, I think the prices are quite reasonable. It's definitely a luxury, though.

I proceeded to knit it into a shipwreck shawl, complete with eight thousand beads pre-strung onto the yarn.

Yes, I'm three-giant-pictures proud of it. Those beads took hours of stringing, and hours of sliding beads further down the yarn, and slowed the actual knitting quite a bit. I'm OCD enough that I did not string the beads in a random way, I put a bead on every third YO in the netting. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. For the edge, I put a bead on every single YO in the next-to-last row, to add some extra weight. These beads rolled up nicely in the edge, and I love every single thing about them.

For the actual knitting, I started out on size three (3.25 mm) DPNs, mostly because I did not have size fours (3.75 mm). Before starting the madeira lace, I switched to my circular, and at every needle switch, I used one needle size smaller than called for. This turned out quite well for me, because I was using lace yarn, and only had about 1250 yards of it; I knitted one less row of the netting than the pattern called for, and only have a few extra yards. This taught me something very important about this pattern. I was using a lace bind off, and that combined with the fact that the next to last row increases to 1100-ish stitches meant that the last two rows took a TON of yarn. I was convinced I had enough to finish the called for 58th row of netting, but didn't want to take ny chances that I would be frustrated. In the end, I was so relieved that I hadn't done that last row, I could have cried. Also, I was that sick of k2tog, yo netting that I could have cried anyway.

The madeira lace was an enormous pain, and there are a few issues with the madeira lace pattern, so before you go knitting this pattern, look up the fixes!

Curlycat's explanation for the beginning of row 16
Nurse Ratchknit's fix for rows 30 and 31

I have pi... do you?

So I just completed my very first pi shawl. EZ was not kidding when she said it was simple. I wish she was kidding when she said that I, as a woman, was unlikely to know pi. I know it was written a long time ago, but underestimating women as a whole just gives me a shiver, and not in a good way at all.

Having finished a simple piece, I can say with relative confidence that the pi is a good model to tack various lace patterns into, and it would make a myriad of shawl possibilities. There's just the one drawback in my opinion: It took three freaking hours to bind off. Just that one row, three hours. Eek!

Beyond that, the whole thing was quite simple. I wouldn't recommend using the shawl as its own bag, as EZ suggests, but that may be because I was using nice yarn that I didn't want to mistreat the way I do my knitting project bags. Of course, I also didn't take it out of my house after the first lace pattern was finished, because it gets far too big to cart around to public spots.

So without further ado, here's the progression from yarn vomit to blocking shawl:

The first pattern:

Halfway through the second pattern. I stopped bothering to take pictures after this, because it pretty much looked the same until binding off.

And finally, the blocking finished piece:

First of all, yes, I am circle-impaired. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get it to block into a perfect circle. Also, I am filled with the lazy, so by the time it looked like this, I figured it was good enough. And when I wear it, it looks gorgeous. Or at least, so say the lovely ladies at my LYS, who are not at all biased to say that a piece of knitted lace looks good.... right? I should probably reblock it sometime to get the wave pattern on the edge instead of points, but I'm overall quite happy with how it looks now. (And yes, that is a hideous acrylic blanket crocheted in the seventies in the corner of that picture, it belongs to the cat.)

The tiny bit of variegation in the Handmaiden Amethyst didn't interfere with the pattern at all, the lace patterns that the pattern's creator used are incredibly simple to memorize, and I fully intend to make one or more of the other pi shawl patterns they created. I'm sure I won't be able to afford more handmaiden to do it, but I don't doubt that they'll look lovely in less expensive yarn.

It's all over but the waiting

Finally, my interminable summer term has come to a close. It's not that I haven't been knitting for the last month, it's just that the choice was knitting time or computer time. When you think about it, it's not really a choice. If I'm not knitting, then what do I blog about?

Anyway, all there is to do now is wait for my last teacher to stop posting on facebook for long enough to turn in our grades... but knitting blog is not for school drama, so we'll leave that there.

In the last month, I have:

-frogged the Stalagmites. I dislike them with an intensity heretofore reserved for knots in my yarn, and patterns that are incorrect. I had him try them on after finishing the heel, and not only did it not fit him, it barely fit me. I'm giving them another try because I am just that stubborn, and my OCD will not allow me to continue on to the next pattern in the book before finishing those darned socks. I'm doing them in KP palette now, though, since I don't want to waste good yarn on annoying socks.

-started and finished my second 'Camp Loopy' project, a pair of Wendy Johnson's Wrought Iron socks, in Handmaiden Swiss Mountain Sea Sock. Both the pattern and the yarn made me exceptionally happy. I suspect that the frogged cashmere from the Stalagmites will go into a pair of the Aran socks for men in the same book. I had doubts about the Wrought Iron pattern as I was making it, but followed it as written, and was not disappointed. I will forevermore trust Wendy. On the yarn, it's some of the loveliest, most luxurious yarn I've ever managed to spend quality time with. I take points away on the fact that it can be a bit splitty, and it's not as easy to pick up dropped stitches as most yarns, but I'm already using more of it, so those issues obviously didn't bother me much.

-Finished a new shawl, Dragon's Blood from Goddess Knits. The pattern was blessedly simple and got me through finals week without being forced to stab anyone with my lovely knitting needles. (That would have been a shame, I'd hate to dirty my lovely needles with blood.) I did have to go up four needle sizes to get gauge, so if you want to do the pattern, keep an eye out for that. Even going up all those needle sizes, though, I didn't use the full 880 yards of wool I had. I don't know for sure, but I would estimate having about 50 yards remaining. I would think if you went down a needle size or two, you could easily get it in under 800 yards.

-A few other projects for Hogwarts at Ravelry that I don't feel are impressive enough to post here. I confess, I actually used acrylic for some of them. *blush*

Finally up to the present, I'm starting my third and final Camp Loopy project as soon as I finish this, a Pi Shawl in yet more Handmaiden Sea Silk. Yes, even with the Camp Loopy discount Sheri was offering, I did spend WAY too much money on this yarn. It's going to be gorgeous, though. I thought the 'camping' theme of the shawl was perfect for Camp Loopy, and then more generally, I've been dying to try a Pi shawl for a while now.

Since I have the week off school, it is possible that I will inundate you with random updates on the shawl in question, since it's the only thing I plan to work on this week. I hope.

Hope everyone had a lovely summer, and that we're all knitting instead of committing assault on annoying people!

Lace - easier than cables?

So since my last post, I finished one pair of socks. And no, it wasn't the cabled Stalagmites, it was the super lacy, complicated-looking Marilinda. Why? Because they were just incredibly easier than the stalagmites. The pattern is more intuitive for me, and frankly, the travelling cables on the stalagmites are making me tired just thinking about them. Considering the fact that the yarn I'm using for them makes me want to knit with it forever and ever, this tells me something about the pattern.

Anyway, here are my pretties:

I suggest that anyone who wants to try the Marilinda pattern use a nice slippery yarn, since the lace pattern would get old if you were using something with mohair (why would you use that for socks anyway?) or other 'sticky' options. The eyelets were so easy that it shocked me, and the whole set took me less than nine days of very-not-continuous knitting to finish.

I'm not expecting to finish much more for the next six weeks, since the head of my program threw us a curveball, and I'm now going to class pretty much every day of the week for the rest of the summer. I will be taking my knitting with me, in the hopes that I both get something done and refrain from stabbing anyone with my pen. I wouldn't want to hurt my lovely Raden Vanishing Point, and be forced to have to replace the feed on it. (For the record, no I did not spend that much on it. The site is quite reputable if anyone wants to buy anything from him, though; I highly recommend it.)

The one where I knit more than anyone should...

So, despite my attempt to forget I had a blog, I keep finding things to talk about. Admittedly, I'm pretty much sitting here talking to myself, but that's nothing new for me. Nor is it necessarily unexpected, since I just started writing a blog a few weeks ago.

In all but finishing, my fountain pen shawl is finished. I did an extra body pattern repeat because I knew I had more than enough yarn for it, and I like the length it came out. Or rather, I think it's a little short, but I haven't yet blocked it, so I'm sure the length will be fine.

Not having blocked it, it looks pretty much like a pile of yarn vomit with some beads thrown on for good measure:

I suppose I could have slightly alleviated that in the picture by not throwing it in a heap and snapping away, but it honestly doesn't look much better spread out right now:



Ahh well, the important thing is that it's finished. Mostly. I ordered blocking wires from inspinknity, but alas, I waited until after the shawl was finished to order them. Of course, this is actually a good thing, because I only heard about the blocking wires in question from the Knit Girllls a few days earlier. If I had ordered earlier, I would have gotten the KP ones, and well... yeah, I just think I've ordered a higher quality product this way. KP has its time and place, but that time is generally not when I'm looking for something I'll use for the rest of my knitting life.

On the subject of the other projects I wonder why I started in the middle of a busy school term, the answer is easy. Lots of knitting projects with deadlines makes me less likely to harm myself or others, because I'm too busy trying to figure out how to finish schoolwork and get back to my knitting.

I started my Camp Loopy Elisa Shawl on the evening of the 15th, and... well, after working more than 200 rows in lace weight on size six needles for the fountain pen shawl, working with DK on size eights is flying by so quickly I'll be surprised if it's not finished before the weekend is over.

This is a few minutes ago

This is this afternoon

All I have left is about 20-25 rows of lace pattern, two edging rows, and a bind off. Unless this is the hardest lace pattern ever, I'll be back to my Pride KAL very quickly.

Oh, and while I'm currently broke *grumbles about stupid local speed enforcement cameras*, I owe myself some yarn when there is money to be had. Yarndiet is my friend.