beautiful things

Clementine Shawlette

Today on the commute in my mind was wandering and for some reason I suddenly thought, hey, wasn't it just recently my one year knitting anniversary? I sure enough, looking back in my notes, it was on January 21st. I remember those early days so clearly, getting up in the morning to make more exciting progress on my scarf. So much has happened since then... knitting is another way to mark the passage of time.

I really want to do a "2007 in knitting" recap, or rather "2007 in my knitting" recap and look back on all my projects and the things I've learned and discovered. But first I have to finish posting my 2007 FOs!

Here's another one from a long time ago from the same recent photoshoot. Remember this one?!

Clementine Shawlette

Date:
May 21st - June 30th, 2007 (yay for Ravelry for the notes field where I now keep track of dates!)
Yarn:
2.5 skeins of Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk in 130 mandarin
Needles:
Addi Turbo US#4 40" circulars

Pattern:
Clementine Shawlette by Michele Rose Orne from Interweave Knits Spring 2007 available for purchase here

The story:

This issue of IK didn't jump out at me at first, but I revisited it when I saw other people's version of the Indigo Ripples Skirt and I ended up buying the magazine on the strength of that pattern, the Clementine Shawlette and the entrelac tutorial.

I still haven't cast on for the skirt, but I did start on the shawlette pretty soon after. I had already fallen in love with Blue Sky Alpacas Sport Weight so I was excited to try the Alpaca Silk... and it didn't disappoint. Nor did the pattern, which was challenging enough to be interesting without being too difficult. Once I got the hang of it I was able to fall into a rhythm and had the pattern memorized. Ah yes, I do have fond memories of summer knitting on this project.

I talk about the grafting here and, as I note several times, I followed Ruthless Knitting's explanation of Lucy Neatby's technique and honestly, I can't imagine how I could have done it otherwise and been happy with the results. In fact, I did it twice, because after grafting together, I decided that I wanted to make the whole thing shorter. So I ripped back something like 8 pattern repeats from each side and grafted again!

To be honest, I haven't actually worn this item yet, and I'm wondering if in fact I didn't go too far in shortening it, because it doesn't really stay on my shoulders very well. How annoying is that! But it was such a pleasure to knit that maybe I won't mind reknitting that length back in... I didn't like it long and tied but it doesn't have to be tied. We'll see if I feel like it.

There are a lot of shawlette's on Ravelry now (I'll give the flickr links for those not on Ravelry yet). Here's a nice one, and I love this color too. This one is cute. And this one is pretty. It is so helpful to see everyone else's, especially when they are worn and photographed by "normal" people.

Anyway, it was a project I really enjoyed working on for both the pattern and the yarn, and I am most proud of my grafting, not that I can take credit for that technique, but I'm proud of the fact that I found the technique after seeing some of the struggles people were having on Ravelry. What did we do before Ravelry?!

In progress shots:

Finished shots:

Flickr set is here.
Ravelry link is here.

The very exciting grafting of lace!

So, Ruthless Knitting's explanation of Lucy Neatby's technique for grafting lace was fantastic. I don't know how I would have grafted the Clementine Shawlette otherwise.

Look look look!

Here you can see my one row of white guide yarn, knit in pattern, and the green waste yarn:

By the way, for those trying this themselves, I ended the pattern on the first knit row after a ridge, in other words, row 63. That way row 64 (mostly purling on the WS) was in the guide yarn and was the yarn I followed as I grafted. That way, the ridges on the two pieces ended up spaced roughly equal to the ridges in the pattern, as you will see in the very last photo below.

Here I start to graft, following the guide yarn on each piece:

(I put a cotton thread lifeline on one of the pieces but forgot to do it on the other.)

Almost done:

Complete!

Here is the back of the shawlette before pulling out the waste and guide yarn:

And here are the finished grafted pieces!

I am really happy with how it came out, although it is a shame it can't be completely seamless. The only snag is... well, it's just a little bit too long, and although I don't really have any experience with such things, I'm imagining that blocking will only make it longer, and that the silk in the yarn will make the piece stretch over time.

It's a good thing the grafting was so painless because... I think I'm going to have to undo it to shorten the shawlette!

But not just yet... right now I'm going to bask in the glory of having completed this piece!

Shawlette progress

I worked through the first half pretty quickly but have been taking the second half more slowly. I'm almost done... not sure I have enough yarn to make the second half as long as the first half (which seems to measure differently every time) so I may have to rip back.

By the way, there's a good tutorial at Ruthless Knitting for grafting lace, using the shawlette as an example. I'm planning on following it!

State of the knitting

I do so love getting packages of new yarn at work! This happened not once but twice this week...

You may remember that I was a little concerned that I had made a bad decision with the light pink fluffy yarn but it is going to look GREAT. I started with the white hat yesterday and it is going to be too adorable for words.

I'll have to post photos of the second shipment later, but let me just say that I LOVE the green cotton for the indigo ripples skirt. It is exactly what I had in mind. We'll have to see how it knits up. I'm so excited about all these new projects!

Yeah, I guess I am no longer a monogamous knitter. I'm kind of an ADD knitter now. Earlier today, I was flipping between the Clementine Shawlette, the white suede baby hat and the Lala Scarf. I was literally knitting a few rows of each and switching back and forth as my mood hit. The shawlette has become my easy knit now that I am so used to the pattern, and it's my luxury knit too. The baby hat is my fun knit, and the Lala Scarf is my challenging knit. It's a fun knit too, and I love how the picot edge bind off is coming out, but it is fiddly and I need frequent breaks to do some "real" knitting, the kind where the fabric flies off the needles.

Plus my stash is starting to grow. I kind of had in mind to try to keep my total yards purchased at no more than double the total yards knit but that's kind of been blown out of the water! Besides, I think there's a benefit to having a few projects lined up to pick from. I think I will just be playing it by ear as to what does and does not constitute "out of hand"!

I have been on a bit of a buying spurt lately - here are my stats for this month (now that I'll be doing them at the beginning of each month). Numbers in parentheses are from May 17th:

skeins purchased: 90 (45)
skeins knit: 28.55 (24.65)
yards purchased: 12,401 (6,290)
yards knit: 3,316 (3,043)
$ spent on yarn: $822.24 ($515.40)
knitting since: 1/27/07

Yup, I pretty much doubled my skeins/yards purchased in two weeks! I'd better get back to knitting...

We interrupt our regularly scheduled knitting....

So, you might be wondering, what is the bundle of frothy blue knitting?!

Well, as you may know, I've been planning on knitting a close friend of mine a scarf. I'd been planning on a winter scarf, so it wasn't really a priority, but she has a big birthday coming up next week, plus I've been waxing lyrical about knitting, so it seems, well, wrong not to knit her something.

A google search on "summer scarf" didn't yield anything that inspired me, so I went back to look at a scarf that struck me a few weeks ago (isn't that pretty), and after a little more research decided that this would be the project - the Lala Scarf from Greetings from Knit Cafe. I had been eyeing the book anyway for the skirt as well as a few other projects including a couple of amazing dresses (not sure if I would actually attempt them for myself) and then I suddenly thought of blue, greenish blue. My friend wears a lot of red, but that seemed too easy, and she looked good in a greenish blue bridesmaid dress she tried for my wedding, and I seem to remember other clothing in this color. Having figured out the color, the whole project came to life in my mind and so I popped down to Purl yesterday and bought four skeins of Madil Kid Seta and the book.

The yarn, I am told, is almost exactly the same as Rowan Kidsilk Haze, which I've been wanting to knit with for a while (my friend Kymm made me a scarf in Kidsilk Haze and it is gorgeous). But they didn't have the colors I had in mind in the Rowan.

I couldn't quite decide on the three colors I wanted and I didn't have much time so I bought four. The tags were not all intact but I believe I got 422 Gunmetal, 486 Country Blue, 403 Aqua and 406 Pearl.

I think these are the three colors I'm going to use:

(I know, the blue isn't very green but I think it will look good on her.)

I struggled quite a bit getting started last night, in part because I was tired and being interrupted a lot, but this yarn is hard! No one else that I've found talks about struggling at the beginning but I ripped out and started over at least five times, at which point I got fed up and decided to just keep going, even though my stitch count wasn't coming out quite right. I couldn't see where I'd made the error, partially ripping out or unknitting is a nightmare with this yarn, and overall it looks ok, I think.

In spite of the frustrations this is an exciting knit, because you really don't see how it is going to come out until the end. I have a feeling I'm going to want to knit this for everyone. The trouble with this blog is that it's hard to give anyone reading a surprise gift, especially if it's something I already knit before, because I do want to include all my projects here. Also, it seems somehow like cheating to give more than one person the same project, even though I know it isn't, and in fact one could have a "signature" gift.

Anyway, I'd love to knit this as a winter scarf too.

In other knitting news, I knit on the subway the other day! Standing! During rush hour! It also appears that I can knit in the car, even if it is about the only thing I can do in the car without getting nauseous (aside from sleeping, which I'm very good at). I think in both cases it has to be very simple - this time I was finishing off the garter stitch mitts. Yes, I am done with the knitting, I just need to seam. I really savored this project and didn't want it to end. This is a pattern I want to knit again too, and could be the perfect subway/car project.

The Clementine Shawlette is going well too. I just started on the third and final ball of yarn, and I have the pattern well memorized now, I even knit some in the semi-darkness of the backyard last night whilst carrying out conversation! Hopefully I didn't screw it up.

Shawlette continues

Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my DAHHHHling Clementine...!

Casting on again...

I hit a bit of a point of confusion last night with my knitting. So far, I've kind of liked focusing on one project at a time, but I knit the Koigu with such exclusivity over the weekend that I was feeling like a change might be nice. The Koigu has been such a pleasure but I didn't want to ruin it by forcing myself to push through to the end. But starting a new project seemed like being unfaithful. And would I be opening a can of worms and end up with millions of WIPs and UFOs?

In the end I decided to go for it and cast on for the Clementine Shawlette.

Casting on is so exciting - it's all potential and anticipation. And so far this project has not disappointed. The yarn is gorgeous, both in color and feel, and the pattern is challenging enough to be a refreshing change from the simple garter stitch mitts, yet not so challenging as to be stressful, although I have had to rip back a few times to fix errors. This is my first time working from a chart like this and it's... interesting. I'm getting used to it, and flipping around blank squares (=knit on RS and purl on WS) and dots (=purl on RS and knit on WS) is not as hard as I thought it would be. Keeping track of the number of stitches is turning out to be trickier, in fact.

I think I might try this multiple projects at a time thing. For one, it seems more balanced and less obsessive. For another, it will help to be able to switch projects to match the knitting situation (which I have done before but more out of necessity). I can knit the shawlette while watching TV (I tried with and without this morning and seemed to make the same number of mistakes no matter what) but I don't think I can knit it while talking, and I do have a family get together coming up this weekend.

The other thing I did this past weekend was check out my financial situation and decide that I could afford some glass jars to display my beautiful yarn. I'm almost loathe to knit some of it so I can have the chance to look at it and pet it first!

I'm pretty excited with how they look although I do want to put up a shelf for them. Here they are in our kitchen:

In other news, I just ate the most delicious sticky toffee pudding ever, certainly ever to come out of a package anyway. I really want to try them all now!

Garter stitch never looked so good

I think I've knit enough today that I could actually, you know, go do something else!

Needless to say, I am really enjoying the Koigu. I've been a mostly monogamous knitter, even more so lately now I've seen how UFOs can drag on. But I'm thinking of casting on something else just so I can savor the Koigu a little more. I've read bloggers complain about the monotony of the garter stitch but I knit much of this with nothing else going on - no tv, no podcasts, no talking with others. That's what I did yesterday morning - I sat up in bed and knit for over an hour in perfect silence and was not even slightly bored.

What might I be casting on next, you might wonder? Well, I made a quick stop by Purl on the way home from work on Thursday, and not only did I pick up 4 more skeins of wildflowers but I also picked up enough Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk for the Clementine Shawlette from Interweave Knits Spring 2007. I bought the color from the pattern because, well, I really liked it. There were some other pretty colors I considered but ultimately, the power of the visual won over and I couldn't get the image of it from the magazine out of my head. Sometimes I'm drawn to a pattern but not the color, or the color more than the pattern, and sometimes it's both. I think in this case, although I do like how the shawl is shaped as well, it might just have been the color more than the pattern. Besides, it wouldn't be a Clementine Shawlette in any other color now would it?!

Ok, off to do some podcast enhanced chores!