beautiful things

Lala scarf completed

I finished this a while ago, photographed it (not very well - it was really hard to photo!) and then wanted to wait until I had delivered it as a gift before posting. Well, that took a while, and then the urgency to post had gone, and then, well anyway, here we are!

Lala scarf

Date:
May 30th - June 4th, 2007 (or thereabouts)
Yarn:
Madil Kid Seta
About 1/2 a skein of country blue 486 and a little bit of gunmetal 422, pearl 406 and aqua 403
Needles: Susan Bates US #10 (metal SPNs)

Pattern:
Lala Scarf by Kat Coyle from Greetings from Knit Cafe

The story:

I love this pattern! It was a fun, quick, knit, although I did struggle at the beginning as this was my first time knitting with such a fine yarn (the metal needles were probably not the best idea but they were the only ones I had in #10). My stitch count just would not come out right after a few rows of increases and with this yarn it's very hard to fix things, or even to see what is going on (at least, if you're not used to it).

Also, you really can't see how it's going to come out until you start binding off, because before that it's all scrunched up on your needles. Halfway through a row you do have one side of the triangle on one needle and the other side on the other, so you can kind of get an idea, but my needles weren't long enough to really see.

In the end, I decided to use all four colors, with the white, then aqua, then gunmetal at the border. Yes, the picot edging took forever but I found the whole thing pretty exciting.

In progress shots:

Finished project:

Flickr set is here.

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.