This is gong to take awhile…

Half of the knitting is finished for the body of my new shawl, Smolder.  It has been great for travel, and spending time with friends knitting, as very little concentration is required.

I am happy with how the color combination turned out, the next step is to figure out the color for the attached iCord.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

My preference had always been the Fuchsia color when I started knitting this, and I think that it will have the greatest impact.

Working on this will require lots of patience.  Binding 2 pieces together with iCord is slow going.  I am happy with the result so far though.  iCord is reserved for working on at home, I still have the other 2 sections to keep me busy with straight knitting.

There are approximately 220 stitches on each diagonal, times 3.  Then there is the entire edge in iCord.

 

Dawn

Years ago, I purchased the book The Fine Line at Stitches Midwest, where I also met Grace Anna Farrow and got so see these shawls knit up first hand.

I was smitten, and purchased yarn on the spot to make Volt.  A little while later I knit Dusk, with yarn that I purchased in a local shop.  One of my blog posts years ago, while trying to follow prompts on writing, focused on Grace Anna Farrow, while simple, I think that her shawls are really elegant and drape very well.  And I love Isaeger Wool 1, it is a 2ply wool from Denmark, and has a real soft “sheep” feel to it.

Recently, our Stitch n’ Bitch group started on another charity project.  One of our members is the CEO of the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force.  Their goal is to improve quality of care, and reduce the disparity of survival rates among low income and minority women.  A truly great organization.  Several people are jointly making a baby basket gift, so I asked Anne Marie, what else would be appropriate.  She suggested a shawl.

Wanting to knit from my stash, I looked through what I had, and came across the lovely Isaeger Wool 1 yarns, and looked to see what shawl to knit.  My knitting group unanimously choose Dawn.  And these were my initial color choices:

But, I just didn’t feel that the dark eggplant color fit in, and found a skein of a light blue already wound up.  I started knitting, taking this on a short weekend family trip.  Perfect plane and car knitting.  That is, until you leave your knitting book in the seat pocket of the airplane.  I discovered this too late to retrieve it.  While waiting for my husband to arrive on a different flight, I went online and quickly discovered that the book was long out of print, but found a store that still had a copy (I really like books better than PDF’s).  but that did not help my  weekend knitting plans, so I also ordered the PDF to have on my iPad.  I must really like this book to have purchased it 3 times!

Here is my finished project, it is so light  and airy and drapes well.

I tried to do a selfie in the mirror, to no avail.  I need to have someone model this.

So loved knitting with this again, that I ordered some more, my color selection was becoming very limited!

Blog week, Post #3

One Great Knitter

Write about a knitter whose work (whether because of project choice, photography, styling, scale of projects, stash, etc) you enjoy. If they have an enjoyable blog, you might find it a good opportunity to send a smile their way.

This was a challenging question for me.  I tend not to subscribe to the more popular blogs, many are overrated.  I like the person, who, like me, loves knitting and talking about it.  In many cases it is because their family won’t lend a good ear to every nuance of the process.  There are  some amazing knitters out there who do great work, but don’t always get a lot of recognition.

After a day of consideration (I actually looked at this clue on Tuesday morning so that I could think about it), I have to say Grace Anna Farrow.  Her blog is A Stitch to Wear.

I met Grace Anna last August at Stitches Midwest where she was promoting her newly self published book The Fine Line

I loved not only the colors but the beautiful drape of these fabrics.  She was modeling and talking about her designs.  After going through the entire market, my sister and I went back to the Isaeger booth, I needed to purchase yarn to do one of these projects. We both concluded that this was the best at the market.  By the time that we returned, Grace Anna had left, but I got help in selecting colors.  I was originally drawn to Dusk, but thought that was too much knitting until I decided if I liked the yarn.  I settled on Volt with turquoise accents.  And, I fell in love with the Isaeger Wool I yarn, it is now one of my favorites, and something that I would not have discovered otherwise.  I love the transparency of this shawl, and how it drapes.  I get wonderful comments whenever I wear it.

So, I was smitten, and decided to knit the Dusk shawl.  This is truly a mammoth project, and I blogged a lot about both of these in the past. During the process, I found some corrections to the chart, and Grace Anna was so wonderful to communicate with.  I added my own touch with a deep eggplant at the end, but otherwise, it is her colors:

I love all of her designs, and thought that I had knit enough, but the book is calling  me back, and I want to see what i can do with the leftover yarn.

Her photography on her website is AMAZING.  That part I aspire to the most.  I often feel that I do not do my projects justice in the photos.

And, more photos from her book.

TAGGING CODE: knitcroblo3

Epic Shawl

I finally finished my shawl “Dusk” from the book The Fine Line by Grace Anna Farrow.   I washed and blocked it a couple of days ago, and finally got someone to photograph it.  I will have to do a better photo when I am dressed up with it.  This is truly an epic shawl as my friend Manning called it.  And, it counts as #2 of UFO’s completed for this year!

Here it is pre-blocking.  My dining room table is 54″ square, and it covers it:

And blocking:

And more, there is a LOT to this shawl:

Almost finished

This shawl is not for the faint of heart.  Not that the pattern is difficult or hard to follow, just a lot of knitting.  200,040 stitches so far, not counting the 40,000 that I had to rip back when I found a mistake So glad that I did that, as I would have always been bothered by it, nobody else would have noticed.   This number also does not count the 4,816 stitches for the applied I-cord that I have to do yet.  I first started to do the row calculation by hand, and quickly realized that was going to take me forever, and be mistake prone.  Enter Excel who did the calculations in 3 minutes.

I changed the end color to a beautiful dark eggplant.  I like how it looks so far, it will be interesting to see how it looks when wearing.  I also found that I had to add an additional lace row.  I have looked over and over at the pattern, and I think that if you do not add that additional lace row, you will have puckering at the edges, as there will be too many straight garter stitch rows at the end before the I-cord.  After a few early mistakes, I discovered the key to working this pattern, because you do not want to have to rip it back, or correct a mistake from several rows below.  I figured out how each new lace row was suppose to align with the one 8 rows below, and focused as I was knitting that row.  If the alignment became off, I knew I had a mistake in that quadrant of the shawl (as the shawl is picked around a center knit square, and knit in 4 sections with an alternating slip stitch at the corners).  On the next row, I counted the 8 yarn-overs and 8 deceases over and over and over.  My second insurance policy.  Mistakes were easy to rectify at that point.

The last 6-8 inches I used a 60″ circular needle.  Addi Turbo are the only ones who make that length.  I was a bit concerned at first, as I normally prefer a wood needle, especially for socks and lace knitting.  I was pleasantly surprised with how well this worked.  I did have a few times where the stitches slid off the end when I put it down, an issue that does not really occur with wooden needles.  Grace Anna told me she did the whole shawl on 40″ circulars, I don’t know how.  I had some room on the needles at the end, but definitely had to push the stitches around.

Now on to the I-cord edging, another 4,816 stitches.  Pales by comparison.  We are in the car for a long drive this weekend, so I plan to work on that portion then.

Knitting Nature

My husband got me this book for Christmas.  Very brave of him to stray off my list and not end up duplicting one of my books.  I am not sure what I will make from this.  There is a Sunflower Tam that looks interesting.   A lot of the projects seem more fit for a 20 year old than me.  There are some interesting details and small projects, and even a couple for the guys.  I will have to delve into the book later.

Still need to plug away on my Henry scarf and Evening Sky shawl that seem to be the endless projects.  I don’t want to put those down for fear that I won’t pick them up again.  On the Evening Sky, I am back to the point where I was before ripping out 40,000 stitches.

Last year I made a New Years resolution to knit only from stash.  Well, I did not exactly keep that promise.  If I had, I would not have discovered Grace Anna Farrow and the wonderful shawls in her collection.  So, a different goal this year–finish up 2 unfinished projects a month.  Some are big, and some small.  Also, limit the starting of new projects until the ones in hand are completed.   Let’s see if I do any better with this one.  I did make a dent in my stash last year, and RAKed a few unwanted yarns.  Now, I just need to go and reorganize.

The Virgo in me…

I am a perfectionist.  Credit that to my birthday.

I spent a week in NYC touring while my husband was working on business.  That was very fun.  I took this shawl along with me on the trip, as it is good knitting where you don’t have to think a lot.  Or, at least I thought so.  I was working on it at the airport, and noticed that I had made a mistake several rows back, 20 ridges to be exact.  At the rate of about 1,000 stitches per round, that meant about 40,000 stitches ago.  I thought about ripping it back then, but my husband convinced me that I was the only one who would ever notice it.  I kept working on it, until my beautiful new lantern moon needles broke on the wooden shaft.  So, I was done with that project for the trip, and moved on to a scarf.  When I got home I ordered new needles.  A big thanks to WEBS, as they sent out a replacement at no cost right away so that I could change needles.  I also ordered a 60″ circular, as this project is getting very big.  When I went to change needles the other day, I decided to rip back to the error, and knit it correctly.  Yes, I am the only one who would have ever noticed, and the shawl is for me, and it would have always bothered me.

Here is a photo of the shawl on the chaise in the hotel room.  Aren’t the colors a perfect match?  I am rethinking adding the deep purple at the end.

And, here is the shawl off the needles.  You can start to see how it will look.  I am really glad that I choose to make the large size.  This is a LOT of knitting, even for me.

NYC was fun.  Got to do some touristy stuff, and we met my sister and brother-in-law for dinner.  Some touristy photos:

Making progress on my Evening Sky shawl …

Making progress on my Evening Sky shawl (Dusk Pattern from the book The Fine Line by Grace Anna Farrow).  There are a couple of errors in the chart printed in the book.  I have relayed them to Grace Anna and she is formatting a new chart, so if you start this shawl, by the time you get to the charted portion, make sure that you have the correct print-out.

I chose all of the colors shown in the book, but I have also purchased a wonderful deep purple, and think that I am going to use that at the end of the shawl instead of reverting to the medium grey.  Here is how the colors look together as skeins:

As to be expected, progress is slow when you are at about 1,000 stitches/row.  I hope that I can make this work with a 48″ circular needle (size 4), as I do not know how to do the Magic Loop technique and use 2 needles.  I have some room, but a bit of stitches to add on yet.  I plan on making the 52″ square version, the largest.   On Sunday, after we dropped my son off at his room-mates house to get a ride back to school, my husband was saying that there was a yarn shop near there that we had been to before.  I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, but he was right, we were about 15 miles north of Geneva, and while he was referring to The Fine Line, I asked if we could stop by Wool & Company.  I wanted to get some 48″ needles, and that lovely purple you see here had been calling to me.  So, great guy that he is, off we went.  I found only one brand of size 4 48″ circulars (addi NATURA), and bought those.  I had been coveting getting a pair of Lantern Moons.   I checked to make sure that they matched the gauge, but when I got home and started to use them, found that the joins were awful.  One of them was as wide as my fingernail, and naturally the yarn was getting stuck.  I turned them around, and they were a tad better (this is very fine yarn).  So, I emailed Skacel, and told them about my problem (the store I bought them at is 50 miles from my house, so returning them there is not an option).  They were very nice, and offered to replace them, the caveat being as soon as I send them to their office, naturally.   So, I am hobbling along with these defective needles, until the Lantern Moon’s that I ordered arrive, and I can send these back.  I will have 2 pair of 48″, maybe I will gift the replacements. It is not really an option to put 1,000 lace stitches on a holder, and I tried in vain to borrow a pair for a week or so.

Love the progress so far…

Zig-Zag Shawl

I finished up my Zig-Zag shawl (the pattern Volt from The Fine Line by Anna Grace Farrow) last week, and blocked it over the weekend.

I love the soft feel of the wool, and the transparency and lightness of it, yet it’s wonderful warmth.  I can’t wait to wear this.  I have my 2 shawl pins purchased to go with it.  I really like how my turquoise substitute worked on this pattern.  Since that was a slightly thicker yarn, I went down one needle size whenever I worked on the turquoise part.  And it blocked out just beautifully.  I need to get a photo with someone modeling it, that will have to wait one day for my daughter.

 

82,950 Stitches

82,950 Stitches, that is how many are in this shawl so far.

This has been an easy knit, but a massive amount of it.  I decided to see how fast I knit on average in both a knit and purl row on this.  So, I timed myself for 3- 3 minute segments on both the knitting portion and the purling.  I did it at different places on the shawl so that it averaged the amounts of increases/decreases, and slipping of stitch markers.  I did not race, but kept my normal pace.  Of course, these times do not account for mistakes, ripping back, or just taking a breather.

Knitting speed was 49.22 stitches/minute.

Purl speed was 46.67 stitches/minute.

Average speed for knitting and purling was 47.94 stitches/minute.  Since there are about equal knits and purls (the accent row is actually a garter stitch row), I calculated that this scarf has taken 1,730.29 minutes (28.84 hours) to knit thus far of just knitting time.  Not including the cast-on, breaks, mistakes, etc.  I would have thought that it was more, given that I have been at it for 3 weeks.  I have, however, slipped in parts of a sock or two also.

Now, onto a tubular bind-off, and tubular edging on all 3 other sides.  That will take a bit!