The real thing?

When a local yarn store, Knot Just Knits, was going out of business last year I  bought only a few items.  One of them was Mimi Yarn by Lotus, and distributed by Trendsetter, advertised as 100% Mink.

Advertised.

Recently, I pulled out this yarn, wound a ball and decided to knit a shawl with it for a gift.  Part way through I was thinking that I would like another skein to allow me to make the shawl larger.   That’s when I found this:

mimi_recall

Apparently, there never was any Mink in this yarn, just wool, angora, rayon and nylon.  It is very soft, but not mink.  I was wondering how this could be at the given price.   Trendsetter was offering a rebate to your local yarn store (out of business) provided you sent back the original yarn and your receipt.  Who keeps yarn receipts?  So, without that I thought that I would most likely not get a good response from Trendsetter, and since I was already part way through my shawl, I opted to continue, and just kept weighing the yarn to make sure that I was going to have enough to finish.

Haurni is the pattern that I knit up. and luckily, the designer was very clear that when you finish Part A, Part B uses about 50% of the yarn.  Years ago I had knit this shawl, and remembered this part, I just was not certain how close it was going to be.  I was able to add an extra repeat in the shawl to make it a tad bit bigger.

The pattern is fun, well written, and easy to expand.  You can check out my previous version of this shawl HERE. and HERE, I had forgotten that I have made this twice before!!! And I did have enough yarn to finish, not a ton left, but not a scary nail biting finish.

The shawl really comes alive when it is blocked.   I had a specific person in mind for this, I will have to see how I like it when the blocking is finished.

This is a good blog post about the Fake Yarn.  Well, a country that poisons their own babies with tainted formula, our dogs with bad pet food, and substituting plastic for rice!  I am now even more committed to purchasing yarn that was first grown and spun in the US, and second from a reliable Scandinavian or European country.  Or back to spinning my own from fiber of local farmers, the best solution if I have the time.

Careful people, the USDA now allows all of our meat to be sent to China for processing.

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.

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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!

Finished and Donated

This shawl was actually all knit last summer as a charity project for Chicago’s Go Red, a Women’s Heart Health fundraiser.  It sat waiting to be blocked, and since they did not want the items until sometime in January, I saw no urgency to blocking it.  I love the pattern, and the color pink is so beautiful.  The first version that I made was gifted to my sister Diane, that was in a natural wool.  This is Merino and Silk and I extended the pattern by one repeat. Love them both.

Greta Garbo Shawl in Estonian knitting, pattern by Nancy Bush.

Blocking photos:

Greta Shawl Detail

Greta Shawl blocking

And me modeling the finished project!

Greta Shawl Finished

Epic?

This lovely yarn from Juniper Moon Farm that I purchased last week at the Knot Just Knits closeout sale was begging to be knit up.

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It was purchased with the intent of knitting something for the Women’s Heart Association annual fundraiser that my SnB group has been knitting for the past couple of years.  Last year I did not contribute, so thought that I should start early this year.  I chose to reknit the Greta Garbo shawl by Nancy Bush.  A couple of years ago I knit this and gave it to my sister Diane.

Since the Juniper yarn is a much finer gauge than I knit this with, I chose to add an additional repeat and use a smaller needle.  At first I just cast on an extra set of stitches to repeat the large motif on each side.  This shawl is started at the bottom right and left edges, so this meant casting on 475 stitches.  After knitting the first row, I realized that there was a problem with my methodology. The border repeat is a multiple of 14, and the large center motif is a multiple of 48.  Didn’t work out, so I kinked back 475 stitches, as I really did not want to cast on all over.  Then I had to redraft how the bottom portion would knit up at the beginning and the center.

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This yarn is so soft and lovely, 50% merino & 50% silk.  However, it is also a bit tedious to work with given this pattern, and I am nervous about the yarn slipping off the needles.  I am also hoping that the nupps will show prominently enough.  Currently they are a 5 stitch nupp, but I am considering switching to a 7 stitch nupp for the main part of the shawl.

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And, then again, I may knit something much simpler for the main part, I will see how the border goes, and how it looks.  This shawl will not be traveling with me, nor going to knitting group until it is finished.  I have it setting next to my comfy rocker in the living room, and there it will stay while I work on it slowly.  Currently it takes about 20 minutes to do a row, but 4 stitches are decreased every other row, so it incrementally gets faster.  I have been tearing my knitting stuff apart looking for the point protectors so that I can make sure that nothing slips off when I am not working on it.  May have to buy some new ones.

So, will this be an epic feat, or an epic failure?  I know that I will use life lines on this one!

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Two Nancies

After a weekend at Vogue Knitting Live, our local yarn shop Knit Nirvana hosted Nancy Bush and Nancy Marchant on Monday evening for show and tell, wine and book signing.  Nancy and Nancy both showed examples from their books in a mini fashion show.  I forgot to take my camera, so consequently these photos are with my cell phone, I took more of people’s feet than anything else!

Nancy Bush is the Estonian expert; lace, socks and history.  She is a great teacher I have taken classes from her in the past.  Some of these models I have seen prior, but always so worth seeing again.  These are mostly from her book Knitted Lace of Estonia:

Nancy Marchant is the Brioche lady.  I was not familiar with her, or her books, but as I was leaving, the thought came to me that I had knit a Brioche hat, and sure enough it was a Nancy Marchant pattern from the Vogue Hats book. 

 

Brioche is essentially Fisherman’s rib, but with a pattern attached.  Consequently it is very soft and squishy, warm but light weight, and most importantly reversible.  This was made with 2 very different handspun yarns.  I like the purple side facing the best.

Here is Nancy showing one of her lovely scarves.  Apologies again for the very poor photo.

She has her first book,  Knitting Brioche that was previously published,

and a new hot off the presses one that was at the store.  I gave the copy I had in hand to someone else, always other opportunities.

 

Nancy M also has a Brioche scarf in the upcoming Holiday issue of Vogue.  Applying Brioche to lace knitting.

A couple of her scarves were with gradients, which got me to thinking….

The Jury is Still Out

Remember how excited I was to knit up this shawl from the cover of Lovely Knitted Lace?  Well, it is finished, actually finished for a couple of weeks now.  Last week I was busy with summer Architecture camp for teens, and this week I am reeling from a really bad summer cold.  So bad in fact, that I did not even feel like knitting or spinning most of the time, and I have been home alone.   It was quite miserable.

Well, here is the shawl pre blocking:

And I was waiting to have a model to take photos of it, but then realized that I could model it and just use the self timer on my camera.  First, the shawl without the buttons closed, you can see how there is no shape to this, it really has to always be worn fully buttoned up.

And the completed shawl.  I was not looking great today, a weeks worth of head colds took its toll, so I artfully cropped my head out!

Wondering if maybe my torso is not long enough to carry this off.

 

I disagree with her directions for sewing the shawl up.  I would find the point for each of the arms to have the petal end right at the top of the wrist (5th one in from each front edge), and then sew the bottoms between to the required measurements so that it fits properly on your hips.

 

Pattern: Camellia Dolman
Pattern Source: Lovely Knitted Lace
Yarn: Helen’s Lace
Needles: US 3 & 5
Date Started: 3/28/14
Date Finished: 4/16/14
Finished Dimensions: Women’s large

Yup, another shawl

Currently I am knitting yet another shawl, but this one is with a twist, the shawl becomes a sweater.  It is from my new favorite book Lovely Knitted Lace by Brooke Nico.

Slowly I am knitting my way through this book, there are some great twists on lace and how to use it for wearable items.  The sweater shown here on the front, Camellia Dolman, is my newest project, it is basically a circular shawl that is knit back and forth to achieve edges that becomes the button band.

 

 

 

The Helen’s Lace yarn that I purchased at the Lorna’s Laces warehouse sale is being used.

 

This shawl had to be restarted as I did not read carefully and got almost through the first 1/2 of the chart when I realized that I was supposed to just purl back on the even # rows.  UGH!, but I ripped it all back and started over.  It took a long time for my brain to realize why this did not seem to be large enough for the shawl.  The yellow showed how far I was when I ripped back, the green highlighted area is my progress to date.

 

Not quite sure about this color for me, although I think that it will look great with white pants and jeans as a summer sweater.

Progress has been moving along nicely and I realized that the pattern was incorrect in a major way, it asked for 3,000 yards of 2 separate yarns (6,000 in total)…. in reality if you look at the breakdown, it is 1,500 yards of 2 different lace weight yarns, or 3,000 yards total.  This would have made a huge difference in my purchasing as 1,500 yards is a lot cheaper than 3,000 yards!  Now I even think that I could make this again with a handspun gradient, after I see if I like the fit of course.  The other errors in the pattern are that the increases are every 12th row, not every 6th row as stated.  The charts are correct, I am not sure about the written pattern as I do not use them.  Also, she neglects to tell you to bind off, I was wondering if the sweater was made by sewing live edges together, but could not figure out how to block the shawl prior to sewing if that were the case.

In spite of the lack of proper editing or pattern testing in this book, I love these patterns.  It just would be hard for a new lace knitter to figure out what is wrong without the corrections.

Shawls to Excess?

Can one person own too many shawls?  Especially when they are handspun and hand knit with a beautiful Fiber Optic gradient.  I do believe I am testing this hypothesis firsthand.  My Reef Shawl is finished and off the blocking boards, fiber was spun using the Reef gradient that happened to be the first Fiber Optic gradient one that I purchased.

I know that this post will generate lots of offers to take these shawls off my hands.  Not happening people, too much time involved.

I was reluctant to spin this for 2 reasons, at first I thought the colors to bright for me, and second, I didn’t want to ruin the fiber.  It seems I should have had no worries. The colors are gorgeous, and the fiber is wonderful.

I chose the pattern, Poppy Shawl from Brooke Nico’s new book Lovely Knitted Lace, as I wanted to maximize the use of the yarn, and I often find that triangular shawls do not sit well on my shoulders.  The unique shape of this shawl is intriguing, 3 triangles separated by a thin rectangle that sits on the shoulders.  Sort of a simplified Faroese styling.

The shawl rests naturally on the shoulders.  Love the Nupps in the long, thin rectangular panels.

Using this mannequin helps me to see what the shawl looks like on the backside while being worn.  I changed the bottom edging, the pattern called for simply finishing a repeat and binding off.  Preferring a more detailed bottom edge, and wanting to maximize the use of all my yarn, I improvised a variation of the pattern for the end of the shawl, and bound off with the stretchy bind-off.

I will wear it today, although it will have to be as a shawl scarf, as it is rather cool outside.

Pattern: Poppy
Pattern Source: Lovely Knitted Lace
Yarn: Handspun gradient Reef from Fiber Optic
Needles: US 5
Date Started: 3/28/14
Date Finished: 4/27/14
Finished Dimensions: 48″ wide x 20″ deep from back neck

Reef Shawl

Work has been steadily progressing on the Poppy Shawl by Brooke Nico.

If you decide to knit this pattern, look for the errata.  I found a mistake in the first row of Chart 3 and in the repeat width (it is 8 not the 9 std boxed out). When I emailed Brooke to ask if I was correct, she concurred and issued a correction on Ravelry.  It is a lot of knitting of the same pattern repeat, which is fairly straight forward albeit a bit boring at times.  I am very intrigued with the shape which is 3 triangles separated by 2 narrow rectangles (those are the sections with the nupps).  It should sit nicely on my shoulders and have lots of fabric to wrap.  One thing that I would like to change is the ending, rather than just casting off.  I have plenty of time to mull that over, still not finished with the first skein of yarn, my spinning was wound in 2 sections.

The colors are so gorgeous on this fiber, that I had to go back and see what the inspiration photo had been.

Which generated this colorway: