Category Archives: lace

FO: celes

20 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in FO, friends, knitting, lace

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yes thats a finished object. and a big one too, not just some little mitts or socks. according to ravelry, i started this in june last year. oops. so nearly 12 months on the needles, although it did hibernate for a while. the only way i got it finished in the end was to put everything else aside and just do it. the longest part was the edging. it seemed endless.

but it finally came off the needles on thursday night,

and i was home sick on friday, so it had a quick bath and then i blocked it outside in the gorgeous autumn sun.

i think you’re not meant to do that but i wanted to wear it on the weekend and it wasnt going to dry inside. as far as blocking goes, i knew it had grown in the water, just length wise really, which is what you’d expect from a heavy weight lace project. it opened up beautifully and i just laid it flat and pinned out the points. every single last one of them. it didnt take long to dry and when i picked it up i nearly cried it was so lovely and smooth.

i am pretty confident that there are no mistakes in the pattern, i was pretty ruthless about ripping back something i wasnt happy with, including the graft (which now lies beautifully flat and seamless). i wore it on sunday to the  annual old  bus depot markets pilgrimmage. it wasnt a particularly cold day, and thats a lot of scarf to have about your neck

but its not the least bit scratchy (it is alpaca/silk after all) and it was really easy to wear.

i love this yarn, i have one and a half skeins left to maybe make a hat with. the pattern worked really well in it and the pattern itself was fantastic. jared writes a beautiful pattern, and this had all the right shetland techniques, two halves grafted so that the pattern flowed in the same direction, a tree and diamond motif, and a gorgeous knitted on border, including really easy to follow instructions for getting around the corners.

i would definitely make this again, but in a lace weight yarn this time. i got  lots of nice comments on it, and margarita took these photos at the markets, where i was remarkably restrained,

buying only one of michelle’s excellent project bags, some sock yarn for a friend who’s having a rough time and needs some cheering, and some bc garn baby alpaca from suzyhausfra, who had her first stall at the markets. and boy was she popular! it was great to meet her in person and see the stall doing so well. i also had an excellent time visiting with my favourite canberra family. we played lots of games, ate cake for mama’s birthday and went to see james’ drawing in a local art show. in his skinny jeans and black tshirt he was very much an artist in the making!

its lovely to have little people who are excited to see me and sad to see me go, and then its lovely to come home to a quiet house again. im feeling a little poorly today, sore throat, head ache but i have a big deadline at work this week so i am in the office soldiering on. i would rather be home knitting though. so many more projects to get off the needles! what will it be next?!

k xx

celesathon

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by in knitting, lace, WIP

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i had one of those glorious weekends just past where i had nothing planned, nowhere to be, no one to see. ok, there was some clothes washing to catch up on and dogs to walk

and vacuuming to do, but otherwise it was mine, all mine. i wont have another one like it for a while, so i decided to make the most of it, and set myself the task of trying to finish the ‘celes’ scarf. finishing those mitts so quickly has given me the urge to finish more things, and i wanted to start a hat to match the mitts but, in an odd bout of self-discipline, told myself i couldnt do that until i had finished at least one other unfinished object. celes is the closest other thing to being finished, plus i want to wear it now that it is actually getting cold. so celesathon was born.

i had already finished one half and was about half way through the second, so it didnt take long to get two seperate halves ready for grafting.

i followed his instructions which said ‘make sure both right sides are facing the same way’. he didnt say which way though, and i’ve only ever grafted socks before, and i stupidly started grafting with the right sides facing IN (against each other). i got about 20 stitches in and realised the ridge was being formed along the right (or, in this case, wrong!) side. i had about 10 seconds of wondering whether i could just leave it and switch from there but thought better of it, and started to undo the graft. that really didnt go well.

is there some trick to doing that that doesnt involve watching at least 3 rows unravel that then have to be ripped back, picked up and reknit? sigh.

it took a couple of hours and i nearly cried, but i did it and am glad i did. the regraft looks pretty perfect – you wont see that when its blocked at all.

then i went all the way around picking up all the stitches for the knitted on edging (there are 580something stitches around, apparently), marked the corners then started with the edging. i was pretty chuffed to get around my first corner, it seems to have worked (the little puckering should block out).

and now i am about 3/4 up one side, with one end and another side to go. i added an extra repeat on each side i think, thinking this would be a long scarf, and you know the rule about scarves needing to be as long as you are tall. do you have ANY idea how long it takes to knit on a 5foot (on one side) edging?? right now im kind of glad im as short as i am.

this is a really beautiful project, the yarn is bluesky alpaca silk which really is the most beautiful soft yarn, but of course its written for a fingering weight yarn. the BSA is an 8ply. so what i had thought would be a scarf is now, with the edging and blocking, going to be a somewhat more substantial wrap type thing.

still, one cant complain about being draped in ruby coloured alpaca silk, can one? i hope to have this finished by the end of the week. wish me luck.

k xx

stops and starts

13 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in knitting, lace, socks

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at our knitters guild meeting this weekend, we did a round the room ‘what i learnt about knitting this year’. i said i learnt that if you work on one project it gets finished, and then lyn said something that really resonated with me – that i dont like knitting patterns i dont like. i’ve always struggled with KALs, and i was really disappointed with the socks that the majority voted for in a group i helped initiate on ravelry. they were good patterns, just not the ones i really wanted to knit, especially in a year where knitting time has been so hard to come by. so i started one or two of them, and then opted out.

this doesnt just apply to KALs though. this year i have also learnt if i’ve decided on something, and i start it, and im not feeling the love, frog it. it wont get finished and it will sit in the basket under my coffee table unfinished. for example, this jaywalker sock, which i discovered on sunday when i was cleaning out said basket.

it has no sibling, because as much as i love the yarn (its online supersocke bamboo blend and its so lovely and so soft on), i really loathe that jaywalker pattern. so even though the basket is now tidy,

and that sock is back in there, there probably wont be a second one. at least, not in the forseeable future.  while cleaning out said basket, and with lyn’s words ringing in my head, i looked at the lovely madli’s shawl in gold silky thread. i havent knit it for ages. why? it bores me. i opted for no nupps, and i hate to admit it but i was wrong (yes yes i said it, take a picture). it needs the nupps so it doesnt look so repetitive, and in that superfine yarn, it really needed the nupps to give it some definition. so it got frogged. because i do want to be knitting some lace, and because fiona is my own personal test knitter at the moment, i have started jared flood’s stonecrop instead.

missfee supplied me with the yarn, which is the beautiful madtosh prairie in thunderstorm (much bluer than it looks here). i wanted to do this because i have some of that colour in madtosh sock, and i love the idea of a shetland/orenburg construction with NO KNITTED ON BORDER. whats not to love about that?

i have been trying to practice what i preach in the monogomous knitting department as well, and concentrating on getting a pair of boy socks off the needles in time for christmas. i achieved that today with these lovely stripey creations.

then i noticed a little problem.

hmmm. i think i will rip that second toe back to the same length as the first (which fits the recipient) and then kitchener it.

so that would be something i obviously failed to learn about knitting this year: look at the first sock before you start the second!

sigh.

k xx

lace lessons

28 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by in knitting, lace

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i’ve been knitting for a few years now, and there are some things im pretty good at. remembering some of the basics about lace knitting doesnt seem to be one of them however. shall  i explain? oh yes please do, i hear you groan.

i started madli’s shawl the other day. you may have heard me mention it. i cast on the required stitches (101) using my go-to needles, knitpicks options with the nickel plated tips. i prefer metal tips for the easy slide, and they’re slightly pointier. however, i have not used them with superfine yarn before. in fact, i’ve not used superfine yarn at all before, and when i say superfine, i do mean proper 2 ply. i dont think its quite cobweb, but its really bloody close. its slippery as all hell. the cast on required a double strand. i lost count about 3 times. on the third try i got to about 3 rows in, made a mistake, tried to tink it, it got tangled (hello silk) and i just yanked it off the needles and started again. that little bit of yarn got thrown in the bin and i changed tips to knitpicks harmonies, you know, the bamboo ones. muuuuuch better. so off i go again on my merry little way.

then i ran into a bit of trouble on about row 15. i dont know why but i was missing stitches. well, i do suspect why. as donna reminded me, the most likely cause was forgetting a yarn over in amongst all the k2tog. tinky tink tink.3 rows i tinked. you know what would have made that easier? yes, you guessed it. a LIFELINE.

how many times have i knitted lace do you think? how many times have i told myself to put in a lifeline? why did i think i wouldnt need one this time?

so i put one in. in case you’re living under a rock somewhere, and dont know what im talking about, here’s how i did it. you slip the thread through the little hole in the end of the knitpicks tip

then you knit along a plain or purl row, dragging the thread through the stitches with you (not KNITTING with the thread though. that would be stupid. ask me how i know).

then voila, it comes out the other end!

you cut it loose from the tip and tie a knot to stop it just sliding through the knitting, and off you go again, secure in the knowledge you’ve done the Right Thing.

i did get a bit paranoid after that, and put one in halfway through the pattern repeat, and then left it there when i made the transition to the centre chart, putting another one at the beginning of that as well.

it paid off. madli’s now looks like this:

its not tightly stretched so still looks a bit wonky, but im pretty sure its mistake free.

next time i start a lace project, someone refer me to this post ok?

k xx

forward planning

22 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in knitting, lace

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once upon a time, summer used to put a stop to my knitting. mostly, that was when i lived in canberra where its hot as hades in summer and sucks the soul right out of you, let alone the will to knit. but now im back with the gentle sea breeze and find i can handle wool all year around. i do make some slight adaptations, and ive been busy planning them in my head. last night, i actually started one:

madli’s shawl from knitted lace of estonia, in glenora alpaca/silk in the ‘camel’ colour. lace is perfect for summer, and this is a really fine thread, definitely the finest thing ive ever knit with.

i had wanted to do something from ‘victorian lace today’, but nothing really struck me as ‘lacey’ enough, and i definitely wanted to do a rectangle for a change. also, im already knitting something from VLT, which is my sisters frame.

im sure some people think this is a very weird project but its coming along really well. its the ‘trellis border’ from the large rectangle in leaf and trellis pattern, and its so perfect in the blue wollmeise, ive decided that the whole shawl is going to be my next summer lace project, in some gorgeous wollmeise lace in the maus ault colour that george the german fibre whore got me in pfaffenhoffen. its making a lovely winding vine

which will look beautiful pinned to my sisters white wall with one of her drawings in the middle.

i am also planning socks for summer. i have a mindless self striping pair on the needles for outdoor knitting which will be finished soon, and the evening stockings are going to be a longer term project, so i am already thinking about what else to cast on! i do, after all, have a rather nice little top shelf of sock yarn to choose from…

you may remember the southern summer of socks group on ravelry, and we are going to start it up again soon and i have some ideas for KALs and NOT-KALS and competitions, including ‘who can knit the most nancy bush patterns’. im going to start with another attempt at unst in some mushroom coloured koigu, followed by some whitbys for trent in knitabulous, and maybe the anniversary socks in wollmeise. after that i have some madtosh just dying to be a pair of cookie a socks…which ones will be the question!

and by then it will be winter again and we can start the cycle over! what about you? what are you planning to knit this summer?

k xx

new ways of starting things

12 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by in cardigan, knitting, lace

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i started two new knitting projects over the weekend, but lest you think i’m out of control, i did also finish something. a fairly large something in the form of the ‘adrift’ cardigan. i even wore it to guild on saturday but i failed to get a picture of me wearing it. i could take pictures of it hanging up or artfully laid across the back of a chair, but i wont, because the whole point of a cardigan like that is what it looks like on. so that one can wait till later this week.

as soon as i’d finished it, i felt lost without a garment on the needles. i have other things i could be working on, and i did for a few hours. plain socks for trent, the celes scarf or evening stockings in wollmeise for me. i had a go at all of them. but i needed to know that there was something big happening, at the same time.

so i unravelled the ‘leaving’ cardigan that i’d started ages ago and decided i didnt like, and i finally chose another pattern for the lovely madeline tosh ‘pashmina’ in vintage frame’ to become. that was ‘atelier’. i really like heidi’s patterns, and her sizing is always really good, so i decided to just go ahead and use the swatch i’d already done for gauge.

i also decided to try something new and take the ‘harder’ option, making the i-cord version. rather than plain stocking stitch edges that roll up everywhere, i opted for the more formal and neat finish. ive seen i-cord edging on a few things now and love the look. but ive never done one. so out came the books and the knittinghelp videos, and i ended up with something that looks like this:

i wasnt sure if i had picked up and knit down the correct side, but i like the look of it so far anyway. the actual pattern doesnt make a lot of sense to me right now, but im sure i’ll have one of those lightbulb moments if i just follow along and see where it takes me. and its just lovely to be knitting with the pashmina, so i dont really care what happens after that!

i also started the project i talked about before, for my sister (the knitted artwork frame). i decided to go with wollmeise, not jitterbug, just to keep it slightly finer and lacey. i decided on this pattern:

the trellis border from the leaf and trellis shawl in ‘victorian lace today’. everything else seemed a bit ‘girly’. my sister’s not really the ‘girly’ type. instead of doing a slip stitch at the beginning of one row, and the knit-together-with-the-shawl at the end of the next (there being no shawl to knit together with), im just doing 3 knit stitches along the inside edge. i figured that should keep it pretty stable.

and as per jody’s suggestion, i did a provisional cast on, and hopefully when i work out the corners and come back around, i can just graft the two ends together, and it will be a square! i’m also using 4.5mm needles because thats what the pattern uses. im not sure if this is making the stitches too ‘open’ or not, but it seems ok so far so i’m just going to keep going for a while. its only twenty stitches across and wont kill me if i have to rip it and start over. i hope not though.

it feels weird to have started two new projects in ways i wouldnt normally use. i feel like im flying a bit blind, no real idea how either of them might turn out. its not a bad feeling though. it feels like maybe i’ve got a bit more confidence in myself to work things out as i go.

let’s see how long that lasts!

k xx

FO: Girasole Shawl

11 Friday Feb 2011

Posted by in FO, knitting, lace, shawls

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i had a lot of trouble concentrating at work yesterday. all day, i was thinking of that lovely piece of red wollmeise stretched out on knitabulous’ floor, waiting to be unpinned. i raced over after work yesterday, and up it came. its so beautiful it nearly made me cry:

the wollmeise has just blocked beautifully, it is so smooth and light and drapey, and its HUGE! its at least 140cm across::

im not sure i made it to wear it, i thought of it more as a decoration, but it was actually very hard to take off:

i should stop preening and tell you a little bit about it, although you can see all the details on ravelry of course. the pattern is jared flood’s girasole, italian for sunflower, which it does indeed invoke:

the yarn is wollmeise lace-garn, in merlot, that george got for me in pfaffenhoffen, and really only natural light does the colour justice. it looks like, well, merlot. the pattern was written for a fingering and an aran weight, but the wollmeise is probably about a 3 ply. i went with 3.75mm sticks, or knit pick option interchangeable with the longest cable actually. it opened up beautifully on blocking:

and is light, and flowing, and drapey. i did extra repeats on chart E and G (6 and 4 respectively i think) and i still have enough yarn left over to make another small shawl. but not enough that i dont think i wasted it, and im certainly not thinking its too small! im so pleased with it, ive bought it to work today.

just because.

on the edge

28 Friday Jan 2011

Posted by in knitting, lace, shawls, WIP

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do you ever think that you have to be a little bit insane to knit lace? all those yarn overs and 2 togethers, the charts, the counting, the lifelines, the stress of mistakes, the heartbreak of ripping back.

and then you get to the edge. in particular, the knitted on border. much preferable looks and work wise to a sewn on one, but destined to drive you batty all the same. i finished the main body of girasole a week ago and the thought of doing a knitted on edge, on a shawl that is 640 stitches around, well, the descent into lace madness seemed a bit much in the same week as seeing ‘black swan’. (not that there is any parallel between dancing and knitting, but if youve seen it, i had a vision of a room with hundreds of lace charts on the wall laughing at me and me running around sticking a knitting needle into my cheek).

but i digress. the main body went into a bag for a week and yesterday, when i was home alone recovering from an australia day that involved pavlova eating, discussions about the nature of australian racism, and the joy of amanda palmer and neil gaiman at the opera house, i pulled it back out of the bag, and took the plunge:

i had to rip three times, but eventually it clicked, and you can see ive managed to get quite a lot done (dodgy pinning aside):

the reason i had to rip is because the pattern says to do the edging on two DPNs, but i didnt have any in that size, and ive never worked an edge like that before. i keep the stitches live and use one needle tip and then work the edging with another needle – see:

(in this case the other needle is a 3.75mm tip on the shortest cable i had). but that in itself was only part of the problem, the other thing was the pattern said to do a double yarn over before a purl, which put 8 stitches on the needle (where there should be 7). then the next row you’re meant to K1P1K1 into ONE strand of the double yarn over. it doesnt say what to do with the other strand, i suspect just let it drop making slightly larger holes than what im getting:

but it just caused me grief, so im only doing the one yarn over, and getting a smaller hole, and thence probably a slightly smaller edging, but i like it:

and thats what blocking is for anyway, right? the other thing that is sending me over the edge about this shawl is that i have decided to enter it in the sydney royal easter show this year. i know theres been all sorts of problems with the royal, and the way peoples things get treated, and broken, which is just awful, and if anything happens to this shawl i will likely hit someone, but im gonna give it a go anyway. i dont expect to win anything, its not traditional shetland and probably not even proper lace, but its big and its pretty, and id like to do something with the show other than run around after my dogs for once!

despite all of that, this project has been an absolute joy. i have not got bored with it for one second, and i love working on it, slowly but surely watching it grow, sensing how much im learning from taking the time to do it right. so its already a winner for me.

k xx

rip and repeat

08 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in lace, WIP

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there are days when i wonder whether all my years of book learning count for anything, because my level of common sense seems to exist in inverse proportion to say, my IQ. for example, it did not occur to me to TRY ON the rick socks that i wasnt sure about. i am a little mortified to think i actually put that out there in the public forum. i really didnt think to try them on. i dont know why. i just didnt. like i dont think to screw back on the lid to the vegemite jar, for example.

so thanks for all those brilliant suggestions. i tried it on. it fitted very nicely on the cuff, and went nicely up my calf no problem. i could see that the leg was going to get a little loose and the whole yarn over at the end of the needle on magic loop was annoying the crap out of me, so i switched to 2.25mm DPNs. after i ripped back to the cuff and started the pattern again, of course. they look much better now, thanks for asking:

ripping seemed to be the knitting theme for the weekend, because the girasole got a bit of frog action as well. i knew that something had gone amiss with the stitch count somewhere near the beginning of Chart C but i thought i had worked it out and it would be ok. however, when i moved to Chart D, all hell broke loose. you know how i said i liked the “dealing with mistakes’ section in ‘heirloom knitting’? the line that stuck in my head as i drifted off to sleep on saturday night was ‘the set up rows for lace patterns are the most important’. when i woke up sunday morning, i knew what i had to do.

i laid it all out on a towel so the stitches would be less inclined to slide around and marked what appeared to be the start of the round back at the beginning of chart c:

i removed the needles:

i ripped. a lot. i may have shed a tear.

then i switched to a smaller knitpicks tip and a very long cable,

and carefully picked up 280 odd stitches until they were all back on the needle.

i also, at this point, inserted a lifeline. no, i didnt already have one. i dont know why not (see above). well, partly it was because im lazy, and had been using an addi fixed cable, and it doesnt have one of those convenient little holes to thread some cotton through so it creates the lifeline as you knit. anyway, it has a lifeline now. its also knitting back up very quickly, and is so far, touch wood, mistake free.

as i am reknitting it, i am thinking that i actually missed an entire row. there is a stitch combination that i have no memory whatsoever of performing the first time around. again, the vegemite jar analogy springs to mind. it feels nice to be getting it right this time, however, so the ripping angst was at least worthwhile.

lets hope i can keep my mind on the job second time around.

k xx

for the love of lace

26 Tuesday Oct 2010

Posted by in knitting, lace, WIP

≈ 10 Comments

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sorry, no, not a post about a pron star. rather, i may have mentioned yesterday that i am loving knitting lace again. oh yes indeed. i am really feeling the love. its so nice to have my sock, and now my lace, mojo return.

of course, it helps if you pick the right project and the right yarn. without too much thought, i put these two together:

jared flood and wollmeise (hmm, now thats an idea for a movie…sorry, distracted). after my intial circular cast on angst, i am really wondering what all the fuss was about. look how its grown!

you cant quite see the pattern yet, but after the first chart i switched from the DPNs to an addi circular (which is nice and smooth but not as sharp as a knitpicks), and now its flying along:

although not quite right, this picture is closest to the true colour. i cant believe how simple this is really. lovely big charts

with easy to remember stitch pattern repeats. my only problem is wondering which chart to do more times so i can use up more wollmeise. or should i just stick to the pattern and have enough left to make something else? (first world problem or what!)

k xx

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