The Terror of Deadline Knitting

I really try hard to avoid deadline knitting. I don’t knit holiday gifts at all, and when I have given knitted gifts I try to incorporate the planning and design process into the giving.  It’s a bit selfish, perhaps, but planning a project is often my least-favorite part of knitting and I have enjoyed having help and input.  It makes the gift all the more special since the final product will be made-to-order, and there is the added benefit of spending some time with the intended recipient.

Then, of course, there are those times when planning and collaboration just aren’t possible, and when deadlines creep up on a person all sneaky-like.  That’s been the case with Levi’s Blanket, which I’ve been struggling to design and create in the mere five months since he was “matched” with his adoptive parents.  Well now he’s here, official, adopted, and in need of his blanky!

After several false starts designing my own cables, I decided I would not try and reinvent the wheel.  Sticking with my original theme of “three,” I combed through stitch dictionaries and finally came up with three different cables.  Working my trusty Excel skills to their outer limits, I created a color-coded chart that takes up a full 11×17 sheet of paper. The chart is 85 rows high and 158 stitches across.  It’s a monster.  Once I was happy with my instructions, I took a deep breath, cast on with Swish Worsted in bare (the natural colorway), and started cabling my heart out.  Three (and change) chart repeats later, I’m just a handful of rows away from finishing.  Since I’ll probably be meeting Baby Levi next week, I’ve got sore wrists and a grating feeling of anxiety deep in my gut even though I’m fairly sure I’ll be able to finish up quite easily.

While I’m happy that I took on this project and pleased with the results, its a good reminder of what I like and don’t like about knitting.  I love the process.  Sitting for hours, thoughts drifting or focused, listening to radio, tv, a book or just silence, each stitch is a quiet focal point, a badly-needed valve for my daily frustrations.  I love to give gifts, but more than “stuff” that is made overseas and breaks easily, I try to give time, experience, or handmade things . . . and NOT on a deadline!

Back on the Horse

You know that feeling, when you have a big term paper looming, and even though you’re procrastinating on it, you just can’t do any other work either on the theory that if you’re working on something it should be the paper?

Well, that’s what’s been going on with my blog lately.  I was so focused and fretty about publishing my Mandala round-up that I just couldn’t bring myself to blog about anything else.  Now that I’ve finished and it’s up, there are so many other things to talk about!

First of all, since I can never be without a lace project, I’m trying to figure out what lace to knit next.  I really enjoyed the Mandala but I think I’m now fairly convinced of my preference for shawls that are triangular or rectangular rather than round.  I loved the way that my Frost Flowers & Leaves shawl turned out, and I love the way that it looks on my sister.  Of course, she is amazing with wardrobe and could make a paper bag look glamorous, thus the nickname.  I like the practicality of a triangular shawl, although it does concern me a bit to have a triangle-tip pointing, um . . . down one’s back.  But the circle just doesn’t make much sense.  I understand wearing it folded up around the neck, but then why bother with the lace if you’re just going to wrap it up tightly?  Thrown around the shoulders it felt a bit awkward to me.  I didn’t like how the top folded over so that the wrong-side was facing out around the shoulders, and I didn’t like the overall feeling that I was wearing a tablecloth.

Sure, I’m not exactly a maestro with draping fabric, and not exactly in the age or weather bracket for extensive shawl wearing, but still.  I want a pattern that looks and feels lacy but also has a classic, elegant simplicity to it.  I’ve always been drawn to Pink Lemon Twist’s Hanami Stole and it’s always on my mind.  I think I’d like to knit it for myself, in the  most luxurious yarn I can think of!  Of course, cash and color are my two stumbling blocks in that area.  With Hanami as my starting point, I’ve taken Ravelry’s new pattern recommendation experiment for a spin.  It’s the little sciency-looking vial icon at the bottom right on the pattern page.  You click on it and it suggests similar patterns you might like.  From this experiment I found the Curved Shawl with Diamond Edging from Victorian Lace Today.  It appeals to me because it’s curved rather than pointy along the bottom, and I like the repeating circle motif.  Still, it is not exactly the clean, sleek look I’ve been hoping to find.

Since I don’t have another lace recipient in mind, I guess I should just go ahead and pick out some lace for myself.  I do have a ton of other people to knit for at the moment.  Levi’s arrival is anticipated at any moment, and his baby blanket is almost (maybe . . . I need to block and see how I feel . . .) finished.  I’ve also got mittens and socks on my needles at the moment, and as soon as I’m done with knitting for Levi I need to start knitting for baby N, a lucky little kid who’ll be meeting his or her wonderful parents in July.  Lots of knitting to do, which I hope will lead to lots of blogging!

Mandala (aka Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl) Round-up

She’s finally finished!

VITAL STATISTICS:

Pattern: Mandala, originally known as the Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl

Made for: My mother-in-law, The Master, who has showered me with gratitude and compliments since receiving the shawl.

Yarn: KnitPicks Gossamer (now discontinued)

Yardage: I’d estimate I used more than half of the final skein, so 3.75 skeins, about 1650 yards

Yarn Source: KnitPicks and the generosity of Ravelers.  I realized that I needed  more than I had of this now-discontinued yarn.  I searched other Ravelers’ stashes for the exact dye-lot I needed, and ended up swapping for the extra yarn.

Needles: US size 4 KnitPicks Options circular needles, US size 3 KnitPicks Harmony DPNs from my set.

Modifications: Although I didn’t modify the pattern at all, one of the coolest parts of the Mandala pattern was the choose-your-own adventure element of the charts.  To my horror as I write this, I realize that I cannot remember which charts I used for the first three sections of the chart.  For chart 4 I used chart B.

Looking back at my photos and the charts, I’d guess I used chart 1B, 2C,  and 3D.

RESOURCES:

I followed along with the Ravelry group for the Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl knit-along, which was very helpful, and also got chart updates and info from the Yahoo Group (although I believe the Yahoo group is now closed to new members).

SMOOTHING OUT THE TANGLES:

The Cast-on:

I started this circular shawl with my old favorite standby, the Emily Ocker circular cast-on.  I used size 3 dpns to start with so that I wouldn’t have to worry too much about keeping the tension snug as I worked the hardest part of a circular shawl: those first few rows!

A helpful hint for getting circular shawls started: put your work on a pillow and turn the pillow as you knit around instead of trying to turn the work itself.  Using a pillow can really help stabilize your knitting in the very delicate early stages.

Choose your own adventure:

This shawl is a variation on Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Pi Shawl.  Instead of one pattern worked all the way through, each section offers a choice between four patterns.  A little basic probability math tells us there are 256 possible shawls that can come out of this pattern!  Such a cool idea!

The charts:

I worked chart one on size 3 DPNs and switched to size 4 circs once I got past the increase at the end of chart 1.  I find that knitting the beginning rounds of a circular shawl works well because the smaller needles help keep the tricky beginning snug.

A tip (that I did not put together until the end of chart 4 but that will probably be obvious to most people): I was initially intimidated by the shaded rows, where the instructions say to knit one extra stitch in the plain round before the shaded row (also known as moving the stitch marker one stitch to the left).  Once I actually did this the first time it made complete sense to me.  I also noticed an interesting pattern feature of the shaded rows.  Each shaded row ends in a double-decrease, where the instructions say to slip two stitches together as if to k2tog, then knit the next stitch, then pass the two slipped stitches over.  Because the pattern repeats of the shaded rows are shifted to begin one stitch to the left, it follows that they will also END one stitch to the left.  This means that when working the shaded rows, you can always check yourself to make sure you are on track by noticing that at the end of each repeat you slip the two stitches as if to knit, remove your pattern repeat marker, knit the next stitch and pass the two slipped stitches over, and replace your pattern repeat marker.

I was a bit behind the knitalong group – it always amazes me how people can knit an entire large clue in just a week!  It worked out well though, because I got a sneak peek at how each chart choice came out and I selected accordingly.

Edging:
One of the things I liked about using the varigated yarn was the way the edging changed:

As you can see, the striping was horizontal for the body of the shawl and then became vertical in the edging.  The visual impact of the perpendicular lines of color was very striking.

The effect was even cooler after blocking:

Now that I’ve done two shawls in the round, I can’t imagine that I would ever choose to finish a shawl without a knitted on edging instead of a traditional bind-off.  Because of the extent that lace must be stretched for blocking, I would not want to be confined to a tight bind-off that would prevent the lace from being as lacy as possible.   Yes, a perpendicularly knitted edge does take a LOT longer than a regular bind off, and it does involve grafting, but ultimately it is worth it.

Grafting means using the principles of Kitchner stitch to bring the end of the edging together with the beginning.  Unlike regular Kitchner stitch though, you must incorporate all of the elements of the lace pattern as you weave the two ends together.  Grafting this shawl edging together was an exercise in patience and steel nerves.  I banished The Baron to his cave and worked in near-total silence for about 45 minutes before I was finally able to breathe.  Perhaps I’ll be able to speak of the experience in more detail later, but let me just say that grafting lace is not for the faint of heart.

I STRONGLY suggest using this technique.  It’s the one I’ve used for both of my in-the-round shawl projects and at this point the only way I know of to successfully execute this delicate operation.

Blocking:

Over the course of working this shawl, I noticed that the yarn seemed a bit sticky, so I was extremely concerned about felting.  I did my usual warm-water wash in the kitchen sink with a cap-full of Soak woolwash.  I squished the fabric down into the bowl once and flipped the whole thing over once, but mostly I just left it alone.  I can’t say why, but I am a sucker for soaking photos, so here’s photographic evidence of my kitchen sink and metal mixing bowl:

After the first hour-long bath, the water was very green, so I did another bath in plain water for an hour.  The shawl still was not rinsing clean, so I repeated the hour-long dip in lukewarm water with another cap-full of Soak wash and after a final soak in plain water (4 soakings in total!) the water was much more clear.  I gently wrangled the wet beast out of the bowl, let it drip for a minute into the sink, and then spread it out onto several towels that I rolled up.  I had The Baron apply his gigantic flat feet to the towels and then unwrapped the shawl and spread it out on our guest bed for pinning out.

I started by pinning out the edges of the shawl in quarters, sticking a pin in the north, south, the east and the west-most points.  From there I added a few pins to each section.  Once the shawl started stretching out, I was able to re-position my original four pins to get even more diameter to the shawl.  When I’d gone as far as I felt I could, I got out my yardstick and measured the radius of the shawl at several points.  The largest radius I got was 31 inches from center to edging point, so I began working my way around the shawl, pinning each edging point out or readjusting the existing pins to get a 31 inch radius.

Once again, the magic of blocking blew me away, turning this:

into this:

Mandala Edging

After the snipped-skein mess last week, I was quite relieved to finish the main body of my Mandala/GKAMS and still have quite a bit of yarn left in the large ball I was able to salvage.  I’m on to the edging, (using a variation of the shawl edging technique I learned about here) and quite happy with the way the varigated yarn is striping up.  If you’ve been following along, you know I’m working with Knitpicks Gossamer in Caribbean which is a pretty loud color.  For the whole body of the shawl, the color and pooling has been pretty intense.  Now that I’m on to the edging though, a back-and-forth 13 to 17 stitch repeat worked vertically along the horizontal edge of the shawl, there’s a very fun quick striping happening, with each color change lasting about the length of one row.  It’s going well and I hope will finish up quickly.  Although I’m very against holiday gift knitting, because of the timing on this bad boy I’m hoping to get it out the door in time for a Christmas delivery to my Mother-in-Law.  We’ll see!

The snipped skein

Though there hasn’t been much blogging going on recently, there has been an awful lot of knitting . . . mainly on my Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl, now also known as Mandala.  Sadly, as with most lace projects, there is little visible progress since my last photo and the thing still looks like a giant blob.  I only know that I’m making progress because I’m checking off row after row of the giant chart 4 (96 rows!) and watching my third skein shrink down to nothing.  I was expecting that three skeins would do it, but luckily, thanks to the generosity of fellow Ravelers, I had a fourth skein on standby.

Last night, with just a tiny length of yarn hanging off of my shawl, I put the fourth skein on my swift and realized immediately that I had a huge problem.  Several rounds of yarn had been cut or perhaps broken, and the whole thing was a gigantic stringy mess.  Not sure what to do, I grabbed the first strand I could find and started winding.  This approach worked well until after about twenty cranks of the ball winder the tail-end of the yarn appeared.  Although I now had one neatly-wound ball, I also had a bunch of unwound strands that were tangling around the bottom of the swift and generally looking knotty.  I admit I was tempted to just toss the whole thing, but I needed the skein to finish my shawl.

It was a painstaking process, but finally I managed to wrestle each snipped strand off of the main skein and was able to salvage a medium-sized center pull ball in addition to a whole bunch of mini-balls.

Hopefully I’ll be able to finish the project with just one more splice!

My Life of Crime

A bulletin from the lifehacks department:

Last night I was with a friend and we got locked out of an office building with most of our stuff still inside.  Since woman cannot possibly survive without cell phone, we had to find a way back in.  Luckily I still had my knitting bag with me and we were able to break into the building using a bit of yarn, some old-fashioned elbow grease and the cable from my set of Knitpicks Options needles.

Although it was slightly frightning to realize how easy it is to get through a locked door, I’m pleased to report that the cable stood up to being pretty badly abused and is, today, still as flexible, functional and (almost) as smooth as ever.  Go Knitpicks!

Knitter on the loose in San Francisco: Part 1 – Knit Stalking

This weekend I headed north to San Francisco and ended up having a very yarny weekend.  I wasn’t feeling well on the plane, so no actual knitting got done, but nonetheless it was a weekend full of fiber and inspiration.

The kickoff was a Saturday morning trip to the Ferry Building downtown.  The market is a pretty big one and the empty-on-a-weekend downtown that I remember was completely replaced by good sized crowds of people milling around checking out the market, wandering along Embarcadero, checking out the spectacular views of the bay and just generally enjoying the beautiful sunshine.  My friend and I were minding our own business, chatting together and heading for the apple stand when we spotted the most beautiful sweater ever.  I mean really, this was a total stunner.  I’d been teasing her that she is next in line for a knitted gift and she pointed out the sweater in awe.  “Can you make that?” she asked.  “Sure,” I replied, “But I’ll need a photo.”

We tried to snap a sneaky picture but it was way too far away and fuzzy, so we swallowed our pride and just asked for a snapshot.

Here it is:

If this is you, thank you for sharing your sweater with us!  Someday I hope to be able to re-create this pattern.

So proud

As we speak, Glamorous is in the air above us, heading to the midwest to spend the next several weeks working on the presidential campaign.  I won’t say which one (if you know me at all you already know anyway) because that’s not the point.  The point is that she’s actually doing it.  Her job (she works on a contract basis) finished, she had a few free weeks, so she called a campaign office, booked a flight and is on her way.  I could not be more proud of her!

There is a lot of talking that we do.  I hear so much talk these days . . . political talk around the office, talking heads and pundits on TV, indignant statements thrown around online.  It seems like there are many many more people talking than there are people doing.  Going out into the world, interacting with others, taking action, having an impact.  I am just SO PROUD!

I’m so inspired by what she’s doing that I’m going to do some phonebanking next weekend in her honor.  Whatever your inclination, whatever your passion, stop talking about it and go do something!

Design challenges, part 1

Although it’s been quiet around the blog, I have been knitting.  I drew an actual sketch for what I’m calling Levi’s Baby Blanket and now I’m just trying to figure out how to make my giant scribble into an actual knitted thing.

So far, so good.

I’m thinking of using Knitpicks Swish Superwash in the bare (ie, undyed and natural) colorway, in either bulky or worsted weight.  Of course, it stands to reason that I’d be swatching with DK weight, right?  Yes, yes, I’ll eventually swatch with the actual yarn I plan to use.  But in this case I’m making design swatches, see?  It’s a whole other process!

Anyway, the concept or theme for the blanket is “three” — three being the number of people in a family when the first new baby arrives.  (In the case of our friends, three also has other special significance.)  Of course thrown into the mix is a dash of “new life” and soupson of “love” so I feel like I have plenty to work with.

Design-wise, I’ve started with the most basic three-part unit I know of: the braid.

I played around with it a bit once I’d worked a pattern repeat, but my favorite part of my swatch is still the traditional-looking braid at the right side of the photo above.    I think the 4-stitch reverse stockinette border looks best. On the left side of the photo, you’ll notice that the reverse stockinette starts to look a little funny.  Well, that was me trying something . . . a teeny tiny braided cable on the wrong side of my swatch.

A cool idea, right? But in practice a big mess. That’s why we swatch right?

My next step was to create a cable of my own design:

I am kind of not digging it. The cable looks kind of snake-like and pointy to me. I also don’t really like the way the bobble placement came out, but I struggled with it and I’m not sure how to correct the problem. Even with a smoother cable and better bobbles, I’m not sure if I’ll use this cable. It looks a little bit plain to me, especially next to the plain braid.

Happy Long Weekend!

Hey there . . . I know I have not been blogging too much recently but still . . . I am feeling very lucky for the people and stories I’ve encountered on the internet . . . from my very first blogging buddy Mick to Needles & Vectors, a blog I just discovered today, I wanted express my appreciation to all the varied ways that wonderful people and ideas and experiences come into our lives.  This is a thank-you for the other knitters in the world — yay knitters!  Also a thank-you for the other bloggers — including my cousin who is solving the world’s problems here — yay bloggers!  And of course . . . put ’em together and you get a huge double-yay for knitbloggers!  To me this is all just part of learning how technology, something that has the potential to be so isolating, can bring us all together.  It amazes me how quickly I can zip across the country and see through someone else’s eyes a new perspective on life.

I will be spending the weekend sprucing the house up for a little get-together next weekend at our place, doing some knitting, and poring over a very cool wedding gift: The Vegetable Dishes I Can’t Live Without by Mollie Katzen of the Moosewood Cookbooks.  I spent last weekend with my college roomates on our annual (and far too short!) girls’ weekend in Tahoe, and they tosted me with the most delicious champagne and princess cake and sent me home with what looks to be an absolutely kick-ass cookbook.  Yes, I will cook the meats as a gesture of my love for The Baron, but I am trying to find increasingly healthier ways to eat and cook and be in the world, and veggies seem like a good start.  Who knows, I might even find the new “it” dish that will keep my belly full and happy all winter!

On the needles at the moment: I’m turning the heel of my second of the Oriel Lace Socks for Glamourous, and I’m cranking away on the Goddess Knits Anniversary Shawl.  I got a lot done traveling to and from Tahoe, but I am working chart 4 B, which has 95 rows, but I’m on row 17 so there’s not really a light at the end of the tunnel yet.  After sleeping on the baby blanket of it all last night, I think I’m going to try swatching for an Aran something using some variation on the KnitPicks Swish Bare (undyed) in my stash.  Stay tuned!