Five in any language

So, still lost in my shawl knitting phase, I’ve finished 5 of my (conservative) 12 for this year. I’ve been trying out some widely available yarns, but I started with my hand-dyed BFL.

Feeling the need for some deep purple around my neck I used a skein of 4-ply to make Peace Offering. The design is Olive Branch by Lindy, and it was a quick and really enjoyable knit.

Next I thought it was high time I became a Posh Knitter and managed to buy a skein in the Sunday evening scramble from Posh Yarn. Here’s Perfectly Possible in the most gorgeous silk/cashmere laceweight. It’s a large and slightly modified Ashton Shawlette – a great design by the innovative Dee O’Keefe.

As usual I beaded the edging with some black size 8s to weight the points.

I took some time off during the Cheltenham Festival and spent my TV couch afternoons knitting Festival in Debbie Bliss Rialto 4-ply. It’s been a while since I bought any DB and the first time I’d tried the Rialto 4-ply. Well, I love it!  Excellent stitch definition (of course), and beautifully soft and springy. The design is Karise by Karina Westermann and, in the black yarn, very Art Deco elegant, I think.

I’ve long had a wish to knit the Fountain Pen Shawl by Susan Lawrence and also to use some Knit Picks yarn. Putting the two together, here’s Waterman (because mine is blue) in Gloss Lace. It’s knit on a 4 mm needle, and I can understand why, but it’ll be a while before I knit laceweight on anything larger than a 3.75 mm. Grumpy Old Knitter!

And finally, to prove that knitting charts can overcome any language barrier, here’s my Pink Pavonis from a design written in Finnish by Sarianna.

But I must give a lot of credit to knitoutsidethebox, because her notes on Ravelry made it possible. The yarn is Drops Baby Alpaca Silk and one day I’m going to make a sweater from this beautiful stuff.

As you can see, I’m alternating laceweight with 4-ply.  Next up is Po Lena‘s Ink Heart Shawl in Debbie Bliss Rialto Lace.  Love the design, love the yarn – it’s just taking ages to finish ….

Knit or blog? Definitely knit

The trouble with having a job is that time away from work is limited.  With only a few hours in the evenings and at weekends I have to prioritise, and knitting comes first as one of life’s essentials.  After all, if I don’t knit I’ll do damage to someone or something.  It’s the only way to stay sane enough to turn up at work every day.

So this blog has suffered from lack of care since November, but here’s a little update on what I’ve been knitting.

I can’t say I enjoyed my lopapeysa, except perhaps the yoke.  I had to work a few shawls at the same time as a distraction, but I finally finished it a few weeks ago.  So here is Védís Jónsdóttir‘s Afmæli, my Once Upon a Lopi:

Inevitable, Evelyn A Clark’s Heartland Lace Shawl, turned out to be an absolute favourite and I wear it at least once a week.  I added some gold size 6 beads which look OK, but I reckon I’ll stick to silver-lined clear beads for the future.

However, I didn’t enjoy the early stages and was distracted into a KAL of The Birthday Shawl by the delightful Kate’s Twirl.  I used my (in)famous hand-dyed yarn which was featured in Knit Now, and it turned out rather nice.  So nice, in fact, that Kate voted it the best of the KAL and sent me a set of her beautiful stitch markers.  A lovely Christmas present!

And you can also go over to Ravelry to take a look at some in progress shots.

Then, as yet another distraction from my Lopi sweater, I used up some Airedale Aran in a winter-time version of Kate Gagnon Osborn‘s Springtime Bandit, Airedale Outlaw:

And to complete another year of feverishly knitting innumerable shawls, Boo Knits‘ Quite Continental:

I love the placement of the beads in Twinkle Twinkle, but not the shape nor the slipped stitch edge which I thought too inelastic.  I started the picot cast-off and didn’t like that either, so finished with the usual Russian.  Such a shame, because I was really looking forward to this one, but most likely the victim of shawl-knitting fatigue!

The Lopi sweater still wasn’t finished so next up was Froth, which was a bit of a marathon:

This is Jatta Saukko‘s Zetor which I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.  Knitted in DROPS Lace on one of my new ChiaoGoo circulars, it turned out beautifully soft and happily goes really well with a recent addition to my wardrobe.  Colour co-ordination is easy if you stick to your favourite colours!

I needed some further distraction before finishing this one, but I think that’s enough for today.  Time for some knitting ….

More Arithmetic

So the Augustine Shawlette turned out to be a scarf. Lovely and soft, but a scarf nonetheless. So subtract one from 20.

Instead, I found a use for my Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic and knitted up Childry by Elly Doyle. I wasn’t too keen on the yarn while knitting, but once blocked it’s been a nice kerchief. But not a shawl!

Since it’s very similar to my version of the Old Man of Storr Shawlette, I called it Presque Vu Déjà, because it’s easy to be stupid when you have no immediate audience.

I’ve enrolled in Miriam Felton’s wonderful Lace Shawl Design on Craftsy, and I’m thoroughly enjoying each lesson. I love to watch her demonstrating a point with a beautifully knitted (and blocked) shawl from her design collection. And so I knitted Adamas in some hand-dyed BFL laceweight,

and added some beads to the edging – hence Bejewelled.

So add one again to make 20.

In the mean time I’ve succumbed to the Icelandic bug and I bought some Lett-Lopi from Carreg Yarns (whose service is incredibly good). I’m making Védís Jónsdóttir’s Afmæli - just don’t ask me to pronounce any of this. It’s hard work on my hands but the yarn knits up soft and fuzzy:

 

And on the topic of northern/ethnic, look at what Sirdar came up with! Their own version of the iconic Sarah Lund sweater. Oh dear, I may succumb, on the rather feeble excuse that I’m supporting a Yorkshire spinner.

But plain knitting in the round can get a bit boring. I really am totally addicted to lace knitting – it’s quite sad – and I can’t not have a project on the needles. Hence, Inevitable, Evelyn A Clark’s Heartland Lace Shawl, in recently dyed BFL 4-ply. It’s on 4mm needles and knitting up quite springy: some aggressive blocking may be required to show up the stitch pattern.

To make things add up, Last Chance Old Boy (my Old Man of Storr Shawlette) drops out of my 20 shawls and is relegated to a kerchief.

And that should be it.

But remember this skein of yarn? Well, it would awfully nice with lots of silver-lined beads. I’m finding Boo Knits’ Quite Continental quite irrestible!

 

 

Five? Yes. Five

So here’s my finished Enzian and I like it so much it’s stayed out on display. It gets moved when I finish another shawl since I’m a real amateur and I’m photographing each one in the same way.

Here’s a bit of detail:

I love the yarn, the design, the beads … and the finished article!

To complete my 12 shawls in 2012, this is a Cassandra by Marie-Adeline Boyer (congratulations to her!). It’s knitted in Baby Alpaca, with a few beads in the points (of course).

It’s a lovely shoulder shawl for cool evenings, and there are many of those this summer.

So, I knitted 20 shawls in 2011 and I’m going to do the same in 2012. Probably more, since no one wants to buy my hand-dyed yarn. Here’s Dazmin, in my deep red kid mohair/silk mix:

The design is Yasmin, by Angelique den Brok. It’s knitted on 3.5mm needles, which I thought would be a bit small. The finished object is fine but I think I prefer this type of yarn on 4.5 or 5mm.

I guess I should knit something more complicated but simplicity of design is very attractive. Next up is my take on Dee O’Keefe’s Ashton Shawlette in a burnt orange/green handpainted 4-ply BFL:

I just like the rosebud pattern.

And finally, there’s Joyce Yu’s Budding Shawlette in (very) bright green. It’s knitted on 4.5mm needles, which I’d usually say were on the large side for 4-ply but with aggressive blocking the “bud” design really stands out.

Are you ready for this?

OK then – here’s My Name is Bud:

Now why wouldn’t anyone want to buy this lovely yarn?

So five more to go (at least) and I’ve got plenty of bright yarn to use. You have been warned.

And the Bead goes on ….

I managed to squeeze another two shawls out of my 200g of hand-dyed BFL laceweight. So that’s five from 1600m – so thrifty!

Here’s my Beaded Swallowtail:

Needless to say, I used beads instead of nupps and added three per scallop to make sure the swallowtails stay nice and pointy.

As a small diversion from Evelyn A Clark’s designs and light blue laceweight, I turned out The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief in baby alpaca:

It was so cold the other week my hands were hurting from arthritis and I thought some new mitts would help. I had enough baby alpaca left and got started on Jennifer Hagan’s Princess Mitts …

… and of course the sun came out! I think it may be a while before the second mitt is done.

Back to the blue laceweight now, I’m afraid. I have this thing about lace leaves at the moment and I’ve wanted to do Evelyn’s Leaf Shawl for quite some time. I thought I’d make the leaves a little smaller (8 stitches instead of 10):

Where to put the beads? Oh yes, the border! I added one to the knit stitch between the yarn overs and then three per point.

The finished object:

So that’s the end of it!

And for the last item in my stash (some fuchsia Filigran) I chose Sue Berg’s Enzian and I’m adding beads to every flower:

It’s taking quite a few so just as well I replenished my stock at Craft Basics last week with 50g of size 8 and 50g of size 6.

And that means, no doubt, that there’ll be more beaded knitting in the future, and it may be 4-ply ….

Hooked on Beading

So I’m going through the “where can I add beads to this?” phase.

Here’s a shawl which called for beads and nupps, but I used beads throughout because I’m not overly fond of nupps.

The design is Karen Strauss’ Bella Botanica Shawl.  Of course you can’t see the beads in the photo – never mind.

I love the edging:

This is the third shawl from the two 100g skeins of hand-dyed laceweight which came out in a colour I adore.  And I’m going to make a fourth!

I’ve been having a good clear out of my libraries: chucking out old magazines and books for recycling and deleting stuff from Ravelry.  In the process I thought it would be a good time to knock off a few classics and get them out of my system.  Finally getting around to the Prairie Rose Lace Shawl probably triggered things.

I have a couple of skeins of Zitron Filigran which I bought when I first got the lace knitting bug and they’d slipped to the back of my yarn queue.  Well, what a lovely surprise!  The yarn is high quality one-ply merino and knits beautifully.  I started with a limited edition multi-shade in purple/violet and finally got round to Emily Ross’ Haruni.

I’m not too sure about the colour-banding, but it’ll do.

I probably wouldn’t have used the yarn for this design if I’d been more alert when I wound it into a ball.  I did it in a hurry because I was a bit incensed over some black alpaca/silk/cashmere laceweight which I’d bought for Jane Sowerby’s Myrtle Leaf Shawl.  It’s by one of our leading indie hand-dyers and I’d been looking forward to using it.  Having got through the first pattern repeat I looked at my hands.  You guessed it – dye transfer.  As an amateur hand-dyer I was appalled.  I won’t sell anything which I think won’t be colour-fast so why should anyone else?  Needless to say it’s all on the compost heap.  I can take dye leakage during washing but not in the knitting.

And my next classic?  Evelyn A Clark’s Swallowtail Shawl.

“What about those nupps?” you may ask.

Indeed.

Knitting with Beads

Sometimes I really disappoint myself. I spent two hours – only TWO – standing with a collecting tin at York station yesterday. I felt pretty chilled at the end of my stint and walked home at a brisk pace to warm up. I had some soup for lunch. Yet I’ve come down with a cold like a character in an Austen/Bronte novel. Honestly!

I was collecting for the York Blind and Partially Sighted Society and really heartened by the generosity of the passersby. There was one wonderful lady who donated a nice crisp fiver. Thank you so much!

Since I felt a bit poorly in the afternoon I did some work on my Mystery Shawl KAL. There’s an option to add beads to the border and, since I’m not that keen on the thing so far, I thought I’d use it as my first beaded project. I’d popped into Craft Basics on Tuesday and bought some nice shiny black size 8′s so I was all set. Well, I’m (crochet) hooked! What a satisfying experience!

Of course I’m thinking about what I could do next and I have a suspicion it’s going to be pink with beads.

I’m collecting for the YBPSS again next Thursday in the city centre, but I’ll dress warmer. Now where’s my Urchin?