Shawl progress: care for the caregiver

The mystery KAL shawl I'm knitting is moving very very slowly, but I don't mind (much).  I don't like to show too many pictures of what it looks like since it is, after all, a mystery... but really I'm so far behind everybody else at this point it probably doesn't matter. 

I only did the minimum number of repeats of the stitch for the second clue, which produces a very pretty offset leaf motif.  Some people were doing two or three times as much (and were ready for the next clue the day it was published, not that I'm bitter.)

What I noticed about the repeats I did do, however, was illuminating: when you knit just one full sequence of a stitch like this, you can't see it.  You have to do it many, many times to appreciate how it interlocks and builds into something that matters.  Even unblocked like this, you can see the dips and elevations in the pattern and it's their repetition that produces the viewer's reaction.

I think life is like this, at least where small ordinary things are concerned, and when we're not in a 'can't see the forest for the trees' mindset.  The things we do once, may very well be nice and appealing and memorable.  But the things we do over and over - they imprint on our minds and become routine.  We come to rely on them, because we know that when we do them next we will get the same result, and for the most part we humans crave that kind of security.

When I heard about this knitalong I resisted joining, not least because I had no idea what I'd do with yet another shawl.  But very soon in I knew I was knitting it for a close friend who paints landscapes and loves purple.  This colourway, called Boreal and shifting from purple to browns to greens and back again, couldn't be more perfect for her.  And the shawl, with this repetitive, organic feeling, is also perfect.

I should be knitting it for somebody else - I think I alluded to this when I cast it on at first.  Somebody she loves a lot, and who I also know, though not well, is facing a long period of treatment for something challenging to cure.  I should be knitting this shawl for her, but my gut feeling is that my friend could use some support too.  She's not a primary caregiver, but she's up there, and that's a tough job.

I mention it because this situation is the same kind of pattern repeat we use in a shawl, isn't it.  Somebody is hurting, and we do something to show our love and support.  When we can't make the problem go away, we can turn back to our predictable secure routines for comfort - comfort for us, comfort for the people we love.

(and isn't it great when those routines are entirely calorie free??)

Hope you're able to enjoy some happy routines today, and I hope I see you tomorrow - one of the happiest routines I have.

Knitting myself into trouble (with a mystery KAL)

The other day I posted innocently at Ravelry about maybe starting up a random-project-along so that I wouldn't be entirely alone in taking on the major undertaking of spinning yarn sufficiently consistent in size to knit my own socks with it

(okay, maybe it will turn out that I am in fact experienced enough to spin yarn for socks that fit and don't bump out for nonexistent bunions and seventh toes, but it's not super likely.)

and somebody just happened to tell me about a mystery shawl knitalong I might like.

Now, if you were here Monday you've seen how much knitting and spinning and knitting I have lined up.  Obviously I don't need another distraction

(which reminds me: tea cosy! I need to make a tea cosy to use at the cottage this summer, now that I'm done most of the sewing.)

and after going through my closet last week I can assure you I definitely don't  need another handknit shawl.

Logically enough, my first instinct was, No!

and then of course I thought Well, let's look.

and - whoa, Tetiana Otruta has designed some seriously gorgeous things.  My thoughts shifted quickly to 'erm, maybe, if I can find yarn in my stash cupboard.'

I looked in there and found a whole lotta nothing. so: No again.

Then that same somebody popped back up and pointed out that I could sign up anyway and then just not knit the shawl if I really didn't have time...

so of course I did that, immediately.

and then I looked deeper into the stash cupboard and found a bunch of Twisted evolution yarns that can't be anything but shawls,

so really I am very lucky to have a friend who is sneaky enough to tell me about things like this even though I think I'm too busy and not enough interested in more shawls to say Yes in the first place, because now I can be distracted while beating back my stash yarns.

Also: the first clue is just 6 lines long.  And features a crochet cast-on! I just knew learning to crochet would pay off.

Okay, I'm off for an exciting day of probably not knitting anything but socks, so as to free up time for Shawl when the next clue, coming Monday.  Have yourself a fabulous day and I'll see you tomorrow!

Should you knit what you don't love?

I was very excited a couple of weeks ago to decide it was time to cast on a shawl with the gorgeous orange-into-black Tomcat colourway I bought from a recent Twisted Fiber Art club.  The question was, which shawl pattern?

I really like the way a crescent shape works for me, so that was limiting right there - most shawls that aren't triangles or rectangles are semi-circles, which don't have the same hug factor.  Then I noticed that quite a few of the crescents I liked were knit side to side, or bottom-up, or some other way that I couldn't get excited about.  I wanted a nice easy but interesting vehicle to get some soft cashmere blend colour up around my neck, not to spend weeks poring over complex lace patterns.

Just as I was about to give up and design my own, which is something I really need to avoid right now, I fell for what I think, in spite of the story I'm heading down into, is very pretty:  Tess Young's Crowning Glory Lace Shawl.   Not only is it a crescent without a hint of a short row, it has a marvelous non-curling starting point.  Also: several rows with just pure knitting or purling, such that you can pause at the end of a complicated patch and pick it up again while visiting with friends.

Deciding Factor: the 'crowning glory' refers to the lace stitch which has a second name, referring to a cat's paw.  Could there be a better fit for my Tomcat yarn? I don't think so.

Introducing Tommy the Seven-Toed Cat

Well, I cast on the shawl the other day when I should have been finishing Bob's socks, and decided after the first repeat that I needed a bigger needle.  So I ripped out and started again and this is how I know I adore the start of this shawl.  It is awesome even when you are knitting it the second time, and it works.  Really, really well.

My first clue that something was wrong turned up on the first try, and was reinforced on the second when I could have adjusted my approach.  There is nicely balanced set of decreases that disappears partway through the repeat, to a decrease on one side only.  And that is hard for me to knit because I am a little compulsive about balancing things.

Naturally, I had to meddle.  I didn't understand why you couldn't just keep the decreasing pattern, and I decided I would add that in myself and make up the difference in stitches in the next row, which I did, and it worked great until I looked at the finished repeat and remembered that the stitch is called a cat's paw because it's supposed to have five holes above a very large central hole, and my version has seven.

Hence the loss of the balance in the pattern as written.  Oops.

Still pretty though!  Look:

Yet in spite of the pretty, I find myself saying H'mmm.  There's just something wrong, and I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's making me question whether I really want to go on.

Is it the fact that I'm not enjoying the motion involved in working the specific stitches for the cat's paw? (because even though they are pretty ordinary, I'm really not enjoying those motions.)

Is it the stretches of plain knitting that produce the ridges, combined with the lace, combined with yarn heavier than Tess envisioned, in a colourway that is going to start very soon to fade from one very distinct hue to another, which is likely to produce an accessory much more busy than I would ever wear?

Is it me feeling guilty about not clearing the half finished socks out of my basket of knitting?  or possibly the hat that only needs the crown knit?

GAH, I don't know.

What I do feel certain about is that the feeling isn't going away and it's not likely to as I get further along - not nearly as likely as the time is to go away, and the time is definitely not going to come back.

I'm going to try to sit on the problem for another day or so, because I wouldn't put it past myself to rip out this shawl and start knitting my second choice, only to decide to come back to this one.  Maybe what I should do is cast on the second choice in an alternate yarn, so that I can look at both and decide which I prefer? even though what I prefer is a shawl made out of Tomcat and socks made from the alternate, and anyway, I only have the one set of needles to work with?

(how is that possible, by the way?  nobody has more needles than I do, surely.)

Anyway, there I am.  Knitting something that for reasons I don't understand, I don't love.  And not feeling sure I should be.  Such a silly predicament for a sunny, lovely day!

Shawl story

Finishing my FoxyMaple shawl project was easy compared to writing about it here.

Do you remember how it started - the idea I had to combine my braids of Foxy and Maple fiber from Twisted Fiber Art clubs into one big project so I'd have enough for a shawl?  I was so excited to take on an experiment that right away I could see would work very well and be fun to do.  Several colours were the same, or very similar, in both colourways but each had a few more shades and as I spun my way into July's Tour de Fleece I got to experience them all up close.

I learned so much more about spinning when I made this yarn, too.  It came out bulky like all my newbie yarn does, but pretty consistent in size, which is still a novelty.  The summer had just started and I was enjoying having a cup of tea and then taking my wheel out to a corner of the porch for an hour's spinning and birdsong every morning.

Of course nothing is perfect: while I was enjoying those hours, somebody I love was dying.  I had already designed my Escapist shawl while worrying about that, and because Lannie was worrying too I knew I was going to spin the FoxyMaple and knit it into one of those shawls for her.  I thought about that a lot as I spun, when I wasn't thinking about the chances of getting good news, or at least not the worst news.

And then we did get the worst news.  It came while the Tour was still running, and I shifted the FoxyMaple to a spindle so it could come in the car with me when I left town for the funeral.  It just seemed so important to keep going.  I spun some while sitting with Lannie one evening;  I handed the spindle to her so she could hold it for a while. I didn't have to tell her I was making it for her.  Who else would appreciate everything that was going in to that fiber?

I started the shawl in August, but by the end of the month things were just busy.  You know how it is. I had to set it aside for a while.  I'd work on it sometimes, a row here or there.

The yarn was heavy and light, both at the same time, and the fabric I was getting was so dense.  I was sure the shawl would be too small to be of any use.  When I finally had time to finish it and cast off, I was amazed by how tiny it was, just a little bundle not much bigger than the two braids it came from.

I put off blocking it.  Blocking out something big like this is hard anyway, I find - it takes a lot of time and even more space.  When I finally did get it into its bath and stretched it out it was huge.

See what I had to do?

Yep.  I had to pin the corners to the underside of the mat.

It was all-encompassing, and so full of holes.

I'm sure I don't need to spell out how that brought right back to me all the little losses tied up in that one very big loss.

This shawl and I have been on quite a journey. I hope I never take another one like that, but I'm glad to have something so useful to show for it and I think really, though it's full of sadness, it's also full of beauty and love.  It has an artist's eye for colour from Meg at Twisted, and it's got resourcefulness from me, trying to do something productive to get through a bad time.  It's full of tenacity, and companionship, and warmth.  A lot of warmth.

It felt important to take this one last picture of the shawl on the portable step that Les built, in the corner where I spun the yarn.

I'm ready to let it go now.  I hope Lannie will find comfort in it, but I know one thing for sure:

she is gonna look awesome wrapped up in these colours.

Spoiler pictures - Escapist shawl part three

I'm not even going to pretend I might finish Part Three on my handspun shawl in time for this week's reveal, because there are only about 5 days left before I want to deliver this one and I'm losing at least two of them to errands, chores, and the occasional party.

So here it is in my wool/alpaca blend:

with the help of a second very very long needle. It is getting crazy big on 4mm needles, up from the 3.5mm I used originally!

And up close:

I'll post the details about yardage and which rows I knit in the contrast colour over at Ravelry later today, and here at Hugs when I post the finished product.  Meanwhile: do the green stripes balance each other now, or just look weird?  Opinions welcome.

You may notice that the wrinkles in Part Two are being smoothed out here in Part Three. It may not be quite the correct form for a story arc but, you know.  It looks better.

Do you also notice the shadow cast over the shawl?  It's from a very big tree branch that has three cracks in it.  Sigh.

Escapist - part one pictures

Spoiler alert, if you don't want to spoil the surprise! If you don't mind seeing what Escapist part one looks like knit up though, you can check it out in the three totally different kinds of fibers I'm using for the knitalong.

Ready?

Okay.  First up, I think I'll show you what the heavy garter-based lattice looks like in sport weight on needles  little bigger than the pattern calls for (4mm, in this case), in the limited edition wool/alpaca blend I bought from A Piece of Vermont a while back.

I love looking at the central lace pattern in the air, with light coming through.

I find the first part of the shawl a bit of a slog to get through because garter grows so slowly, but on the other hand - nice to look at lace and pretty much see what you're going to get after blocking.  This part does stretch out a bit after it's been pinned to dry and then released, but not as much as the rest of the shawl does.  And of course the plus of that is: it's warm up around your neck where you want it.  It also produces a natural fold for a shawl collar, should you want one.  (Not to be too spoilery.)

I don't know whether I'll get a shawl collar out of my handspun FoxyMaple as it's so much heavier weight, but it's awfully pretty don't you think?

I did far fewer repeats of the first lace chart and will be making other changes along the way to adjust for proportion and the amount of yarn I have, but so far I've got this to the same size as my original sample so I think it will block out to be nicely wrappable.

Slower going: the cabled laceweight version.

I have to be a bit careful not to put my needle through the cabled strands (I did mention it's not perfect, right?) and I have a few other projects I have to keep up with, so I've decided to take my time with this one as it's for me and can therefore wait.  But I'm really pleased with how it's looking and I think it will make a lovely little accessory for my usual black on grey winter uniform.

Hope your shawls are going beautifully too!

Mysterious Shawl: revealed

I was going to save this for a rainy day but you know what?  Turns out it's raining today. Plus, who doesn't need a bright green Zing in the middle of the week?

So here it is: I blocked the mystery KAL shawl.

Tough to get a picture of it on, by myself:

But rewarding, since there are so many different mystery stitches in it.

I got a friend to take up the camera, but only for a minute, so this is all there is of that.

Blocking it was a challenge because I had insufficient horizontal space for this much wing (I'm sorry, but there is No Way Whatsoever that I will ever pin out a blocked item on my bed; naps take priority even over knitting.)  So I folded it in half.  This made it possible to keep each point symmetrical from one side to the other without any extra blocking wires - with which I have a traditional love/hate relationship - but it also left a fold line down the middle of the shawl

which I haven't steam-ironed out yet.  Been too busy knitting (and napping!)

The Pattern: Liz Abinante's Roxanne

The Yarn:  Biscotte & Cie's Super Bambou, in an exclusive club colourway

The Modifications: This shawl takes a whole whack of yarn as written, but luckily Super Bambou comes in 115g skeins resulting in more yarn for me.  Also it has a lot of bamboo in it, and bamboo will stretch during blocking, thank goodness.  So all I had to do was leave out the last repeat of the last chart - there should be another row of lace along the perimeter - and change the recommended bindoff to a superstretchy version.

The Farewell-For-Now:

(hope your day is lovely, even if you do have rain like me!)

Shawls on the fence

I'm still plugging away at my lump o' mystery KAL shawl:

Meet my 24" circular lace needle, courtesy of Addi and whichever LYS I acquired it from (When it comes to Addi, I seem to be spreading the love around.)

It's holding all the current stitches and appears to be able to hold a lot more of them yet, making this size a keeper because it will also do a sweater body and flat knitting.  To think I was annoyed when I realized I already had this exact size when I got a second with a non-lace tip!  The lace tip is great here, but in superfast stockinette my fingers appreciate the non-jabbiness of the regular tip.

And now back to the mystery lace shawl.  It's not so much lace really (till now) but warm garter and deeply furrowed ribbing, making it look quite small still which seems to be worrying some of the other knitters in this KAL, not least because now that it's so big it's eating up a ton of yarn every row such that one must look for contrasting border yarn in self-defence. 

I'm not worrying about that, partly because I already lined up a good contrast.  Admittedly, I haven't started the last bit of the current clue myself because there seems to be a slight hitch in the current wording of what I have to do next, and I was too exhausted the last few days to pick my way around that; today, the shawl is on the top of the knitting pile.

But a small shawl is okay with me if it turns out that way - which I doubt because you can block the dickens out of a shawl and lace always grows in the water even if there's just a little of it, proportionally - because small shawl = scarf and I never know how to wear a shawl without looking dweeby.  We've been discussing this over at Knitting and Tea and Cookies and someone helpfully posted a link to this video which gives very good suggestions on that front. 

Watch the video at your own risk.  It's making me think about making a really big shawl and I hate to think what it might do to you.

Yesterday it occurred to me that I could slip the shawl onto a needle of any size just to take a picture, so I got most of it onto a 47-incher and left the the rest where it was.  It still bunched.

Here is a closeup:

And here is the whole thing.  Don't the needles look like long spindly witch hands in plotting-something mode?

After I got the stitches back where they belong I noticed the needle I'd just used is a lace tip in a 3mm size.  Which would be perfect for the really big shawl I'm not thinking about at all.

(I knew those witch hands were up to no good.)

Fit for a queen

... and now that the wedding part of the Royal Wedding is complete, I'm just popping in as promised with a photo of my mystery-shawl-in-progress:

I absolutely love the way this is looking.  I know some people knit tons of shawls for the sheer joy of lace and the beautiful end product, but I find it hard to wear lace, what with not having a remotely elegant lifestyle and all.  Even if the rest of this shawl turns out to be very lacy indeed I think I'll be able to pull it off anywhere because of these heavier stitches at the start.

I'll tell you one thing though:

I will be buying a much longer circular needle at the Knitter's Frolic tomorrow.  The stitches are already bursting off this 24" one.

It's not too late to join in - two more clues are coming, the first of which won't be published till tomorrow, possibly at the very moment I might be buying another skein of shawl-friendly yarn, heh.  

... and now back to the TV for Balcony Watch.  And some serious propping up of eyelids because my goodness, I am not a morning person let alone a 5am in the morning person.

The lure of the mystery knitalong

I have been obsessed with shawl knitting all weekend, and it's all hert's fault for suggesting I join her in Liz Abinante's Roxanne mystery shawl knitalong.  Good timing for stressed-out me though - when you're knitting something without pictures to see how it's meant to come out, and several new-to-you stitches are combined in different sections, you really have to focus. Be in the moment, as it were.

Admittedly an awful lot of the early moments involved deciding which yarn to use.  Since I decided spontaneously to participate I decided too to just use the first yarn I put my hand on that also had the right yardage.  That paired me with this blue farmspun wool given me by a friend who'd bought it on holiday and never knit with it:

The photograph isn't out of focus - it's the yarn.  It's a bit thick and thin, has a bit of a halo, and its heathery colours blend or stand out a lot like the ones in an Impressionist painting you view from afar and then near.  Not so fab for showing off a lace pattern.

Also, I had to fight the yarn for every stitch. It's so tightly spun that in spite of being wool it has absolutely no give, which is less than ideal for patterns that involve picking up between stitches or knitting into the front and back of a stitch.  In considering whether to reject this attempt I considered what on earth it would be good for instead; socks probably, if it weren't just so scratchy.  Maybe weaving?

It was the realization that shawls starting out from the neck go on for miles once you get about halfway through that made me set the blue-green start aside and dig out some alpaca in a nice soothing colour I hoped would reveal the lace a little better.

Having already worked through the thrill of starting something new, I realized much more quickly that the halo on the alpaca was going to obscure the shawl stitches even more effectively.  Also: not so much more give in alpaca than in overspun wool, and

REALITY CHECK

am I seriously going to wear this colour next to my face?

Back to the drawing board.

Everybody else seems to be using sock yarn, of which I have a lot.  Sadly only one skein offers sufficient yardage: this club colourway of Super Bambou from Biscotte et Cie, a blend of wool with bamboo and nylon.  I adore this colour and was hoarding it for socks.  Also I'm not 100% sure this particular shade is the very best green to be wrapping around my neck.   I was however 100% sure I didn't want to wait to get to a yarn store to get started on this knitalong.

Because (and here is the real lure of the mystery knitalong):

A shawl is a big project.  I can talk myself out of knitting a shawl in no time just looking at how big.  But a shawl with instructions released in installments seems manageable.  By the time each row is so long you're starting to spend 10+ minutes on each one, you're invested.

I'm invested almost to the end of Clue #2 (10 rows to go) but in case you want to join in I'll wait till Clue #3 is released to post a spoiler picture.  Or if you're thinking about joining in, are a Raveler, and want to see how the shawl looks before committing, check out this photo thread.

(lure, lure, lure, heh.)

Much rejoicing

Christmas 2009 is officially over because

I finished Carol's shawl!!!


Yes, it is true. And this is the only picture you're getting because even though it was super sunny yesterday it was also suuuuuper windy, rendering every other attempt to photograph it a vaguely triangular blur.

Now I am free to indulge myself with some Valentining, such as the little heart sachets I sewed all weekend while the shawl dried on its blocking mats - instructions at the link.

(but you know that what I am thinking while I do all that is how sensible it would be to start making things for next Christmas, so as to avoid the mayhem that was the 2009 and 2008 holiday seasons. Because, as I am sure you have noticed after reading even a little of this blog, I am a Very Sensible Girl.)

Shawl update

I know you're all wondering:

When is Mary going to finish her trainer's Christmas shawl???

I mean, when you think of all the things Carol has done for me and my health in the past year - the past four years really - she totally deserves not to have to wait eleven months for it like my aunt did with her last year's birthday hat.

(I did mention the hat is finished now and she loved it, right?)

So I want to reassure you that I finally resolved the technical errors therein by ripping it back nearly to the beginning and starting over, paying attention to the pattern this time, and remembering to put in all the yarn overs. And now it looks like this:


It's probably big enough to cover part of one whole shoulder, don't you think?

Ah, progress.

(I finished another hat yesterday too, but all I can say about that is how impressed I am with myself for pulling that off and still having time to take a pic of the shawl and drink hot chocolate. Went a little short on sleep, but you can't have everything... not all in one place anyway.)

The Haapsalu Shawl

oh. my. gosh.


My friend Merli at Apollo Publishing hoped I'd have my copy of The Haapsalu Shawl in time for New Year's and it CAME and it's so beautiful that when I opened up the parcel I was speechless!

(and honestly, it takes a lot for a girl like me to go speechless.)

It's so beautiful that as I opened the parcel to look at it the guy next to me said WOW. That is the most beautiful book I have ever seen.

(and let me tell you, this was not a knitty sort of guy.)

The cover design is beautiful and the photography is beautiful and the paper stock is beautiful.

But apart from all that: this is the most thorough stitch dictionary I own, and I have a few. It's got:

history


a stitch glossary with images so you understand how to make each individual stitch

clear instructions with diagrams for finishing and blocking

'Master's Advice' inserts throughout the book and

large, lovely photographs of Haapsalu residents wearing a shawl or scarf, with a quotation about what the town and/or garment means to her.


But is that that enough for this publisher? Not by half!

The book is oversized - 9.5" wide x 13" tall - and each stitch combination gets its own page. Complete with an impeccable photograph of the stitch above and a large, clear chart below.

It's a heavy book and given the size I don't know where I'm going to store it and it is in such perfect condition because it was wrapped so carefully for shipping that I'm afraid to just leave it lying around where it might get a dent on my watch and yet -

there is so much white on white on the cover, and such a generous amount of white space on each page, it feels as ethereal as the shawls themselves.

This is a great book, and I think you need it. You don't even have to order it directly from the publisher like I did, because the English translation is available at shops now too. Like, for example, Needle Arts Book Shop!

I finished the shawl!

Is the world still turning?

I thought I would never get through it! and in fact, if I hadn't had to stay home sick from Christmas Dinner, it would be on the needles even now. But I did and it's done


and Lannie loved it


and now I am FREEEEEE


to knit another one for Carol. Thankfully, hers is in heavier yarn, and I should be able to finish it before the weather is too warm to wear it. Knock wood.

Yarn update: this one was knit with just under one skein of Arial from Twisted Fiber Art, in 'Jaunty'.

and miles to go before I get festive

It's very pretty here this afternoon, perfect weather for a Christmas eve: grey skies, softly falling snow. You can see some here on the table around the kitchen scale:


14 grams, people. I still have to knit 14 grams' worth of yarn to knit into the shawl I'm giving away in three days. And I'm sick as can be with a cold, again. It's chicken soup to the rescue, and if that doesn't work fast I won't even get to church tonight.

At least the mittens are done... and if I do get stuck alone at home, I get bonus knitting time. Gotta love the silver linings, dontcha?

Are we there yet?

My new kitchen scale is, seriously, the gift that keeps on giving.

Lately I've been wondering about how much more knitting there is in the shawl I'm aiming to finish in time for Christmas, and yesterday the thought occurred to me that I could find out by putting what's left of the skein on the scale:


54 grams.

I started out with 100 grams.

And it's taken me two full months to get this far.

I'm going to have to shift this particular project from 'travel knitting' to 'every spare minute knitting', yes?

A perfect match

I'm off to an out-of-town funeral home today, which has the bright side of making it impossible for me to do any pattern-writing whatsoever while affording me guilt-free time to knit.

And I can pack up my current mindless project in a new tinyhappy bag. I know, I know, I keep buying them, but they are so perfect! Especially the flat-bottomed ones, for socks. So when I had a chance I bought a second one in that style, and it's arrived just in time to hold my second lazy day lace shawl:


Perfect match, yes? Right down to the blue of the stitch marker!

I was working on this at my mum's over the weekend - I love this shawl for mindless knitting, especially with the Addi lace needles I bought on sale at the last knitting show - and she was marveling at the stripes. Specifically, how they seem to be coming out in consistent widths, even though there are more stitches for every pattern row. Well, I can't imagine they'll do it for much longer, but I think it's the result of Twisted Fiber Art's organic striping technique.

Whatever the reason, it's exciting to see what happens next with the colours and I get four hours of that today. Definitely a bright side.

Stitch marker heaven

I used to belong to the school of 'whatever works' when it comes to stitch markers, and made do with the plastic disks you buy at a chain store, but then a kind soul sent me a set of 5 beaded markers and I discovered what I'd been missing. The beaded markers don't stretch out my stitches, they flip easily forward or back to be out of the way when I knit, and they look like bling for my needles.

Trouble is, there were only five, and I seem to have misplaced three, and the other two are perpetually on a pair of socks. I tried to go back to 'whatever works', but even with a non-hairy superwash wool scrap tied into a loop, I kept knitting the non-stitch-stretching impromptu markers into the work or, ack, sharing fibres. I found I was actually resisting casting on lace and sock projects for lack of proper tools!

Heavens to Betsy.

So I treated myself to some lovely snag-free markers from Seeking Sanity.


They are beautiful, come in many sizes, and the odds are I'll never run out. Even though I'm using them whether I need them or not, because they look so pretty and feel so nice under my fingers as I work. I have to admit that the ultra-slender loops are harder to spot than my original metal loop markers, especially on hairier yarns - I actually knit one into a stitch the other day without noticing! But they really are snag free, and oh, so gorgeous, and they come in just about every kind of bead you can imagine. And I am freely knitting again.

See?

Lazy Day Lace Shawl - a free pattern

It's the shoulder season again - the time between hot and cold - so I've been thinking of my shoulders. And of Christmas, for which I will doubtless want to knit scads of reasonably fast flexibly-sized presents I didn't start in April as I'd planned.


This little shawl is the perfect response to both thoughts. You can knit it in a week (I knit it in four days, but I don't recommend this if you are also responsible for showing up at a day job and cooking meals and/or cleaning house), it's repetitive enough to be both soothing and suitable for watching TV or chatting over, and it's surprisingly versatile when complete.



As with many of the things I design, however, as I worked through the pattern repeats I realized the shawl was teaching me something - or maybe I was figuring something out while experimenting with the lace sequence?

This year has been an eventful one for me, challenging in just about every way you could imagine, and I haven't always known where I would find the energy to get through the next obstacle. I always did find it, but I've gotten through a lot of days on hope (plus chocolate.)


That's what this lace does. You knit a clear path - many parallel clear paths - and then you turn the work and knit a barrier that crosses all of them. The very next row you start up again as if the barrier wasn't there and you do this over and over again. In the end, when you stand back and look at the fabric, you can see that the barriers actually enrich it all. It's a lot like life, isn't it? Everybody faces challenges, and it's up to all of us to keep on keeping on; we may be individuals, but it's absolutely a collective experience.


Notes: I made this on 4mm/US 6 needles with a single skein of Twisted Fiber Art's 'Playful'; I'm now knitting another on 3mm/US 2 needles with a single skein of TFA's 'Arial'. Essentially, if you have circular needles you like and a good amount of yardage in a yarn that comes out nicely on them, you can do this shawl. Just knit to the end of what you have, and stretch it as far as you can after wet blocking.

Bonus: If you like the shawl, you'll love wearing it as a scarf with the matching hat!


November 2009: French Translation Now Available

Many thanks to Louise at Biscotte et Cie for translating this shawl pattern into French for me! Many of the gorgeous yarns at Biscotte would be perfect for this shawl, but one of the newest - Thalassa, a blend of 70% superwash merino and 30% sea cell - would be particularly scrumptious, I think. Can you imagine the sheen you'd get with the sea cell??


Download .pdf of Lazy Day Lace Shawl

View .pdf of Lazy Day Lace Shawl - French translation