I finished the first side of the first clue last night, but I decided to leave picking up the stitches for the second side till this morning. Once I’d picked up the stitches from the provisional cast on, I took the opportunity to get a photo. As before, it looks a lot lacier in real life, and of course it will be lacier still once it is wet-blocked.

 

I’m really enjoying this project. I rarely knit this sort of lace with a design ‘drawn’ with eyelets on a stockinette ground, so it makes a change. I am now knitting with both ends of the stole on a single 32″ circular needle. After 4 rows of the second half, I’m not finding that as awkward as I thought I might. It would be a little easier with a longer needle, but this one has a more flexible cable than any of my longer ones, so I still prefer to use it.

I don’t think I’ll get the second side of clue 1 finished before the next clue is released tomorrow as i have to concentrate on getting another slipper knitted in time to let my mother try it on tomorrow. I’m using Patons Diploma Gold this time. I used it for her socks and it seems to be wearing better than the Sirdar Country Style which I used for the previous pairs of slippers. Although they are both classed as DK yarns. the Diploma seems much thicker and firmer, so I’m having to adjust the pattern again, hence the need for fittings. I want to get at least one pair done by her birthday in 2 weeks.

I did a lot of swatching for this KAL, including Zephyr, but I decided in the end that I don’t want a stole, so I’m going to knit it as a scarf. I was given some Skacel Merino Lace by an online friend and hadn’t found the right project for it. It is nearer cobweb than laceweight, so I swatched with 2.50 mm and 2.75 mm needles (US #1.5 and #2). I’m going to go with the 2.75 mm, which will give a scarf about 12.4″ by 58″. That seems a good size for a cobweb scarf to me.

So here are the swatches. They are lacier in real life than they look here.

I scored 4 free Blue Faced Leicester fleeces last month, and I finally got around to washing one. Then I felt a need to dye some of it, so …

No pictures today, but I might get some taken over the weekend as I have a lot of things that need to be photographed. However, we have to go new-to-us car hunting urgently this weekend as our current one died this week.

My most urgent current project, other than the car, is to get at least two more pairs of slippers knitted for my mother by her birthday (less than 4 weeks). The old ones wore out too quickly, so I am going to use the same yarn I used for her socks, as that seems to be lasting better. It’s Paton’s Diploma Gold DK, and I picked up 4 balls each of navy and denim so I can make at least 3 pairs of slippers and one more pair of socks, maybe a second pair of socks too. That’s how many she requested for her birthday, but she doesn’t expect me to get them all done in time.

I’ve been swatching for other projects – the Mystery Stole 2 KAL and the Icarus shawl from the latest Interweave Knits. I haven’t joined the Icarus KAL yet but I might. The Icarus is for me, and I have a cone of 2/16 cashmere from ColourMart UK. I can’t stop fondling the swatches as they feel so wonderful.

I’m doing the Mystery Stole in Skacel Merino Lace, which is almost cobweb weight, so it will actually be a scarf. I’ll probably end up giving that one away, unless I totally fall in love with the pattern when I finally see it complete.

Before I start either of those, I’m trying to finish the edging on the fan stitch half circle shawl from Waterman’s shawl book.

I’ve also been washing and dyeing free (yes, free) BFL fleece. I got 4 fleeces for just a contribution to the petrol (gas) costs of the friend who collected them. They aren’t bad, even though they were sheared by the farmer’s neighbour and were going to be burnt as it wasn’t worth him sending them to the Wool Board. They have quite a bit of VM, but mostly straw and not too difficult to pick out,

Well, that’s all the fibre news from Chez Jenny for today. I hope I’ll manage to do the next update a bit more promptly than this one.

We spent this past weekend at a Colour and Weave workshop with Janet Phillips at the Berkshire Guild. As usual, it was very enjoyable. Janet is an enthusiastic and inspiring tutor.

During Day 1, I ‘unvented’ a pattern which looked interesting on the loom, so instead of continuing with the worksheet, I spent some time weaving variations of it:

Janet wanted to see what it looked like once it was washed (so the threads would ‘bloom’ and move into their final positions), so that evening I cut it off the loom and retied the warp, then washed the sample, and wow, what a surprise!

It amazes me how much fabrics change during the finishing process, even cotton. I really like this pattern, so I’ll probably continue experimenting with it using different yarns to emphasise the visual structure. First, though, I have to weave off the rest of this sample warp, and then I’ll probably put on another one to continue with my Colour and Weave experiments first as I’m really enjoying them.

I’ll let you in on a secret if you promise not to tell – I really wasn’t at all keen when it was decided that the workshop topic would be C&W and only went because I’ve enjoyed Janet’s previous workshops. I’m glad I did!

Since my last entry, I’ve been doing more pick-up takadai braiding using patterns from Makiko Tada‘s book on pick up braids and from Yayoi Miura’s web site, including some variations. After doing a few, I decided it was time to try a design of my own. My first thought was to try a Greek key design, but takadai braids are more suited to hexagons than to the right angles of a classic Greek key, so I ended up with a kind of double spiral. The picture shows the right side of the braid with the reverse side below it. Click on it for a larger picture.

We went to a 3-day takadai workshop with Makiko Tada last month, which was great fun and very informative. I’ve finally finished the sampler I started there. I’d decided beforehand that I wanted to focus on double layered pickup, even though I’d only made one double layered braid before (for an exchange). Pickup is fiddly, so it takes patience, but I love the result and I am impatient to do more. Click on the picture for a closer view.

Here’s a picture of our takadai set up at the workshop, back-to-back with the one which Rys was borrowing:

I tried to get a better photo of the shawl when I took it over to show my mother, but the pictures weren’t very good. I can’t take any more now as my mother loved it so much that it didn’t come home with me. I’ll try to get it away from her for long enough to get more photos eventually. Meanwhile, here is the best one:

It is finally finished and blocked and currently drying on our bed. I used wires to block it, along the top edge and a pattern repeat in from the scalloped edges (visible in most of the pictures), then pinned the loops of the scallops before removing the ‘internal’ wires. The blocked size is 72″ by 43″, and it took almost exactly 1000 yds of Zephyr. Click on the picture of the whole shawl to see a larger version. I’ll try to get pictures of it draped and/or being worn this weekend.

When I saw this Quantum Spindles Floater on eBay, I couldn’t resist it. The 3.4″ carved whorl is black walnut and the 10″ shaft is Peruvian walnut. It weighs 21g, so it is great for fine spinning and is very well balanced.

I’ve reached the border of the shawl so I hope to have a picture of it finished and blocked by next weekend, but at the moment I’m trying to finish braid samples for an exchange,

I’ve now reached the stage at which I need to decide whether to add an extra repeat of the main pattern before adding the border and edging. I decided to pin it out and measure it so I knitted half the stitches onto a second long circular needle. When I tried to stretch it out, I lost a few stitches at each end – eek!!!

I think (and hope) that I managed to get them back onto the needles correctly. Then I finished the other half of the row before slipping the stitches onto 4 blocking wires. It pinned out to 50″ by 27″ so if I don’t add the extra repeat, it will end up about 67″ by 36″. I think I will have to add that repeat, making the finished shawl about 75″ by 40″. At least I’m now confident that I have enough yarn to do that.

Anyway, I suppose some of you want to see a photo. I had to climb on a chair to get this one, so I won’t be able to get a good photo of the finished shawl being blocked.

 

I got a treat in the mail today, an abacus pendant I had ordered from my friend Tricia. Click on the image for a bigger picture …

If you don’t know how they work, they are row counters, though of course you can use them to count anything you want. You slide a “one” bead past the ‘stopper’ (an elasticated ring of beads) at the end of each row, and when you get to the 10th row, you slide the mall back and move one of the “ten” beads past the stopper instead.

Tricia makes abacus bracelets as well as the pendants, which are small enough you can pin them to your knitting instead of putting them on a neck cord if you prefer. I love the pendant and bracelet I already have, so I ordered a custom-made pendant with a different number of beads so I could use it to count rows within pattern repeats rather than 1-10 etc.