FO: Veil of Isis, the details

Now that all the Giftmas knitting has been gifted, I can actually get my brag on about some of these babies. Some have already been displayed, but here's the first of the secret projects.

Pattern: Veil of Isis from BadCatDesigns
Yarn: Indecita Baby Alpaca, fingering weight, purchased in Cuzco by Ironman way back when, a bit more then four skeins, but I don't know the yardage
Needles: US 2/2.75 mm
Gauge: it's lace. Who cares.
Start/finish: This was my Ravelympics 2008 project, so I started August 8, 2008. Finished November 5, 2009.
Comments/mods: The Albatross is finished, long live the Albatross. I decided that doing my first beaded anything would be a good challenge for the 2008 Ravelympics, and doing an entire lace shawl in two plus weeks would be a serious challenge. I was right. The beads slowed me way down, but I still don't think I could have gotten the whole thing done without the beads. Lace is hard, and when the rows got up in the neighborhood of 400+ stitches each, things slowed down even more...

The pattern is not for the faint of heart, as it requires being able to read your knitting and figure out where you are both within the row and within the pattern. The pattern is charted, but not for the entire shawl, so it takes some paying attention to keep things going. That being said, the pattern is fairly intuitive once you get into the swing of it. And the results are beyond gorgeous.

The pattern calls for five repeats of chart B, but I did four. I used size 6 black seed beads that I found at the local Houston bead shop. Hundreds of them. And a very small crochet hook. I got one tube of beads to start, which had ~600 beads in it - those were used up about two thirds of the way through. Suffice to say I lost count and there are a metric crapton of shiny little black bits.

Unblocked the shawl was 38 inches along the diagonal and 28 inches along each side. I messed up a bit with the blocking wires, and ended up blocking it in a slightly circular shape, but it ended up about 50 inches in diameter.

This baby went to my sister-in-law, who is possibly the only person I know elegant enough to be able to use this. She seems to be enjoying it so far.

Best.Procrastination.Ever

I was very lucky early this autumn to get in to Alice's Knit Love Club 2010 sock club. And someone happened to suggest on the group forum on Ravelry that maybe we should do a mini-sock swap for the holidays. So I've been using the swap as my excuse to churn out teeny tiny socks at every opportunity.

Pattern: Toe up magic loop wee tiny sock swap sock by Sean Higgins
Yarns: assorted. Green Mountain Spinnery Sock Art Forest, left over from Glynis, Trekking XXL left over from socks for my Dad two Christmases ago, and some random bits and pieces from the bowels of the Sock Yarn Blanket scraps.
Needles: 2 US 0/2.0 mm dpns
Gauge: ? socks are about 2 inches high as pictured
Start/finish: 15 Nov -25 Nov 2009, but each one only took about an hour
Comments: fun, quick pattern. Purple sock is worked in garter rib on instep and leg, red stripey is stockinette with a 1x1 rib cuff and the candy cane one is stockinette with a picot bind off. I just hope my downstream swap person likes them!

The thing about Boo socks

Is that she likes them and they don't take very long to make. Thankfully.

Pattern: Riverside architecture by Cat Bordhi
Yarn: Regia Jacquard that I found at Oxfam for 99 p
Needles: US 1/2.00 mm
Gauge: 8 sts/12 rows per inch
Start/finish: 8 Nov - 24 Nov 2009
Comments: This was my first working of this particular architecture from New Pathways, and it was pretty straightforward. I did a whirlpool toe, eye of partridge heel, and garter rib for the leg. Wove in the ends last night and she asked to put them on with her purple fleece jammies.

Unfortunately she then went to stand on the highly patterned rug we have in the living room, but so be it. You can get the idea.

Feels a bit like a cheat using these for the Sock a Month, but you gotta do what you gotta do. It's been a busy one!

FO: Cold Comfort Scarf

Last week I spent a couple of days at home suffering from a horrific, child-induced cold. On the first day I had to take Boo to the doctor's office on the way to school, and by the time I'd dropped her off back at nursery, Stash had opened. Since I walked by on my way home and had some time to kill, I went in. I browsed about until the lovely proprietor asked me if I was looking for anything in particular. When I said "Something to make my cold feel better" she immediately said "Alpaca. Bulky alpaca." And there I was, in front of a bunch of shelves of this.

It's been a long time since I've knit which chunky yarn, and boy was I happy to find that, at the end of about three hours, I had a new scarf.

Pattern: Chunky ribs & ruffles scarf, by Nancy Kleiber, a free download on the Misti Alpaca website.
Yarn: one skein of the above Misti ALpaca Chunky, 108 yds/100 gr skein, colorway 2030
Needles: US 13/9.00 mm
Gauge: pshaw!
Comments: This pattern was perfect mindless knitting for a head cold. After blocking, it's about 60 inches long and 4 inches wide (+/- an inch or so at each end). Nice and cuddly, and long enough to wrap around my neck and tie in the front. It nicely fills in the bare space at my neck when I've got my coat on.

FO: Eunice

Pattern: Eunice, by Cookie A, from Sock Innovation
Yarn: Spindlefrog Sock yarn, 75% superwash merino/25% nylon, 425 meters/100 gr, colorway "Bronte"
Needles: US 1/2.25 mm, magic looped (!)
Gauge: Hunh? Close enough...the pattern is written for women's medium, but with the lace it stretches enough to fit my 9.5" circumference, size 41 feet.
Start/finish: 12 Oct - 31 Oct 2009 (just in time for SAM!)
Comments/mods: Once again, a screamingly fast pattern from Cookie A. The yarn was some I picked up in September at Stash - their Yarn of the Month selection - and I love how the colorway works with the pattern. Since the colors are mostly quite similar (dark green, black, grey) the lighter bits make a nice accent instead of muddying the pattern.

There is a bit of pooling on the soles, but it's not noticeable on the top of the foot, so big deal. The yarn was lovely to work with - a bit on the thinner side of fingering/sock weight (similar to Trekking XXL), but nice and soft, and the dyeing is lovely. I hope it holds up well!

I did change the toe, yet again, since I don't like the steady decrease rate that Cookie uses. Instead I decreased 4 stitches every third round 4 times, every second round 4 times and then every round 4 times. Same number of decreases called for in the pattern, just distributed slightly differently. Other then that, I didn't make any modifications but if I knit these socks again, I will do more repeats on the leg to make them a bit longer. I have a ton of yarn left, even after knitting them long enough for my feet, and while I don't typically like long socks, these are a bit short even for me. I must also mention that I'm now two for two on patterns with errata from this book. I hope that's not true for the whole thing, but I will be sure to double check before I start Installment #3. Which is looking like it will be in December, since this month is not conducive to an entire pair of adult socks.