Bonus!

An unexpected upside to living in the UK: when Interweave sends out a sneaky email about the Hurt Book sale at 11:20 am my time, all my knitterly competitors in the States are likely still asleep. My bank account is now somewhat lighter, and my mother is going to have to deal with a large, heavy box of stitch dictionaries (I got almost every Harmony guide available, even the crochet one!) and some of Franklin's cartoons. I think I'll need a extra bag for our trip this summer to haul all this loot back. Plus some cashola for the heavy bag charge...

There is knitting being done: I have decided on Annis as the teacher present for this year, partly because I think it's lovely, but mostly because I did one and it took me four days. That would have been three days if I hadn't mucked up the stockinette section (only I would do this...). So Numero Dos is on the needles in this, with some modifications for slightly short yardage. First one was 340 yds, and I've only got 305 yds of the handspun, but I think it will be ok. Expect an Annis Rainbow post sometime around the end of the term.

In which I impersonate an anal knitter

I spent much of last week cruising along on Aestlight, enjoying every minute of it.

The yarn is fun to work with - a little bit grabby but nice and soft. I'm loving the way the colors are going. It looks like a sunset. And oh! the garter stitch cushiness! Gudrun's pattern is beautifully written and presented, and the hold up I had at the end of the lace section of the border was due solely to operator error (otherwise known as I-am-a-dumbass-and-can't-follow-simple-directions syndrome).

Bird's eye lace, how do I love thee? Let me count the purl stitches...

But here's where the OCD kicks in. I finished with the border section in Maine, and had to stop. Because I didn't want to have the edging change colors suddenly in the middle. And I didn't want the colors to be asymmetrical. Harumph. The last few rows of the border were the same blue-green of the center triangle, and there was quite a bit of that left in the yarn cake. But the outside of the yarn cake was that gorgeous pinky-orange hue.

Of course, I was positive that I didn't have enough of the pink section to do the entire edging, particularly since I'm knitting the large size shawl. Erf. So I broke down in a heap, put down the garter stitch, and realized that I needed my niddy-noddy before I went any farther.

Now that we're back at the ranch (and Ironman and the girls have gone blackberry hunting again), I busted out the ball winder and my scale to get things set up for the final stage. First up, the yarn left:

You can see that the part I've balled is bluer then the rest of it. Deciding where to divide between the blue/green/yellow and the orange pink was tough, but finally I bit the bullet and broke it. The remaining pink/orange stuff got wound on the niddy noddy and I counted the number of wraps (19.75).

I set up the ball winder next to the niddy and wound off half of the yarn available. Then I broke the yarn and wound up another ball of pink/orange. The first ball got rewound so that the end that was in the middle of the pink/orange section ended up being the end that I'll start with. That way if I run out before the halfway point in the edging, I'll be able to seamlessly blend in the blue/green/yellow ball (also rewound). Hopefully I'll use up enough of that ball to be able to blend into the second ball of pink/orange without too much contrast.

Yes, there is an orange ball and a pink ball. I'm hoping it won't make that much difference in the final product.

Pink/orange yarn, 18 gr.

(My dubious math skills are up to this one) Blue/green/yellow yarn, also 18 gr. Given that I started with 121 gr total, I have no idea if I'll make it through with just the pink/orange. I suspect I will be weighing what's left after a few edging repeats to see if I'm going to make it.

Gosh, I feel like Grumperina!

FOs: Thank you brain

FO#1: a large research grant, which is out of my hands and off to the lovely administrative folks at my institution to submit to the Grand Poobah of Federal Biomedical Research Funding (otherwise known as the National Institutes of Health). I am looking forward to reclaiming my very worn out brain cells and returning to the land of the semi-coherent sometime in the next week or so.

FO#2: the North Roe shawl in my own handspun...

Pattern: North Roe shawl by Odile Buatois-Brand
Yarn: 70% merino/30% mohair, colorway Verdant, from Hello Yarn, 5 oz/approx 650 yds
Needles: US 8/5.0 mm
Size: preblock, 60 x 26 inches; post-block, 70 x 36 inches.
Mods/comments: Loved the pattern, loved the handspun, even though I ran out and had to spin more. I even love how the striping came out, and I'm not big on striped shawls. Since I was light on yardage even before running out, I worked fewer repeats of Charts 1 and 2 (4 repeats and 3 respectively), and made it 8 of 12 rows into the edging before I decided that binding off was the better part of valor. Since running out again and having to spin more "laceweight" at 10:00 pm Sunday night would have dissolved me into a puddle of tears on the living room floor. This is my third lace shawl, and as with all the others, I am enamoured of the process of taking unblocked blob:

and turning it into this:

Chart 1

Chart 1 morphing into Chart 2

Chart 2 morphing into edging

Bliss.

FO#3: will have to wait for another day - I can't put all the goodies in one post now, can I?

A near thing

Last summer Ironman went to Peru and brought me back some alpaca. In fact, he brought back lots of alpaca. 30 balls. Fingering weight. Two colors. It's gorgeous stuff, but since I wasn't sure what to do with it, I stuck it in the closet to marinate.

Recently I've come down with a major case of startitis. Whee - a shawl!...oooo, look over there, pretty fiber! Hmmm, I think I need a new sweater project... Some of this may have been encouraged by the lovely, but unseasonable weather that has been lingering in the Houston area, and the rest of it by the Website That Shall Not Be Named. But I found a lovely, retro pattern that was appealing, and decided maybe it would be a good fit for my lovely alpaca.

To recap:

Alpaca sweater.
Fingering weight.
Black.
In a Houston summer.

Does this seem like a good idea to anyone?

Thankfully, I swatched yesterday, and have been deterred from my path of madness. The yarn is gorgeously soft, knits up into a nice stockinette fabric, but the cables are pretty appalling. As in, they disappear into mush. This may change after a bath, but I'm not optimistic. So I think the alpaca will disappear back into the stash closet for a while longer, although I've got some ideas about other uses for it.

Do you see a cable here? I don't see a cable here. Nope, nothing to see here.

The North Roe shawl is still a shapeless blob of bright green and brown, but it's getting larger. I'm well in to the second chart and am looking forward to the last.

Unfortunately, I've reached that stage in shawl knitting where the rows take forever (~3 rows/bus ride, not conducive to rapid progress), and it's starting to drag. This may also contribute to the startitis a bit - I'm not going to mention the other swatching action that is ongoing. Best not to confess to too much methinks!