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.

More dilemma

So I was just sitting on my mother-in-law's porch, taking advantage of the fact that she took my children off to do some blueberry picking, and knitting away studiously on the Veil of Isis, when something horrible happened.

I finished the yarn. Mind you, I'm knitting this thing out of some lovely alpaca yarn Ironman bought me himself in Peru. I've got 17 balls of the stuff left, so there's plenty of yarn to knit this with. I'm on row 9 of 32 of the edging, so the end is definitely in sight. But the rest of the yarn?

In England. Ha ha ha, say the knitting gods.

Aestlight is still burning a hole in my metaphorical yarn pocket, so the only solution I can come up with is this: I have to finish Glynis before I cast on for the shawl.

There is good news and bad news. The good news is that I finished the first sock and cast on/did the ribbing for the second sock on the plane. The bad news is that I have to finish them in the next few days or hide away somewhere to work on them where someone (stop reading here Mom!) won't see them.

Bah.

Two extremes

So the last time we saw this project, I was bemoaning my lack of competitiveness in the Ravelympics and making myself blind with black beads and fingering weight alpaca.

I'm still making myself blind, but the shawl has grown considerably, and I am now only 50-something rows away from being done. Hooray! Granted, I'm doing one less repeat then is called for, but from my extremely scientific calculations* this thing is going to be at least 40+ inches across. Plenty big enough. The only issue is that the rows are approximately 550 stitches each (and only going to get bigger), so I get maybe four rows done per day commuting to and from work. Which means 5 more weeks of knitting. And Christmas is only 6 weeks away right? So...hmmm...we'll see.

To combat the wear and tear on my noggin from Ms. Isis up there, I cast on a few days ago for something nice and simple - garter stitch.

Devil has decided that she needs a "coat", and due to our impending relocation across the pond, I've decided that I need to do some serious stashbusting, and fast. Enter some stashed Lamb's Pride Bulky (in a barely acceptable purple color, since there was no pink to be had), and a couple of evenings with EZ's The Knitting Workshop and Alias, Season 1 DVDs, and I've gotten almost to the armpits of my first ever Tomten (Rav link).

Look at the squishy garter stitch! Absolutely the perfect brainless evening knitting.

So Isis for the bus commute, and Tomten for after the kids go to bed. Or for Knit Night, since I brought Isis last week but was extremely uncommunicative (which totally negates the entire point of going to Knit Night**, right ladies?).

* I pulled on the center to stretch it out, put it next to a piece of paper for comparison and said "That looks like about 16 inches, and with 50 more rows, I'm sure I can get 4 more!" You know, Scientific and shit...
** Which is, of course, to talk very loudly, share completely inappropriate and embarrassing stories about our children/spouses/pets, and scare the folks who go to Whole Foods to, you know, buy food or something!

Oh, right

I've not been feeling the blogging love recently - too much time in front of the computer at work, and lots of projects that are making progress, but aren't getting anywhere close to completion, making for somewhat dull reporting. I'm hoping for a bunch of completed objects soonish, but here's the current state of affairs:

1) Gathered Pullover: one sleeve done, need to pick up stitches for other sleeve and redo the neckline. I love the top-down set in sleeve cap. I think it's going to become a standard technique.

2) Ironman's Christmas socks: should be finished tomorrow, just it time for the August installment of the SAM knitalong. Next month's installment is scheduled to be Azure in StR In the Navy.

3) I finished the last 2 oz of Maldives yesterday, but haven't yet taken pictures to share.

4) My Ravelympics project continues on - it's still a big black blob with beads ever so often, but it's moving along. I'm torn between three or four repeats of Chart B - it may depend on how long the rows take me after 3 repeats.

5) SYB is limping along, but I'm running out of scraps to use. I don't really want to start recycling them yet, so I either have to put it aside and knit socks faster, or start cracking in to unused skeins. Hmmmm...here's where it stands though.

That's about it. Keep your fingers crossed that I get my butt in gear to take some photos so I can post some of these soon to be FOs.

Sticking the dismount

Or, in my case, not sticking the dismount. As in, taking a huge giant sideways step on the dismount, then falling on my ass and rolling off the podium onto the ground in a giant heap.

Can you tell I've been watching too much gymnastics? Or as Devil calls it, the monkey bars.

My grand, ambitious, long-anticipated Ravelympics project is probably not going to make it across the finish line. I'm loving the pattern, the yarn is gorgeously soft (mmmmm, baby alpaca!), and it's moving along. It's just that, well, it is kind of overwhelming. I'm maybe a third of the way in, and the rows are 400+ stitches and take about 12 minutes each. I'm finding that I want to savor this project, not rush through it. Plus black yarn plus black beads divided by spending much of my day in front of the computer makes for sore eyes. I worked on it on the bus yesterday, and by the time I got home all I wanted to do was knit stockinette sleeve caps. No more yarn overs, no more tiny beads on tinier crochet hook.

It is going to be absolutely phenomenally gorgeous when it's done. I just don't think it's going to be done by Sunday at noon. Oh well (Porpoise untangles herself from hurdle and stumbles across finish line).