A bit of a spree

As those of you on Ravelry know, a number of designers chose/are choosing to donate some of their proceeds from pattern sales to various organizations offering aid to Haiti. Using their nifty "Help for Haiti" tag, you can browse the patterns, or filter the results to patterns that you've already favorited or queued.

The ease with which I was able to find patterns that I had already noted down meant that I dropped quite a bit of imaginary PayPal money on patterns. Including:

Snow White
Gosport
Honeybee Cardigan
The Manzanita Collection
Francie
Northman Mittens
Triskele Mittens

And I don't think I'm done yet. A number of designers (including me) are extending the donating period well into February and even later. So get out there and start buying people!

The next question, of course, is what do I cast on first with my four sweaters worth of stash (at least). Any suggestions?

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.

FO: Sunset Aestlight

Pattern: Aestlight, by Gudrun Johnston, size large
Yarn: Corriedale handspun, dyed by Adrian, colorway Thrive, spun by me, ~500 yds/121 gr of fingering weight.
Needles: US 4/3.5 mm
Start/finish: August 20-September 1 (knitting)/September 15 (blocking)
Comments: This shawl was a joy to knit. I've blogged about the yarn already, so I won't go into details of the spinning, but the knitting was lovely. The only real modification I think I did was to use a smaller size needle, in the hopes of being able to knit the larger size and not run out of yarn. Finished, blocked dimensions are 21 inches deep and 51 inches wide.

It starts off with a big garter stitch triangle, with yarn over increases at the start of every row. These loops are then picked up to knit a garter/lace/garter border around the long sides of the triangle, and then it finishes with a lovely pointed edging that is knit sidewise and attached to the live stitches as you go along.

The pattern was very well written and presented, and Gudrun also has a group on Ravelry, with a KAL thread and lots of helpful tips. I had some issues with the last of the border sections, mostly because I was being an idiot, so there are no issues that I could find with the pattern. In fact, if you're new to lace knitting, this would be a great pattern to start with. Since it's largely based in garter stitch, there is almost no purling at all. And the lace patterns used are fairly straightforward once you get through a couple of repeats.

When I got to the edging, I had an OCD moment and started weight remaining yarn. I made it through 2/3 of one long side before I finished the first ball, so I started with the greeny-bluey-yellowy stuff for the section around the point, and then switched back to the yarn I had set aside partway up. In the end, I had plenty of yarn.

These are going to end up in the Sock Yarn Blanket

The transitions are somewhat abrupt on both sides, but so what. My OCD moment has passed and I'm happy with it.

As always the transition from blob,

through blocking,

to finished object is so, so satisfying. I got some blocking wires while we were in Maine, and this was their maiden voyage. They worked pretty well, although I chose to thread them through the shawl before soaking it, and then had a devil of a time trying to squash the thing together enough so that it would fit into the sink and actually get wet. Never mind, it all worked out well in the end.

It's definitely my favorite part about knitting lace. Devil showed continued interest in photography, and insisted on taking some of the FO photos. Girlfriend definitely needs her own camera.

Holy fuck I'm getting grey...

The colors of this shawl make me think of Arizona sunsets, and are sure to be a huge hit on those cold, grey London winter days that I know are just around the corner. I can't wait.

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!