Lace

About a month ago I found myself in the enviable position of knitting two gorgeous shawls simultaneously! How lucky was I?! Here’s the story, morning glory:

It was really hard to settle on what I wanted to knit after finishing my Miter Madness Blanket. Sure I had a million projects on the needles, but I wanted something new and fresh. Something that wouldn’t take forever to finish. Then I fell in love with Romi Hill‘s Red Rock Canyon Shawl and started dreaming about it. Should I buy new yarn? But there is SO MUCH YARN in this house. I decided to stash dive and lo and behold I found a bunch of semi-solid colors of my beloved STR Lightweight. PERFECT! I actually settled on three colors, because much of my STR is older and my skeins only had about 360 yds and the pattern asked for at least 385 for both colors. I am so glad I went with three!

I used Passive Agressive Green for the main color, alternated stripes in Pond Scum and Sweet Pea, and did the lace sections in Sweet Pea. The three colorways worked GREAT together!

The Sweet Pea has a touch of yellow/green running through it and the Passive Agressive Green plays nicely with the Pond Scum. I love it! The shawl was also a very enjoyable knit. Do you like to purl? Then this shawl is for you! It’s a very textured shawl with lots of purling through the back loops. I personally love to purl so it worked well for me.

About a week or so after I started Red Rock, some old time knitbloggers started talking about doing a mystery shawl – you know the kind where you get a clue each week and you know vaguely what the project will look like – triangular shawl or whatever – but you don’t know until you knit it what it will really be? Yeah. One of those. Not only were they doing the mystery shawl, but most of the bloggers involved were doing it in Black Trillium Fibre’s Gradient Yarn – which I’ve been wanting to use for a while. You can guess what happened next – I cast on Kirsten Kapur’s (Through the Loops) Mystery Shawl in the Tidewater Gradient.

It was my first mystery knit, but it won’t be my last. I’m not one to knit stuff I don’t really like, so it was definitely a step outside my comfort zone, but I trust Kirsten implicitly and I absolutely LOVED the yarn. Add to it I was knitting along with some of my oldest blogger friends and it was like I was transported back in time. While I love Ravelry for what it can offer you in terms of knitting tips and tricks for patterns, there’s nothing like a real time knit along where everybody screws up and rips back and figures out how to get through the pattern together.

When I was done with a clue for the week, I would hop back over to my Red Rock Shawl. It worked out really well going between the two. There wasn’t as much confusion as I feared – as long as I didn’t mix up the charts I was good to go.

The tidewater colorway – a definite blue/green/teal sea color, has turned out to be kind of hard to photograph. Every picture came out too blue, and then adjusting it made it too green, but I think this is pretty accurate. I alternated between mini skeins (you moved onto the next color with each clue) for a row or two and when I was knitting it, there was a pretty well-defined stripe that I did not like, but now that it’s done and blocked, you can’t really see it. I’m very happy with how it turned out!

And now I have two new shawls – and a new way to wear them! For whatever reason (like I’m clueless sometimes) I didn’t think to wear this small-ish shawls like a cowl. I love cowls! So now I can’t wait to wear my new shawl/cowls. Bring on the cold weather! (Yes I said it. This summer hasn’t been so bad, but I am definitely more of a cold weather girl.)

Red Rock Canyon Shawl (raveled here.)

Knitblogger Reunion Shawl (raveled here.)

You know what’s funny? The Red Rock Canyon Shawl was originally one of Romi’s mystery shawl patterns! And I loved knitting these shawls so much, I started Germinate, by Kirsten Kapur, which was also one of her mystery shawl patterns!

I ask you, who doesn’t need a little mystery in their lives? Hope your Summer is filled with knitting and MYSTERY! Thank you for stopping by!

PS – Click on the pictures to see them bigger. They look so much better that way!

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Before I go to bed at night, after sitting on the couch for hours knitting and watching tv with my baby, I check the computer one last time – for emails, the odd bloglines post, whatever. Monday night I was doing my thing and I saw that Anne had posted. She wrote about a local fiber festival she attended and some of her purchases, including some merino laceweight from Knitting Notions. Little did Anne know, but she was tapping into my brain! I have been thinking about lace off and on for weeks – thinking about my next big project. I’m done with blankets for the time being, done with the crochet for now (yes, I will be finishing the Larger Than Life bag), socks are zipping along at sweat shop speeds, but that’s going to break soon.

And I’m going away in like two weeks. We’re going to California again – this time San Fran and Lake Tahoe – and I’ll need something major to take with me. Socks, of course, but something else too.

In walks Anne with her “incredibly soft” and “almost a fingering weight” (I’m not a fan of true lace weight) yarn and next thing I know I’ve bought three different colors.

Catherine at Knitting Notions was INCREDIBLY nice (crediting me for shipping when I added extra skeins the next morning) and the yarn got here FAST. I ordered it Monday night late (and Tuesday morning) and it arrived yesterday. That’s what I call service!

Classic Merino Lace
Kettle Dyed 100% Merino
Aubergine, approx. 388 yd.

Classic Merino Lace
Hand Dyed 100% Merino
Maple, approx. 437 yd.

Classic Merino Lace
Kettle Dyed 100% Merino
Green Apple, approx. 388 yd.

Now the fun begins! What to make with it? I think I’ve settled on a pattern: Anne’s Wing of the Moth Shawl. It seems only fitting since she enabled me to begin with. I was searching around the internets and I just LOVE Wendy’s version of this pattern – we both agree – lace should be blocked SEVERELY and just look at her CORONAS! Hubba hubba! I’m all over THAT!

Anyway, so I’m thinking of using the green apple for this – the only thing I need is some of those new Addi Turbo Lace needles. I gotta try them – I’m just hoping I don’t put a hole ALL the way through my finger.

Okay – so some questions about the picot edge on yesterday’s sock. I’m too far along on my sock to take pictures – maybe when I do the second Seastone sock – but really it’s easier than it sounds. You do your designated number of knit rounds (I did 5 but you can choose whatever number you like – don’t make it more than say, six, or less than, say 3 – just for arguments sake.) Then you do a round where you start with a yo and k2tog. Repeat this until you end with a k2tog. This lands you at the start of the next round. You then knit the same number of rounds that you started with – start with 5? Then knit 5. Good!

The next row is the tricky row. It’s not hard at all – just tedious. What you’re going to do is knit the stitches on the needle TOGETHER WITH the corresponding CAST ON stitch. I knit both loops of the cast on together with the live stitch. So you’re in essence FOLDING UP the cast on to make a hem – as soon as you do it you will see the little picot points come to life! It’s AMAZING! Like MAGIC (hence the unicorns that suddenly appear in your life!) The most important part is to make sure to get the corresponding cast on stitch together with the same live stitch. Otherwise you might get some buckling. Here’s a tutorial from Purlwise – although I don’t do a provisional cast on – I just cast on over two needles (whatever size I’m knitting with). I do that with all my socks. Makes for a stretchier cast on and I cast on tight. And here’s a video I found on the DIY network – this is really good! Shows you exactly what I’m talking about. Here’s the main page if the video link doesn’t work. Hope that helps!

I’m off to a Princess Party tomorrow – I’ve got to remember to bring my fabulous tiara – and I hope you have a great weekend too!

Summer Shawls

Lace

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