Shawl Fixes, Austrian Mittens, and Bacteria

Thanks for the supportive comments about my shawl problem. You gave me some good things to think about.

As Cattycorner pointed out, since the shawl is circular, I would probably wear it folder over. However, I'm thinking that I would like to wear it not quite doubled, but with the top 12 inches or so folded down -- I like the look of having the center of the swirl in the center of my back. And I think I will be annoyed if every time I go to wear it, I need to arrange it so that the stupid error isn't falling right smack on my butt (thereby drawing unneeded attention to that part of my anatomy ;)

franticom suggested that I try to hide the mistake under some embroidery, which is an interesting idea. However, my embroidery skills are sorely lacking and I think I might just totally mess that up.

SJ suggested that I do some creative blocking to make it LOOK like there are yarnovers in that row. I'm really intrigued by this suggestion and I think I'll try it. I'll let you know how it works.

I'm in the process of making a test swatch for the kitchener fix, just to see if it works. If it turns out to be too difficult or annoying, I will just leave the shawl as is. The mistake does kind of blend in and look like a variegation in the yarn, especially when seen at a more normal angle (and against a darker background).

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Well, enough about my shawl. In an attempt to give you something interesting to look at, I am finally posting pictures of some mittens I finished a couple of months ago (during my blogging hiatus).

Austrian Mittens

I made these mittens after taking a Strickmuster class with Candace Eisner Strick at Webs, back in October. This was a great class, in which we learned all about Austrian twisted stitch patterns, including some of Candace's special adaptations. Candace gave out the pattern for these mittens as part of the two-day class, and I started them on the 2nd day.

Here are the details:

Pattern:

Austrian Mittens, designed by Candace Eisner Strick (provided as part of her Strickmuster class)

Yarn:

Reynolds Whiskey [100% wool],
color: 16

Needles:

US 3 (and US 4 for the i-cord at the bottom)

Gauge:

7.5 sts/inch in stockinette, about 9 sts/inch in pattern

Modifications:

My gauge with this yarn was a little tighter than that specified in the pattern, but I did not change the number of stitches for the hand since the mittens made from the pattern (which Candace brought to class) were a little big on me.
I started with the i-cord edge, but I kitchenered the i-cord together at the ends, instead of having extra i-cord hanging down (kind of like tassels). Also, I did not want to include the gauntlet part of the cuffs, so I cast on just enough stitches for the hand of the mitten. I widened the thumb and knit the inner part of it (the part toward the palm) in reverse stockinette, instead of twisted ribbing.

Comments:

I really enjoyed making these mittens, although it did require me to pay a lot of attention to the chart. Once I got about halfway through the first mitten, all of the manipulation of the stitches started to come more easily, and the project moved along more quickly.
I really like the way this pattern had you start with an i-cord edge and then pick up stitches from the side of that to start the hand. That makes a nice, clean bottom edge for the mitten.
I used Reynolds Whiskey for these mittens because it was one of the few yarns then available at Webs that was the right fiber content and roughly the right gauge for this pattern. It really doesn't show off the stitch pattern to its best advantage (a lighter color and a smoother yarn would probably have been better), but my choices were limited and I do like the color. I would definitely use this yarn again for a different sort of pattern.
I love these mittens and they fit great. I intend to make another pair of them sometime, but using a yarn like Louet Gems Merino (the recommended yarn for the pattern).

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Oh, and I wanted to let you know about one last thing. I was just on the website for the Boston Museum of Science and I stumbled across a very interesting bit of science news. Apparently, some new research has shown that the amount of certain types of bacteria we have in our intestines may help determine how fat we are. Check out the museum's podcast about it -- fascinating.

Crappity, Crap, Crap, Crappers

So, I finally got around to blocking the spiral shawl that I started last summer. I finished it sometime in the fall, but I was too lazy busy to block it until now.

All was fine and dandy, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself, until I stood back to admire it and whammo, I saw it. ARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH! A big fat mistake!

Can you see it?

How about now?

Can you see it now?

Yep, there it is.

(rollover the image for a lovely highlighted effect)

I knit across one of the segments instead of doing the yarnovers!

At first I thought, "Well, maybe it's not that noticeable." I had Uncool Guy look at the shawl to see if he could find the mistake. He didn't see it. I directed his attention to the general area. He still didn't see it. I told him which segment it was in. Nope. (The man must be blind.) I had to point it out to him. That was encouraging.

However, I then located Daughter#1 and challenged her to find the mistake. (sigh) She found it within 10 seconds. (She's got a touch of the persnickety in her, that girl.)

Maybe you just have to be a knitter to see it. Anyhow, it bugs me and now it's all I can see when I look at the shawl. I'm hoping I can fix it by cutting the yarn, picking out the one offending row in that section, and kitchenering it back together with some added YO's and K2tog's. Sounds fun, huh? I'll have to test that very carefully on a swatch. (big sigh) But not anytime soon -- I'm just not up for it.

What a big fat bummer. Anyone have any other ideas?

Some Catching Up To Do

Howdy! I'm back. My work should be over for a while so I should now have some more time to do things like reading blogs and posting to my own sadly neglected blog. I may not have posted much this summer, but I sure have been knitting. I've got a lot of FO pics to take and post about. Here are a few things to start us off.

First up, we have the Frost tank from Rowan 30. I made one of these last year for Daughter#2 (see pic in my gallery), but it was getting a little tight in the chest for her, so I decided to use up the rest of that yarn and make a bigger size. We passed the smaller one down to Niece#3 who seemed very pleased to receive it.

Daughter#2 and Niece#3 in their matching Frost Tanks.

Here they both are modeling their tanks which they wore to Tanglewood two weeks ago. We went to hear a violin concerto by Dvorak and Beethoven's 3rd symphony, but we got caught in the continuous POURING rain partway through the performance (we were sitting on the lawn). Luckily, we had raincoats and umbrellas ready, but still -- it was a drag. I got leg cramps from sitting all squished up under my umbrella, followed by a wet butt after getting up to stretch my legs and sitting back down again. Oh well, the music was great (particularly the violinist, Hilary Hahn) and we did get in a very nice picnic before the rain started.

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Next up, remember THESE annoying socks from early July?. The ones where my gauge was completely and totally off? Well, I ripped them back to the ankle and knit the whole sock on the 2.5mm needles (with LOTS of trying on along the way).

What did I learn from this experience? Well, let's hope I learned never to ASSUME that just because you are using the same damn yarn and the same damn needles that you will get the same damn gauge. [You know, it's stuff like that that just sucks all the fun out of knitting.] Anyhow, here they are finally, on Sister#1's feet. She seems to like them.

Trekking XXL, color 71, on 2.5mm ndls, with picot trim ankle.

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With regard to current projects, I am working on Meg Swansen's Super-Spiral Shawl from A Gathering of Lace. I'm using some laceweight yarn I got this summer from handpaintedyarn.com. It's their Kettle Dyed Pure Wool Lace Yarn in the color Paris Night, which is sort of a purplish-grayish color.

This is a circular shawl that's worked from the center out. In this picture you can kind of see the center (bottom left) with the spirals moving out from there. I love how it's coming out so far. Sure, it's super monotonous knitting, but that's what I needed for the summer. Something I could just pick up and knit, and knit, and knit, and knit, and knit without thinking about it. And this shawl seems to be the perfect project for that.

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Oh, and I received by prize yarn the other day and it is WON-DER-FUL! That yarn in the upper right corner turned out to be Artyarns Ultramerino4 (as a couple of you guessed). Also, Melissa wanted to know the color nbr of the Lorna's Laces. It's #18, Watercolor. And, no, I'm not trading it. ;)

I have already almost finished a pair of socks with the Socks that Rock, and I am loving that yarn. I've also started some socks with the Knit Picks Simple Stripes. The yarn is a bit splitty, but I really like the colors. Hopefully, I'll have finished pics of those next time.

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Well, that's it for today. I'll leave you with some pictures my garden (which I should probably go water).

One final thought: Don't these flowers remind you of fried eggs?

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Oops, one more final thought: I signed up for Sock Wars. I'll be on vacation in Maine that first weekend so I'm betting I get killed before I kill, but it should be fun anyway.

Yeah, I suck at being regular

No, I didn't drown in the flooding, I'm just a lazy slug who doesn't blog often. No, really, I've been quite busy and every time I sat down to blog, something came up to interrupt my spare time. I've even been sucked back into my computer consulting work, although only temporarily. And now there is gardening to do. Anyhow, thank you for your patience, dear readers. I will try to post more regularly.

At long last, I present to you photos of my Lady E. stole that I finished almost a month ago. Feast your eyes on its lovely colorifitude.

No, that tiny butt does NOT belong to me.

I finally got someone to model this for me. I am notoriously camera shy, and, anyway, it would be hard for me to take my own photo while wearing this. It can be a complicated business getting this thing to drape properly, or maybe I am just a stole-wearing novice.

My lovely model here is my about-to-become-a-high-school-graduate niece, aka Niece#1. She also goes by the alias Oh, Jane. when online. [I was instructed that I must include the period in her name -- and she says that I am anal.] She is starting her own blog to show off her artwork. She is super-talented and creative, so I can't wait to see more of her work, especially since I don't get to see her very often. If you go to her blog now you may still be able to see her temporary test post, which contains a picture of her at 8 years old, standing behind my daughters who were only about a week old. Too cute!

OK, back to the stole, here are the details:

Pattern:

Lady Eleanor Entrelac Stole, by Kathleen Power Johnson, from Scarf Style

Yarn:

Noro (boo, hiss) Silk Garden [45% silk, 45% kid mohair, 10% lambswool],
color: #217, about 12.5 balls

Needles:

US 7 or 8 [Crap, I waited too long to write this up and I, in my apparent early senility, cannot remember which needle I used)

Gauge:

about 4-4.5sts/inch (it's hard to tell from the stole). Anyway, my gauge was way smaller than the 3.5sts/inch in the pattern.

Size:

22" wide by 78" long, excluding fringe. Fringe adds about 13.5" at each end.

Modifications:

I did an extra 2 rectangles in width to make up for using thinner yarn than the pattern called for. I also did about a million rows of rectangles. [OK, I counted. I actually did 55 'tiers' of rectangles instead of the 35 in the pattern. It just felt like a million.]

Comments:

I enjoyed making this stole and I love how it came out. I have gotten over my crisis about the lavender. Learning to knit backwards really helped with my enjoyment of this project. If I had to turn the stole every 8 stitches, it would have been a huge drag.
Also, although I do LOVE the colors that apparently only Noro can provide (and why is that?), I will no longer be purchasing yarn from them due to my enormous frustration with the knottiness (naughtiness?) of their yarn. Four knots in one expensive ball is 4 knots too many. Don't worry, they will definitely be receiving an email from me on Yarn Rant Day (read the PDF about this here).

What a cute model. However, please note that she is much shorter than me. The stole does not come as close to dragging on the ground when I wear it.

In the book, they show this stole also worn as a scarf. I tried to do a shot like that and this is what I got.

Ummm, not so good.

OK, I tried again (my model was getting a little sick of me by this time) and it kind of works as a scarf, but only if your neck is really, really cold.

No drafts can get near this neck.

Overall, I'd highly recommend this project. After the first few tiers of rectangles it becomes some nice mindless knitting. However, I suggest that you check out some alternatives to Noro Silk Garden, such as La Lana Wools Forever Random Blends (the yarn used in the book) or Karaoke by Southwest Trading Company. There must be other alternatives; please let me know if you find any.

Lose the Lavender

I'm about 6.5 balls into my Lady Eleanor stole and I figured it's about time for another progress shot. So here it is.

This thing seems to be taking forever -- I feel like I'm knitting a blanket, not a stole. I'm still enjoying making it; I'm just itching to finish.

I'm not so sure about the lavender-ish sections of this yarn though (Noro Silk Garden #217). I think they stand out a bit too much. In fact, now that I've said that, it's all I can see when I look at this picture.

If I ever use this colorway again I might snip out those sections of the yarn, because I love the rest of the colors here. I wish I could replace that lavender with a dark green. I'm still pleased with the color overall I guess, just less ecstatically so. Ah, but that feeling never does last long, does it?

In Other News

So, I've been reading for a while now how crochet is the new knitting. Not being a crocheter, I've been all like, "whatever." But today, ummmmmmmmm..., I think I got sucked in.

I was just browsing in my local bookstore, waiting for my daughters to get out of their art class and minding my own business, not anywhere NEAR the craft book section (oh, I had already been there of course), when all of a sudden I saw it. The new book by Debbie Stoller. [I'd mention the name, but I really don't want to think about the Google hits I would get.]

I only opened it out of idle curiosity. I have her Knitter's Handbook and it has some interesting things in it, so I thought I'd give this new book a quick look. I was just flipping through the pages, thinking to myself that I really should learn crochet some day, when I stumbled upon this:

Oh my god, these are the cutest bunny slippers ever! And if that isn't cute enough, here they are in pink.

Needless to say, I bought the book. I just couldn't resist. I am weak.

Daughter#1 now wants to learn to crochet too, so we will be learning together (which could be fun, ... or not, depending on the frustration level). I think we'll start with crocheted cotton dishcloths, because, you know, that old one could stand to be replaced.

Entrelac <> Speed

So, I spent the entire weekend knitting my Lady Eleanor Stole and this is all I have to show for it -- a 21 x 12 inch rectangle. It seems like I should have made more progress, but I guess speed and entrelac really don't go hand in hand.

All of this knitting was done in (or en route to) lovely Woodstock, Vermont, where I spent the weekend at a family gathering. There was much eating of great food, playing of games, and general sitting about and chatting. Oh, and knitting. There was quite a lot of knitting, but that was mostly just me, I guess.

I am really enjoying knitting this stole. Yeah, it's certainly slower than straight knitting, but entrelac is so much fun. I have been continuing to practice my new backward knitting skills on this project and I can report that my speed has greatly increased. I really like this technique now. I love not having to turn the whole project around to knit back and forth on those little 8-stitch-wide sections. Without backward knitting I think this project would probably be a nightmare.

I have used up two balls of yarn and the stole currently measures 12" long. So, I guess that means that the 10 balls I have will give me a total length of about 60" with no fringe. I'm thinking that may not be quite long enough (plus I would like some fringe). I may need another 2 or 3 balls. I guess I should have thought this out before buying, but I was operating in the haze of a yarn swoon. I saw other people's posts that said they used 10 balls, so I bought 10 balls -- not thinking that I would really want more of a wrap, and less of a 'big scarf'. Hopefully there will be more of this dye lot.

Abrupt Change of Topic: I recently read a great roundup (part 1 and part 2) of all the various knitting-related podcasts that are currently out there. It's by Anne of knitspot. Go check it out. It introduced me to a few I'd never heard of.

If you haven't listened to any knitting podcasts yet, I would recommend you try out Cast On first. You don't need an iPod or mp3 player to listen to a podcast, you can just download the audio file and play it on your computer. However, they do tend to be big files, so you may only want to do that if you have a high-speed internet connection.