Back in May on Fiber Fun Day, I made some watermelon colored batts.  I’d given these batts to my Mom as a Mother’s Day present with a promise that I would take them back, spin them and knit them into something for her.

I started spinning them back in July.  I decided to do a simple two-ply yarn.  I spun each batt as a single and plyed them together.  I wasn’t aiming for any particular weight, and I ended up with approximately 275 yards of mostly aran weight yarn.  Like all of my yarns so far, it suffers from some inconsistency in thickness.

After the yarn was spun and plied, I then faced the challenge of what to make.  Mom and I had discussed making a “modern lace” wrap for her.  She wasn’t into the idea of a traditional shawl.  I spent some time wandering through handspun lace projects in Ravelry and stumbled upon this project.  It was a heavier-weight Wisp modeled as a off-center wrap.  Mom loves ponchos and the like, so I knew this was perfect for her.

For my project, I originally cast on more stitches than the pattern called for and had a wide (top-to-bottom) Wisp, but not enough yarn to give it length to fit around an adult.  It would have fit like a glove instead of draping nicely.  So, I ripped out all of the knitting.  For the second attempt, I cast on fewer than the original a pattern and knit until I ran out of yarn.  When I finished, I had less than two or three yards of  yarn remaining.

The biggest challenge for this project was finding suitable buttons.  We don’t have a great button supply locally.  Since I didn’t shop for buttons until mid-December, and I wanted Mom to have this for Christmas, I had to settle for what I could find.  I ended up with these shell buttons.  I would have preferred to have 5 of them, but I could only find 4 in this size and color.  I may continue to look for buttons and send Mom some new ones.

I heard from Mom on Christmas day and she was excited about the present.  I don’t have any photos from her, so we’ll have to settle for a quick shot of me modeling it before shipping it off.  In the end, the project ended up to be what I was looking for.  It’s lace and open, but without the frilly, old-fashioned look that Mom was looking to avoid.  I think this will work perfect to keep her warm in those air-conditioned Arizona buildings.

Pattern:  Wisp
Designer:  Cheryl Niamath
Source:  Knitty, Summer 2007
Yarn: Handspun Wensleydale
Color:  Watermelon
Needles:  US 10 (6mm)

Started:  October 7, 2009
Completed:  October 24, 2009

Ever since the 2009 Winter Knitty came out, I’ve been thinking about Citron.

While it seems that the majority of Ravelry seems to be knitting it in fingering weight yarn, I’ve decided to stick with the original laceweight.  I’m using an unknown, unlabeled lavender colored baby alpaca laceweight yarn that my mom purchased  She knit a scarf out of it and decided that she was done using laceweight yarn.  Since I received it without a label, and mom didn’t remember what it was, I don’t know the yardage.  I made a guess about yardage based upon the popular alpaca laceweight yarns in Ravelry.  Those yarns seem to average 250 yards per ounce.  Since I have approximately 3 ounces, I figure I have around 775 yards.

Since Citron is a smaller shawl, I think that I’ll probably add a repeat or two of the pattern.  The pattern, as written, calls for 470 yards of laceweight, so I should have enough.  However, I’d like a little better knowledge of how much yarn I actually have and use in the shawl.  After some quick searching this morning, I found this article from Interweave’s Handwoven Magazine on how to make your own yarn balance (like the McMorran Balance).  I may just have to try this and see how much yardage it tells me I have.

I cast on last night and made it through the shawl body first section.  It went very fast.  But, as with all top down/center-out shawls, each section will be slower because of the ever increasing number of stitches.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to finish this by the year end, but I’m going to try.  I’ve had a goal the last few years of not carrying projects over from one calendar year into the next.

I know I’ve been missing for a while (4 months!), but I plan to update more regularly from now on.  I’ll also post some updates for some projects I’ve finished while I’ve been missing.

This shawl started with the best of intentions as my Knitting Olympics 2008 project.  Could I really knit Laminaria in laceweight in 18 days?  Sure, I thought.  I’d take it with me everywhere, and there should be no problem.  If I hadn’t modified the pattern, I think I would have made it.

I had so much of this yarn, and wanted to use as much of it as possible, that I continually decided to add repeats to make the shawl larger.  I added repeats to the blossom chart, but I should have added more.  Even after adding additional border rows, I still ended up with a lot of leftover yarn.  Because of all of this, it ended up a huge size.  It was actually difficult to photograph, it was so big.  The finished, post-blocking size is about 84 inches wide by 40 inches long.

I made it into the border pattern during the Olympics.  When they were over, but the shawl wasn’t done, I put it aside, feeling a bit defeated.  It sat for months.  I really wanted to finish it up before the beginning of the new year (I don’t really like carry-over projects), so in mid-December, I picked it up again.  I managed to finish the knitting in late December, but didn’t get blocked until the new year.  It finished blocking about two weeks ago, but I didn’t get around to photographing it until now. After blocking, it sat in the coldest room of the house, which is also a bit damp.  The shawl seems to have unblocked itself a bit while it sat.  It’s not nearly as open or crisp as it was when it was first blocked.

One of the major changes I made to the pattern was that I added an additonal repeat of the border chart to continue to use up more yarn.  I’m not sold on the way the border came out.  It was very hard to block because both the base of the shapes as well as the open area seemed to want to be the point at the edge fo the shawl.  In the end, I opted for the shape instead of the open area.

Pattern:  Laminaria
Designer: Elizabeth Freeman
Source: Knitty, Spring 2008
Yarn: Skaska Deisgns Superlamb (1315 yards/100g)
Color:  Midnight
Needles:  US5, 3.75mm

Started:  August 8, 2008
Completed:  December 29, 2008

Pattern modifications:

• Knit 10 repeats of the blossom chart to increase the shawl size and use more yarn.
• Modified pattern to add a repeat of both border patterns to use more of the yarn.  I didn’t really write down what I did, and winged it most of the way through.
• Because of the modifications, the points were blocked at the base of the shape in the shawl edging, instead of the large open area.

Yarn oveview:

I liked this yarn. It was easy to work with and has an amazing color depth.  It’s hard to capture in photographs, but the yarn actually has small flecks of a green and other colors in it.  It’s not just a flat blue color.  I’ve heard that this is actually repackaged Jaggerspun Superlamb, but having not used the Jaggerspun, I cannot compare the two.

A few Saturdays ago was the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, OR. I took a trip down for my first Oregon fiber festival. I did manage to buy a bit of yarn.

First up was a purchase from A Verb for Keeping Warm. I’d first heard about the company in a Stash & Burn podcast. They use natural dyes, and their booth was filled with beautiful colors. I had a hard time choosing a yarn. I finally ended up with the Superwash Merino Fingering in Kerala, and is lovely shades of brown with some red tones.

Apparently, the next yarn I purchased is from a vendor also in the same Stash & Burn episode, but I don’t remember hearing their name (must go back and re-listen). The yarn is from Toots LeBlanc & Co. It’s 1200 yards of fingering weight yarn in a Jacob wool, alpaca and mohair blend. I’m thinking this would make a great “rustic-style” lace shawl.

I did, of course, make a stop at the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth. I took a cruise through and didn’t see anything in the regular stock that I needed. However, this skein on the Rare Gems rack caught my eye. For those who don’t know, the Rare gems are the mistakes or over-dyes when colors aren’t quite to the color specification.

I must admit that I’ve been a bit obsessed with chartreuse green lately, so this skein was particularly hard to resist. Plus, with the added depth of some rust and aqua colors (not colors I’d have imagined it paired with), it had to come home with me.

Finally, I purchased some lovely 100% alpaca laceweight from Crown Mountain Farms. It’s their Alpaca Lace Athena in the Stonehenge colorway. It’s 500 yards per two ounce skein, and I purchased two. I’m currently using it to knit Icarus.

I was also lucky enough to win a prize in Black Sheep Bingo, but I haven’t had a chance to photograph it yet. I’ll be sure and post it later.

I’ve been working on a variety of projects lately.

First up is the Spiraling Master Coriolis pattern from Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters: Book One.  I’m using Socks that Rock in the Chapman Springs colorway.  It’s great to finally find a pattern that this color works with.  I’ve tried it several times with other patterns, and it hasn’t matched up well.  The sock has been a bit of a challenge.  I’ve knit so many socks in the “traditional” fashion that it seems strange that the patterns will work as written.  So far, I’ve made only one major mistake.  I put the increase stitch marker at the wrong place, so I ended up with a straight line of knitting instead of a spiral.  I didn’t like the way it looked, so I ripped back and knit it correctly.  I’m at the end of the first sock, and just need to determine what cuff to put on this pair.  I’d been thinking about a picot edge, but I may just make a plain ribbed cuff.

Also on the needles is a shawl, the Icarus Shawl from Interweave Knits.  Right now, I’m nearing the end of the plain stockinette and eyelet rows that seem to go on forever.  I’m starting to worry a bit about my yardage.  Per the shawl calculator over at Rose-Kim Knits, I’ve completed 48% of the shawl.  When I way the yarn, I have about 2.1 of 4 ounces remaining, or 52.5% of my yarn left to knit 52% of the shawl.  This is going to cut it really close.  If I’m off by only the tiniest bit, I might run out of yarn in the final rows.  It would be so heartbreaking to have to rip back half of the shawl because I ran out of yarn.

I didn’t check Ravelry before I purchased the yarn. The pattern originally called for 875 yards, so I thought I’d be fine with 1000 yards.  However, the pattern on Ravelry calls for 875-1200 yards because a lot of people have run short when knitting the shawl.  The designer now calls for 1100 yards to be enough yarn for the majority of knitters.  Since I’m using a hand-dyed yarn, I don’t want to risk ordering more and having it be a drastically different shade.  For now, Icarus is sitting in the corner while I decide what to do.

The good news about these two projects is that they gave me a chance to use my new stitch markers.  I purchased the big beads while I was in Prague, with the intent of someday making myself some stitch markers.  I never got around to it.  But, recently, Allison started making and selling stitch markers, and she was nice enough to turn my beads into stitch markers for me.

It’s hard to capture their sparkly orange-ness, but I love them.