Prime Time Knitter

June Bugged and July Baked

For the last five or six weeks, I’ve had nothing to show for my hours of knitting.  I switched to shawl knitting as an antidote to the hot weather, which had not yet arrived in June, by starting the Tendrils crescent shawl in the latest Twist Collective.  This was intended to get me acclimated not only to the weather but to knitting with beads.

Well, the bead knitting was easy enough.  What was not easy enough was every other aspect of this shawl.  Let’s just say I crawled up my learning curve by taking one step forward and two steps back.  I’d like to say that I made every mistake possible, but new possibilities keep cropping up.  This is not the shawl that is warming me up for Evenstar, but a formidable challenge of its own.

The first hurdle was casting on the 507 stitches to start the shawl.  This is my first bottom-up shawl, and just that task alone gave me some pause.  I counted the stitches a zillion times before purling back and getting ready for the lace border.  I did manage to get the 507 stitches cast on.  Don’t rush to congratulate me yet.

On my first pass, I learned that dropping a purl stitch sends you back to square one.  This is 100% silk lace and very slippery, so what might be forgiven on wool (a stitch “stuck there” waiting to be picked up) is a disaster on silk. The stitch falls into the cast-on row.

So back to square one.  I cast on again, purled back, and was ready for the first lace row.  No drumrolls yet though.  I read the chart incorrectly and didn’t knit the edge stitch.  So when I managed the 506 lace stitches, without a flaw, I had two stitches at the end of my needle when I should have had one. 

I thought I’d tink back, despite the annoyance of doing so, but that was an exercise in futility.  The beads flew everywhere and the knit 3 tog’s disappeared into oblivion.  I ripped out everything and started again.

Hah.  I’m not going to make these mistakes again.  And I didn’t.  But, lest you not be aware of it, silk lace spins around on the circular cable.  After knitting up to about row 15, I realized that I had twisted the yarn in Mobius-like fashion—something I have never done before. And never hope to do again.

Back to square one.  This time, despite one minor hitch, I appear to have done it:

 

 The flaw is here:

 

I’m actually not sure what I did.  The yarnovers flop over the knit stitches next to them (or the purls on the wrong side), and it is easy to knit or purl the stitches out of order.  I think I did that, and then tried to put the stitches back on the needle.  In any case, this better block out because I’m not ripping again. 

Despite the aggravation, I love this project.  It would have been in the trash had I not been so captivated.  And I’m now happy to be working on it after nearly three weeks of unrelenting heat (we’re headed for two 100˚ days before the latest heat wave ends—and not even for that long).

Until this week, when the temperatures because stifling, my garden had done pretty well.  This is what it looked like at the start of July.

 

My new "capital improvement" for this year was the purchase of a large roll of shade cloth (the green stuff), which is saving my beets and chard.  The broccoli in the back two rows didn't make it.

I’m particularly pleased with my garlic harvest (nearly 7 lb!).

And even more pleasing, with a face only its mother and a gardener could love, is a praying mantis (actually, I have spotted two).  I’m thankful to my knitting friend Sara for giving me an egg case last fall. 

The garden doesn’t look quite so orderly now because the rule around here is not to weed when the temperatures soar into the 90s and the air quality is unhealthy.  Also the plants are very stressed.  But I had a great salad year, and it looks like a wonderful pepper and green bean year as well.  My fingers are crossed for the tomatoes.

Excuses, Excuses

The reasons for my most recent blog hiatus fall in the dog-ate-my-homework category. 

Just when I had that fleeting senses that I was about to get my work-life-gardening balance back, Con Edison had other plans.  Early in June, they descended on my street, unannounced, with jackhammers and backhoes so they could dig it up and replace my gas main.  This was how the edge of my driveway looked about three days into a week-plus of work.

With additional contributions to the deafening decibel level from my neighbors, who took down a tree and another who used another backhoe to help reseed his lawn (I’m going to get an “I hate backhoes” bumper sticker), my work schedule fell back into the toilet, and I needed every single June weekend—and July 4^th—to catch up.

And my birds, who would make Mr. and Mrs. Rabbit blush with their antics, finally did what nature intended.  Addi was about to lay an egg.  But things did not work according to plan at all.  The books and websites tell you that you can let the budgie lay an egg and replace it with a dummy. 

The hen presumably will sit on the dummy and eventually lose interest.  Addi Bird doesn’t seem to know that.  She tried to lay the egg and could not.  She was eggbound, which is serious and can result in injury or death.  So off to the avian vet we went, and he removed what looked like a boulder compared to her tiny size (imagine giving birth to a 12-lb baby, and you will get the idea).  She did not respond right away and looked really miserable a day or two later.  Back to the vet we went for antibiotics and cortisone, to relieve the swelling in her nether parts.  I’m happy to say that she is now better, but she and Larry are renewing their commitment to having a family.  From the moment they wake, they begin the courtship routine with mutual barfing into one another’s beaks—a sign of birdie affection.

What can I do about this, because I don’t think Addi really should lay more eggs any time soon? Well, essentially not much.  Female birds can lay eggs without males present, although they’re not fertilized.  So there’s still a chance she will have another egg or two or three.  The vet said I should keep her in the dark more to give her the sense that it isn’t the breeding season, but you can see how well that is working out.  The extra couple of hours of sleep just seems to give both of them more energy.  I have attempted to break them up, but this is a fool’s errand.  Yesterday I just turned around to change their water, and they were mating again.  I can only imagine what goes on when I’m in the shower or on the phone.

And the garden has had some new surprises for me.  My garden is looking pretty lush for the beginning of July.

I’ve replanted the rows that kept us in lettuce and mustard greens for the spring with carrots and parsnips, the tomatoes all have tiny green fruit, we're eating the beets and their greens now, the onions (lower left) are about ready and we’ve enjoyed scallions all spring as I picked and ate the thinnings, but my cucumbers are being attacked by striped cucumber beetles.  These little nefarious critters chew the leaves and flowers, lay eggs at the base of the plant that hatch into larvae that eat the roots, and spread bacterial wilt, which kills the plant.  So I covered the cucumber trellis with row cover, to help keep them off.  Although this has worked (I can’t tell if the larvae will attack, however), the beetles are now on to my squash.  It probably wasn’t such a good idea to plant squash next to the cucumbers because they’re in the same family, but that was the only space I had in my crop-rotation scheme.  So even though we’ve enjoyed some summer squash so far, I think there won’t be that much for the growing season.  And, of course, I spent hours on the web researching what I can do to protect the plants—not much here too, unless I want to spray with chemicals that also kill bees.

So knitting has offered some respite.  Sirdal’s first sleeve is done.

I’m up to the end of the cuff on the second, but I need some thinking time to position the rest of the sleeve above it.  And I’ve knit quite a lot of Wing of the Moth, and I’m up to the bottom border.

It's a Wrap

If 2010 taught me anything, it was not to make grandiose plans for my knitting year. Although I really didn’t begin last year with a list of projects, I thought I’d tackle stranded knitting and try some of EZ’s shoulder and neck shapings. But that turned out to be a more ambitious plan than any list I could have come up with. So this year, I’ll just pick up where I left off and resume my UFOs. In fact, I do have a strong desire to complete the partially-finished sweaters (and socks) and come closer to project monogamy. I also experimented with having different projects for different purposes (home, travel, mindless and mindful knitting), and that doesn’t work so well for me. I have the sense that nothing is really getting accomplished, and often the travel projects turn out to need some attention, and so they take away from my regularly scheduled nightly knitting time. I might relax this constraint a bit and have one big (sweater) project on the needles along with one small project (socks or gloves—fingerless or otherwise). And in preparation for what I hope isn’t an unbearably hot summer, I will knit another shawl over the summer—probably something from Myrna Stahman’s Scarves and Shawls book or Anne Hanson’s Wing of the Moth Shawl. Stash yarn is available for either.

But for now, I’ll revel in the pleasure of having my now-blocked warm and cozy shawl available for the rest of the winter.

 

 

I suppose if I make any resolution at all, would be not to look like a dork in the modeling shots. It didn’t start out to be a bad hair day, but when I looked at Ed’s shots, I thought decapitation would show the shawl off to greatest advantage.

This is the Wool Peddler’s Shawl by Cheryl Oberle from Folk Shawls. I used the wonderful Foxhill Farm yarn that I bought at Rhinebeck this year. It is 88% wool and 12% alpaca, and the yarn is undyed and minimally processed. The original pattern calls for about 826 yards of yarn that I thought was similar—although now I’m quite sure it is not. The Foxhill Farm yarn came in 4-oz (114-g) skeins of 275 yards, and I thought I’d be cutting it too close to manage with just three. So since I bought four and had 1100 yards, I decided to make a larger shawl by increasing the garter stitch area enough for another repeat. This addition turned out to cut it very close. I have just 9 grams left.

I also hope to do more with my new sewing machine than stitch up steeks. I had some fun with it as I made my first practice project: a Scrabble tile bag for my son. I made this from some leftover French corduroy (the rest was once a jacket for me, with matching solid purple pants—in the 1970s) that I bought when Bloomingdales’ still had a fabric department. So it is truly a vintage piece, although DS couldn’t care less.

This is surprisingly challenging for such a dinky-looking project. When I started to research the construction of tile bags, mainly, I thought, to get the dimensions, I discovered that these bags cannot have internal seams. If they did, the tiles could get caught in the seams or be hidden, giving one player an unfair advantage. My first plan was to use flat-felled seams for the side seams—the kind on men’s shirts or on jeans. This is the inside, although they’re hard to see because of the black inside.

I also self-lined the circular bottom, put plackets on the outside for the drawstring, and added seam tape to hide the folded top edges.

I had to retrain myself from the habits I have for using mechanical machines to one with computer controls, but I just love how the machine works. Now that I can thread the machine, make bobbins, and shift between the programmed stitches, it is on to a bird-cage cover and some reusable made-in-the-USA shopping bags (that don’t contain lead because they too are of “vintage” fabric). I think by then, I’ll be skilled enough for an actual garment.

Happy New Year, and Happy Knitting for 2011.

 

 

From Finish to Start

The last several weeks have been topsy turvy as far as knitting has gone.  I’ve had time to knit, but not time to blog because my early morning photography hours, when the light is the best for capturing the color of my yarn, have been preempted by work. Part of this frenzy is self-imposed.  The installation of my new windows and siding begins about three weeks from now (weather permitting), and I expect my work hours to be disrupted—although I am really eager to have a new office window and to have siding that deters squirrels and sparrows from trying to nest in it.  I’m attempting to turn in assignments quickly, so that I can finish a book I’ve been working on since last May and to get ahead on another.  The goal of getting ahead has been elusive for the more than a quarter of a century I’ve worked out of my home, but this time I’ve tried to convince myself that it is possible.  Unfortunately, the reality has been quite different.  I’ve encountered snags and problems that need long hours to resolve, and I suspect I’ll be doing my best to work through the hammering and noise.

The work assignments that stubbornly refuse to end have contributed to a burst of enthusiasm for several WIPS and UFOs.  At least I can get the sense of finishing something.

The Wool Peddler’s shawl from the Foxhill Farm yarn is done, but not blocked:

 

This photo was taken in haste as the first flakes of what promises to be a major blizzard started falling.  The loose ends have been neatly woven in, and the shawl has now had its bath of Eucalan and is consuming much of my living room floor as it dries. (You can also see from this shot the repair that is next on my list—replacement decks.  My hope is to schedule new decks, masonry on my front steps, and a new front door and garage door for later in 2011.)

I also finished the Multidirectional Scarf out of bits of Noro Silk Garden (color 230) that were left over from my entrelac jacket.  It will get a light blocking when the shawl is dry and the blocking pads available.

There is still enough Noro left over for some other small project.  I suppose I could use a tea cozy, now that old age has made it necessary for me to eschew my coffee addiction and become an herbal tea drinker.  Or I could manage a pair of mitts.

And one of my Traveler’s Socks is knit (but not blocked), and I’ve cast on for the second.

I was really on a roll with these socks, but my efforts to complete them were derailed by the need to start some fingerless gloves (the tipless variety) as presents.  Here are those I finished for DS:

These are from Socks That Rock, Medium, color: Corvid, and there is enough for another pair out of the skein.  Ed got a Christmas raincheck.  One of his gloves is nearly finished, and I’m now skilled enough at glove knitting to do one of these every two to three nights.  Then I’ll be knitting a pair for me, to round out my 2010 knitting.  With all my unfinished projects and my newfound zeal to finish them, I wasn’t eager to start anything new.  But having warm hands seemed to be a worthwhile goal.  And before I get back to some of my unfinished stranded sweaters, I want to knit DS a hat.  So it looks as if more things will be started before the finishing resumes.

 

It Ain't Over 'Til You Yarn Over

I had bumped all other WIPs (and, sad to say, UFOs) to barrel through the Wool Peddler’s Shawl.  And I was congratulating myself on such amazing progress.  It has barely been a month since I started, and here I am with an almost finished shawl. 

I spent the last couple of nights trying to figure out how many days it would take before I could block and model it, and then get on with my so-called Christmas knitting (there’s not much planned for this year—just the fingerless gloves).  The lacy pattern on the edge of the shawl takes 48 rows, and I thought, “if I do 6 rows a night, I’ll be done in around a week.”  But then the rows got longer, and I began to consider that “if I do 4 rows a night, now that I’m up to row 30, there are about 5 days of knitting left.”  Well, the knitting gods had other plans for me.  In particular, they wanted to play What's Wrong with this Picture?

The thing that frustrates me so much about lace is that it is what I don’t see that causes the mistakes.  No only did I neglect to yarn over on one row, but I did it on the next right-side row as well.  So now there’s about an inch to rip (around 6 rows) and replace on the needle.  It is probably going to use up all of tonight’s knitting time to do that and reknit a few of those rows.

This isn’t the first mistake I made.  I had forgotten to yo around the center rib, but I figured this out on the purl row on the wrong side.  And I simply picked up the yarn between the stitches, wrapped it around the needle, and then purled it.  Ha, I thought, I fixed something without frogging or tinking back.  In this case, the result was a slight imperfection:

 

Anyone who is as myopic as I am (which fortunately for humanity is not many or our cave ancestors would have gone extinct as they walked off cliffs) can see at a glance that the yo is twisted the wrong way, and I began to obsess about this as I knitted on.  I tried to calm myself by saying that fixing this wasn’t worth derailing my progress.  But a mistake is a mistake, no matter how trivial.  And when I rip back to fix the missing yos, I’ll be able to fix this as well, and be much happier (presumably) for the experience.

So when will this shawl be done?  Your guess is probably better than mine.

 

Sunday Best

Because I have type-A tendencies, I always try to head out to Rhinebeck on the first day so that I’m there around a half-hour before the gates open.  Like any aficionado of yarn festivals, I have a sneaking suspicion that all the yarn will be gone if I delay my visit.  But this year, I was a bit calmer than I have been in the past.  I had a bad cold—my first in a few years—in mid-October, and the days before Rhinebeck were damp and unpleasant.  (All that rain I needed so badly in the summer has fallen now, after I decided that planting fall vegetables would be an exercise in frustration.) Saturday was cold and windy, but the forecast for Sunday was warm and sunny.  So it seemed like a no-brainer to make my annual trek on Sunday.  And Sunday was beautiful. 

The drive north is always a treat because the leaves are turning, and even if the summer drought made them a little less beautiful than past autumns, it was still a great day out.  And, in fact, I wasn’t disappointed when I reached the Dutchess County Fairgrounds.  The crowd seemed less frenetic, and there still was a lot of yarn left (lest you had any concerns about this). 

And it is always nice to see where all that luscious yarn comes from.

I had to show some restraint this year in my yarn purchases, partly because I bought the sewing machine, but mostly because we’re about to embark on major home repairs, beginning with new siding and windows.  I expect to be very cash-poor in 2011 (and possibly beyond) as I start renovations on my house.  So I studied the vendor list before I headed for Rhinebeck and focused only on some “must-have” items that I wanted to buy.

For some time I’ve wanted a nice cozy shawl to curl up in while watching TV, and I had my eye on Cheryl Oberle’s Wool Peddler's Shawl from Folk Shawls.  Although many Ravellers have knitted this shawl in heavenly colors and in a range of yarn weights, the pattern always struck me as needing some thick, somewhat unprocessed yarn.  I guess if I were a spinner, I’d attempt to create a yarn of just the perfect texture for my mental image of the shawl—but that’s not likely to happen in my lifetime.  So I headed first to the booth for Foxhill Farm and bought four skeins of this 88% wool-12% alpaca yarn. (Alas, Foxhill Farm has no website.)

And, in fact, I was not disappointed.  I couldn’t keep my hands off it, and I swatched immediately upon arriving home.  I just wish I could waft its tactile qualities through cyberspace so that you can feel how squishy, soft, and warm it is.  The swatch alone did not make me happy—it just whetted my appetite for the real thing.  So here I am, about two-thirds of the way finished with the shawl.

I have a serious Socks That Rock habit, and I justified the purchase of yet more by deciding to knit fingerless gloves for DH, for DS, and for me.  The medium weight is perfect for what I have in mind, but the colors have to be subdued for the guys in my life.  I had gotten a skein of the Raven Clan color groups (the balled up skein in Corvid), and I wanted two more like it.  Here I was disappointed because the Saturday Rhinebeckians left only one skein in a black colorway (middle skein, Pallas Athena).  I had to get another at Stitches (top skein, Strange Brew), and it might just be too colorful for those lacking a second X chromosome.  I will use that one for me.

Another website-less vendor with beautiful yarn is Snow Star Farm.  I had gotten some natural and green in a past visit, and I thought that if I had a few more colors, I could do something interesting.  And so I bought some unprocessed gray and navy to mix with those yarns and whatever yarn is left over from a cherry-red sweater I have planned for next year (the red is much richer than the photo).  These are now the colors in my Snow Star Farm stash:

The yarn is a perfect weight for stranded mittens or hats, which is what I have in mind for it.

I also visited a vendor new for me: Long Ridge Farm. Although there were knitted samples at the booth, the self-striping yarns were sold out.  Nancy Zeller asked me what colors I’d like and promised to dye up something special.  I was totally at a loss to pick colors, and I told her that I liked reds and autumn tones.  And so she sent this photo in a follow-up email, and the yarn, with the enchanting name "Autumn Mystery" is on its way.  At last I may have something perfect for difficult-to-match mustard-brown slacks that are in the back of my closet.

I also had a chance to meet WheatFran, a fellow member of the Philosopher’s Wool group on Ravelry.(look at her beautiful hats).

Now that I’ve caught up on Rhinebeck, it’s time to photograph the yarns from Stitches.

 

 

 

Getting My Shots Up to Date

Today was a perfect morning for my long-postponed FO shots of my Arbor Rose pullover, NaKniSweMoDo Sweater #2.  It was cool enough for DS and DH to complain, and for our boiler to go on—so I was nicely comfortable in Arbor Rose.  This sweater is warm and luxurious.  The Aurora 8 yarn is incredibly soft and squishy. It might just be a candidate for my Rhinebeck sweater, since I don’t think there will be many opportunities to wear it before the fall.  (I promise if you see me in it at Rhinebeck, I will have a more winning smile.)

I used 17 skeins of color 19, it was knit with Addi Turbos size 7 U.S. (body), size 3 U.S. (neck), and it is my own design. 

While I corralled Ed into taking the shots, I had him do a few more of the Bee Fields shawl I knit last summer, to round out my Ravelry posts.  I never did model this.

And, I must have accidently deleted the picture of Myrna Stahman’s Faroese-style lace shawl from Knitter’s Scarves and Shawls, because I can’t find it on my old or new computer.  I have never posted it to Ravelry—and now I can.

I used the recommended yarn, Haneke merino lace (wool-alpaca mix), and it was lovely to work with.  This was the first shawl I ever knit. 

And, since this is a picture-heavy post, here’s a few more.  I’ve called these Birdz n the Hood.  Ed calls them hood-lums.

Apparently Addi and Larry Bird are totally fascinated by gray sweatshirts.  Navy doesn’t cut it.  So long as they stay away from my yarn, and do not chew on circular-needle cables, they will remain cute and lovable. 

Chilling Out

I’m losing my window of opportunity in finishing my heavier wool projects. The weather gods (who are in cahoots with the knitting gods) decided to give us tantalizingly cool weather for this week. It is delightful enough for me to think that summer won’t be all that bad, and perhaps that is their little joke on me. There’s a spring in my step when I hear the words “unseasonably cool” on the TV weather reports that remind us that summer starts this weekend.

My new computer has sucked up all the weekend time that I devote to solving knitting problems. I think on weekends so that I don’t have to think on weeknights when my brain isn’t capable after a day’s work of anything demanding. But this weekend I got all my programs on the new iMac, starting with the new version of Knit Visualizer and the Complete New Yorker, and ending with Office and Adobe Elements. Even though I’ve escaped the clutches of Windows, I still maintain an uneasy alliance with Microsoft because I use Word and Excel (at least the more friendly Mac versions). So in contrast to the easy installation of all other Mac programs, I had to fill out a ridiculous form to get a Microsoft ID so I could download the Word updates. And that took an hour all by itself. I guess it isn’t good enough for Microsoft to have you enter the kajillion-digit product number to get the patch that presumably fixes flaws that exist in their products (until the next patch that fixes the flaws they couldn’t find the first two times). I thought they might want my DNA and fingerprints too. I’m glad they don’t know about my first-born son.

I’m not done with the conversion to the new machine. I’m a packrat in every aspect of my life, and the computer is no exception. I have files of completed projects, interim drafts, and invoices that have been paid. These are now neatly stored on an external hard drive, and only active files will be transferred to the new machine—freeing up space for me to store these sorts of files as I begin to accumulate them anew. Once I clean up my email this weekend, I’ll switch machines. Ed can hardly wait, and I want him to have the computer with most of my work removed.

And so I started this week without resolving any of the thorny issues on Devonshire or the Calvin Klein cardigan. Knitting this week has to be tranquil and easy. I am knitting the second Devonshire sleeve, from wrist to armhole, because I know that is ok. It is only about three nights' work. My two summer KALs, the Summer of Socks and the Seasons of Lace, start on Saturday. Even though my sweaters won’t be done, I want to begin the KAL projects.

My first for the Seasons of Lace is Bee Fields. I started this with some stash yarn, but when I saw the beautiful shawls on the Bee Fields KAL made from slightly variegated yarn, I decided to reserve the stash yarn for something else. I’m going to use Fearless Fibers merino in Notorious. The color shown here is more accurate than it is in the swatch photo.

Last night I swatched to see what size needles I should use and what size shawl I should knit. Anne Hanson makes this decision easy, since she gives gauge recommendations in an unblocked stockinette swatch. I almost get gauge if I drop down to size 3 US (Addi Lace) needles, from the recommended size 5s. I was wondering if I should knit the small or large, and since I’m a bit over (I get a 4 ¼-inch square instead of a 4-inch square), I’ll knit the small size.

Things haven’t progressed as quickly on the sock-planning front. I bought some Fearless Fibers superwash at the same time as the shawl yarn, and I love the colorway--Sublime. I’ve only started to swatch, and I have no particular pattern in mind as yet:

So I will have more UFOs than I like, but I’ll be able to knit this week and keep my cool.

Guilty Pleasures

There’s not much knitting to show so far this week, and so I’ll do what any sensible blogger would do in such circumstances—flash my stash.  In this case, it is new additions to my knitting yarns collection and supplies.

I just loved the tactile pleasure I got from knitting with Socks That Rock yarn.  In an idle moment, I thought about the yarn I’m using for my WIPs.   Zara (for the Devonshire jacket) is wonderful to the touch. Silky Wool looks better than it feels.  I don’t really like knitting with Cotton Fleece, but I will finish the red sweater—which I know will be enjoyable to wear. But the Bee Fields shawl has languished because I just don’t like the way my stash yarn looks and feels.

Anne Hanson and Wooly Wonka offer this shawl as a kit, and the yarns are lovely, as you can see from those on the KAL who’ve completed their shawl.  My one-color yarn looks flat compared to the beauty of the slightly variegated yarns of the other KAL members.  I decided not to use the kit yarn because I simply don’t look good in green or yellow.  Anne also recommends Fearless Fibers, and while web surfing, found a yarn that would capture the same honey glow as the kit yarns but in colors that are better for me.  And so I put aside the sense of virtue I was getting from the prospect of stash reduction and bought it.

While doing that, I thought I’d also try some of Fearless Fiber’s sock yarn:

It is just gorgeous to the touch, and I love the colors—which have more purple than my camera captured.

I’ve had in the back of my mind, a shawl that Wendy had made last year.  She used Morehouse lace weight.  I have loved Morehouse Farms yarn ever since knitting their Family Sweater (featured in Knitting in America) for my son.  I’ve made some of their children’s sweaters as special gifts and a tweedy scarf for myself.  So when I got an email notice saying that the March special was their natural color lace yarn, I couldn’t resist. 

I had intended this for another of Anne’s shawls, Wing of the Moth, but when the yarn (color: oatmeal) arrived I thought, with its homespun texture, that it would be better for another shawl: Summer in Kansas from Two Old Bags.

I’m still on the prowl for the perfect yarn for Wing of the Moth.  I might choose Morehouse’s off-white natural yarn when I’m done with Summer in Kansas, but I’ll leave that for my Rhinebeck quest this coming fall. 

When I used KnitPicks Harmony circular needles in US 3 to reknit Liv’s sleeves, I also liked the feel.  And when I started my new sock using my trusty Brittany Birch DPNs, I noticed that the points were rounder than those on the Harmony needles.  I thought how nice it would be to have the KnitPicks DPNs for those yarns that could use a pointier needle, and I ordered the set—along with the set of interchangeable circulars from sizes US 4 to 11.  So now my sets of Harmony’s are complete, and they’re a welcome addition to my tools.

Tonight it is back to knitting on something.  Work has interfered with every aspect of my life since Monday, requiring me to work and not knit after dinner.  And staring at the computer screen, even that of my beloved Mac, for all those hours has given me some eyestrain.  But the prospect of knitting with these yarns is an inducement to get the WIPs to FO status.

 

What Shawl I Do Next?

There’s no getting around it.  I’ve been seduced by shawl knitting.  It started innocently enough a few years ago when I made the Myrna Stahman shawl that had been featured in Knitters Magazine.

After IK started showing shawls designed by Evelyn Clark and Miriam Felton, I decided to try again.  This time, though, I rummaged through my stash and considered that yarn I had bought decades ago for thin sweaters would work even better for shawls.  I made some practice Flower Basket shawls from that yarn, which I gave as gifts.  One ball of the Chat Botté yarn I used for the Shetland Triangle I just completed makes a scarf-sized shawl, and two balls make a small shawl.  I used stash yarn for the Seraphim shawl.

The problem I have with shawls is where to wear them.  They are definitely not as practical for me as sweaters.  I don’t attend many garden parties or events where I have to wear flowing dresses that look fabulously elegant when shawls are draped over them.  I can’t even wrap myself in a shawl and sit out on my veranda, because I don’t have a veranda.  When I gathered my thin yarn, I saw that I could make major inroads in stash reduction if I used that yarn for shawls.  I feel virtuous when I knit from my stash yarn.  And so it makes sense that I should knit away at shawls, just to use this yarn. (And I'm embarrassed to say that this isn't all of it.  After I took the shot, I realized that there at least five other yarns that should have been included and weren't.)

So now the dilemma sets in.  There are much more sensuous yarns available now for shawl knitting than the thin yarns in my stash.  Yes, the colors of my stash yarn are often lovely, but they’re all plain wool—and not even anything special, such as merino or cashmere.  The yarns that attract me now have alpaca, silk, or mohair in them.  I don’t even allow myself to think of qivuit.   Many are dyed in the most enchanting ranges of color, but mine are not. 

And I did buy other yarn that could be used for shawls.  Aside from the Foxhill Farm merino (moorit), which is intended for a shawl, I have enough of the Tess Cascade Silk and Brooks Farm mohair for sweaters.  And I think sweaters they shall be.

Being captivated by shawls makes it tough for me to keep to my goal of stash reduction.  Having amassed a collection of shawl patterns and a copy of Victorian Lace Today, it is hard for my stash yarn to compete with the siren call of the yarns in the pictures.  Shawl knitting would be even more frivolous for me if I bought new yarn.  I’d be no better than the balding, potbellied middle-aged man who dumps his wife, buys a red convertible, and hangs out at singles bars.

When I read Dave’s August 1 post about using using up the Dugly-Ucks in his sock yarn stash, I knew that I’m not alone in my quandary about using stash yarn or buying something new and perfect.  For this yarn, it is not so much “what was I thinking” when I bought it (although that certainly applies to other stash yarn).  I know what I was thinking, but my tastes and knitting interests are different.  So for now I’ll remain virtuous and resist the allure of the new, although I can’t guarantee this restraint in the future.  Trips to Rhinebeck and Stitches East in the fall will definitely weaken my resolve.

The choice of what shawl to knit next hasn’t been an easy one, but I think I’ve settled on either Anne’s Wing of the Moth or Bee Fields.  Currently Bee Fields has the edge because the soft, butterscotch-colored yarn (purchased around 1975 in London—most likely in Harrod’s or The Needlewoman Shop) would work well for it.  It is so old that there is no yardage on the bands, but I have 350 grams of it, and so I’m sure there’s enough.

So when I’m done with Ed’s sweater (I made major strides on the left front yesterday) and Liv (the back is nearly complete), I’ll be contemplating which shawl to knit and which yarn to use.