Unblocked: Prairie Rose Shawl

By the skin of my teeth.  19" at the spine before blocking, and almost all of a 437-yard skein of undyed cashmere used up.

I keep on doing this thing where I freak out about yardage for the last quarter of an entire project.  I go back and forth - will I have enough?  Will I run out, bloody and tearful, halfway through the bind off?  And unfortunately, the only way to find out is to knit along and hope that everything works out.

Usually this does not happen in any sort of merry fashion.  Usually there is wincing and gnashing of teeth and obsessively checking how much yarn I have left until the bitter end.

About halfway through the last repeat of this Prairie Rose, I realized that my yardage was looking a little skimpy.  And then the dance started:  I will have enough! and then, five minutes later, I will not have enough and I should give up and give the damn thing to the rat and find a new, more relaxing hobby, like maybe ice climbing or bear wrestling.

Because I am a mature and well-adjusted person, I threw it on the couch for a day because I was mad at it.  Two nights ago I was feeling optimistic, so I did a few rows and realized that I would almost surely be okay for yardage.  From then on, I decided that it would definitely work.

Apparently my blind faith paid off, but still - yikes.  I cast off in the car yesterday morning, and what was left was this tiny wisp, perhaps 5 yards - a little cocoon of yarn.

And thank goodness for that, because I don't even want to think about the alternative.

WIP: Prairie Rose Shawlette

What's that you ask?  Why yes, I have started another shawl.

After finishing the Onda Cowl in a day, I reluctantly went back to this project, the Prairie Rose shawlette from The Knitter's Book of Wool, which I started knitting out of some random cashmere I got at a yarn and fabric shop's moving sale.  I saw this lone skein on the counter with a 50% off label on it, and I snapped it up.  What can I say?  I'm a sucker for cashmere.

I've knit this shawl once before, and though the pattern called for 370 yards with the given number of repeats, I was just barely squeaking by (and ended up ripping back a whole repeat) with 400 yards.  This time I have 437 yards, so I'm prepared to knit until it's almost gone.  I think this yarn, a discontinued domestic brand called Cashmere America, still has some oil on it - it's pretty scratchy for a cashmere yarn.  I'm hoping that it will bloom nicely on blocking.

FO: Harbour Lights

 

Harbour Lights, she is blocked and woven in.  Stick a fork in 'er.

(The spine went from 21" to a grand 28.5" upon blocking.  Magic!)

I was initially a little worried how the cast-on and bind-off edges of the edging would look, especially after blocking.  Verdict?  They're not perfect, but they'll do.  Overall, I think this shawl will definitely get some wear as a late-spring to early-summer shawl - the beads add heft, but they also add a chill factor!  All those tiny little beads have a much lower heat capacity than the cashmere/silk blend yarn, which means they soak up cold and transfer it to your skin.  Which may be nice in the warmer months, but isn't going to do me much good in the cold weather we've been having!

On another note, I read a blog post recently by a knitter who doesn't have a stash.  (GASP.)  I can definitely see how it would simplify one's life.  Some days I aspire to be the kind of person who doesn't need a stash.  There's something very appealing about finishing a project and going to the yarn shop to buy more yarn for the next project, never accumulating huge quantities of yarn that jump out to attack you when you stumble into your stash room at 2 am to look for a fix of aran merino.



But other days, I realize that projects like this one - made from a stash yarn that needed a few years of percolating to know what it wanted to be when it grew up - are part of the life cycle of the stash-laden knitter.  Maybe it's blatant rationalization, but I think having a monstrous stash challenges me to find the perfect pattern for each yarn, even if it sometimes takes a while.  I do have trouble knitting certain yarns in my stash, because I bought them when I was a much younger and more fearful knitter.  I bought them knowing there was a possibility I'd never be skilled enough to work with them properly, and thus they have never left that yarn-pedestal in my mind.

Of course, at some point I have to realize the ridiculousness of this idea and just knit the stuff up.  As my friend Teri says, there will always be new, pretty yarn to buy and put in your stash.  I think I'll trust her on this one.

Project Page
Pattern: Harbour Lights, by Sivia Harding
Yarn: Jade Sapphire Silk/Cashmere 2-ply, colorway Sterling
Yardage: Almost all of 2 skeins, ~760 yards
Needles: Size 5 (3.75 mm) US Addi Turbo Lace
Notes: I used the knitted cast-on for the edging and cast off knitwise.  Other than that, I knit it exactly as written.

WIP: A Harebell Fichu

I woke up on Sunday morning with a cold, so I've spent quite of bit of time sitting around in my pajamas for the last couple of days.  Not as much knitting has happened as I'd like, but I did cast on for a new project on Sunday night.  The pattern is A Harebell Fichu from Victorian Lace Today.  My mom heard me talking in awe about the book one day over the phone during my freshman year at Oberlin, and two weeks later I got a copy in the mail.  I immediately blew off my homework and took it to the library to read it cover to cover.  I actually haven't knit anything from the book yet, but it's remained one of those "someday when I'm good enough I'll totally knit tons of stuff from this" books.  Now that I am good enough, it's about time that I tried some of the patterns out.

I ended up ripping out everything but the cast-on the same night I cast on, but I started over Monday and have done a little bit more since then.  Originally the pattern had me knitting picots at each end, but I didn't like how sloppy mine looked - that, and I totally misread the pattern and had to rip back anyway.

This particular project is yet another one inspired by my friend Ondrea, who cast on for her own probably  two years ago now.  I'm not sure if she ever got to finish it - the pattern is a little muddy in places - but when I saw she was working on it, I got this idea stuck in my head that I wanted to make it.  When I was out in California visiting friends a few years ago, I bought some yarn with this pattern in mind.

The fichu, sort of like a little mini lace capelet, is a little old-fashioned, but then again, so are shawls - and I love wearing shawls!  I have no idea how I'll wear this sort of thing, but I'll be sure to report what I come up with.

The yarn is Curious Creek Meru in the colorway Plum Thunder.  It's a two-ply merino/tussah silk blend with a lovely hand - slightly crunchy, but soft.  The color is a saturated plum, just the kind of color I like to have next to my face.  I'm knitting it on size 3 (3.25 mm) US needles and I like the fabric so far.  I'm hoping that this will be a fun, fast little project - I've had it on my knitterly radar for so long that I'm anxious to see how it turns out.

Harbour Lights, Pre-Blocking

On Saturday night, my mom and I went to a show by Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo - a drag ballet corps, which was awesome - and then I came home and rocked out the last 5 repeats or so of Harbour Lights.  And now it's done: 21" deep at the spine and heavy from beads.

My main reason for finishing quickly was not, as one might think, pleasure of knitting, or joy at the sight of so much lace emerging from my needles.  There were certainly elements of both - but no, I'd have to say that what motivated this finishing spree was sheer, unadulterated terror.

Right around halfway through the edging, I started thinking that maybe I'd be a little tight on yarn.  With each repeat, the teeny little ball of yarn got teenier, and I started having daydreams in which I got to the last five rows of pattern and was greeted by the last inch of yarn, mocking me and all my hard work and beading.  I tried not to madly scheme my plan of attack, should this tragedy come to pass.  If it were, there would be more than a few roadblocks in my way: first, I bought this yarn so long ago that there's no way the shop still has any.  Second, I've found Jade Sapphire to have wildly different dye lots of the same colorways, so probably no ordering new yarn to finish - not to mention the rather hefty pricetag of an extra skein of yarn just to finish two inches or so of fabric.

Luckily, as you can see, I did make it.  Right about halfway through the very last repeat, I realized that I would definitely have enough yarn, but by that time, it seemed a shame not to finish the thing.  And finish I did: in the wee hours of Sunday morning, I cast off the very last stitch and unceremoniously dumped the shawl in my blocking basket.

And people think I do this for fun.

WIP: Harbour Lights

I've been plugging away a little slowly at Harbour Lights, a shawl I started at the beginning of the month.  The beading starts to make my head explode after a little while, which is why I have been unceremoniously dumping this project to work on fun, easy projects like a basketweave scarf for a friend.  Every time I start working on it, though, I think of Parks and Recreation, since we zoomed through the entire series when I first started knitting this project - not a bad association to have!



And, in spite of the tediousness of beading, this much can be said in its defense: it's damn pretty.  Although the yarn and the beads were bought two years apart from each other and I bought the beads without matching the two at all, they're perfect together: yarn the color of polished silver, or thunderclouds, or a dolphin's back.  Beads that glow green or violet depending on the light.

I have no idea where I'll wear this shawl.



So it's sitting in its basket unloved.  One of these days we'll start watching another show and I'll pick it up and grab my little soy-sauce dish and fill it full of beads, and away we'll go, but for now I'm hoping that taking pictures of it will inspire me to keep going.  The edging is knit in an ingenious way - after the body is finished, you cast on 20 stitches and start the pattern, then the hundreds of live stitches of the body are slowly eaten by the edging using decreases, which means no super long awful bind-off - but it is so, so repetitive and the beads are fiddly and I'm really just trying to say that that's why I'm knitting a green basketweave scarf out of plain superwash wool even though I like cashmere way more.



But hey, at least that edging's a quarter done, huh?

WIP: Harbour Lights Shawl

About two years ago, while I was in college, I went on a trip to a yarn shop with my friend Sparkle.  I was having a really intense semester, and getting out of Oberlin felt both thrilling and wrong.  So we went to River Colors and petted yarn, and I fell deeply in love with this Jade Sapphire Silk Cashmere 4-ply.  With the silk content of the yarn, the steely grey read as silver.  I couldn't put it down.  I bought it, ferreted it away in my stash and hoped for the day that I would find the right project to do the yarn justice.



And finally, a couple of months ago I was paging through Sivia Harding's patterns and found this shawl called Harbour Lights, a triangular beaded shawl that took just about 800 yards of laceweight.  Exactly the same amount as I had of the silver Jade Sapphire.  I bought the pattern and beads on a whim without even matching them to the yarn and put it on my queue.

I cast off the California Roll scarf yesterday, so I needed a new project.  So I cast on for Harbour Lights.



I think I like it.

Harbour Lights pattern photo copyright Sivia Harding.

FO Post: Cochineal Shawl

I've been finishing a lot of stuff lately.  Ripping out projects that aren't working; finishing socks on the needles since January of this year; blocking and weaving in ends and swatching and generally being a very responsible knitter.  (We'll see how long it lasts.)

This is one of the many outcomes of that productivity.  It's my third Swallowtail Shawl, and I am still obsessed with the perfection of the pattern.  We recently received a shipment of Madelinetosh into the LYS where I work, so I volunteered to loan out this Swallowtail knit in Tosh Merino Light and my Ene's Scarf knit in Prairie as shop models.  Before I did, I managed to have the Lumberjack snap a few pictures.

I was a little worried about yardage for this shawl, since my friend Ondrea had run out of yarn in her Swallowtail made of Tosh Merino Light.  I managed to squeak by on one skein, although towards the end I was getting pretty anxious.  I think it took about 400 yards of a 420-yard skein.  I'm always torn on whether or not I want a lot of yarn left over when I'm done with a project.  I hate being stressed out about whether I can finish something, but I also really love only having 3-5 yards left over.

Moving on: the yarn?  Holy crap.  I have to keep myself from buying every colorway of Tosh Merino Light that I see, because it is so luminous in color and such a pleasure to work with.  This colorway is Tart, and I'll already admit that I have it in two other yarn bases.  It is one of the prettiest reds I've ever seen, with undertones of black and overtones of the perfect cherry red.

This Swallowtail feels a little different than my other two, since the others are knit from Seasilk, which has a bit more heft and drape.  This one is light and small, and fits around the neck very nicely.

Pattern: Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn Clark (rav page)

Yarn: Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light, colorway Tart

Yardage: about 400 yards of a 420-yard skein

Needles: Size 5 US Addi Turbo Lace

FO Post: Flower Basket Shawl

The endless parade of FO's continues!  This Flower Basket shawlette only took me two weeks or so to knit, and I think it's a really good fit for the yarn.  I had bought this Handmaiden Seasilk a bit on a whim, and there was a minute there where I wasn't sure how the variegation would work with lace.



And whether or not it was successful, I like it.  It's mostly magenta and a very bright, citrusy orange, with a little bit of pistachio and paler orange in there too, and this pattern is just basic enough to let the colors shine while still being interesting enough to keep my attention.



I think it will be a good little scarflette to wear with a t-shirt and jeans.



I didn't really see it while I was knitting it, but the lace really does look like little flower baskets.  As usual, Evelyn Clark's little lace shawl patterns are well-written and addictive as hell, with a super cute product.



Yet another one to add to the shawl drawer!

Pattern: Flower Basket Shawl by Evelyn Clark, distributed by Fiber Trends
Yarn: Handmaiden Seasilk, colorway Turkish Delight, about 400 yards from a 437-yard skein
Needles: Size 5 US Addi Turbo Lace
Modifications: None!

FO: Ene's Scarf

My blocking queue had gotten a little long again, so I've been trying to block at night while I'm thinking about it.  It's started getting dark around 4 pm since Daylight Saving's Time, so I've had to plan my time according to the light a bit more.  So, last week I finally blocked Ene's Scarf, a project I finished probably a month ago.  Above is how I'll probably wear the shawl, but for the sake of showing it off, here it is from some other angles.



This is the shawl unblocked.  It measured about 22 inches at the spine, and was very crumply.



After blocking?  Pure magic.  The spine now measures 32 inches, which means it grew just about 10".

I really, really enjoyed working with this yarn, Madelinetosh Prairie.  Tosh Merino Light is the popular Tosh yarn on Ravelry right now - so popular, in fact, that LYSs are having a hard time getting and keeping it on the shelves! - but as a lace nerd, I totally covet Prairie.  It's a finer version of TML, relatively tightly spun for a single, seems to be pill-resistant so far, and has the most beautiful shine at its core, almost as if it contained silk.



The best part, though, as with all of the Madelinetosh yarns, is its deep, awe-inspiring color.  This particular colorway is called Curiosity, and it is a shapeshifter - lavender in some lights, blue with violet undertones in others.  The subtle variegation of the yarn doesn't distract from the lace pattern one bit, but lends that depth of color that I just love.



The fabric it creates is light as a feather, too.  I'll have to style this shawl a little differently than my heavier ones, perhaps as a light layer over sweaters rather than a standalone scarf.  Seattle has gotten chilly as well as dark lately, and I haven't yet tested how well this shawl keeps the cold out.

All in all, a very satisfying and quick knit that I can't stop looking at because it is so dang pretty.

Pattern: Ene's Scarf, from Scarf Style collection.  Pattern by Nancy Bush.
Yarn: Madelinetosh Prairie, colorway Curiosity
Yardage: About 800 yards of a 840-yard skein
Needles: Size 6 US Addi Turbo Lace
Modifications: I did a cable cast-on and two rows of garter stitch as set-up rows before the first chart.  Miralda employs this garter set-up, and I love the way it looks as an edging to set off the lace.  Otherwise, I knit the pattern exactly as written.  As usual, Nancy Bush writes beautiful and easy-to-read patterns.

WIP: Flower Basket Shawlette

This project was in and out of my stash, on and off the needles so fast that it barely registered in my knitterly consciousness.  It was a pleasant week of knitting off-and-on, with no nail-biting on the yarn requirements or the pattern or anything.  I mentioned in this post that I would probably do an Evelyn Clark pattern with my skein of Handmaiden Seasilk in the tantalizingly weird colorway Turkish Delight.  I don't particularly like the candy, but I do like orange and pink and mint green, especially together.  Yum.



Also on a color note: whenever I work with my Friday coworker at my LYS, we have conversations that go like this:

Her: That color is pretty bright.  I'm not sure if I like it...
Me: I LOVE IT.
Her: Of course you do.

And then we laugh.

What can I say, I have the color sense of a six-year-old.

Because I am occasionally a creature of my word, I used Evelyn Clark's Flower Basket Shawl as my pattern.  The smallest size called for about 425 yards, and I had 437, so I figured I could make it about the same or even a touch bigger.  Since I've already knit Swallowtail twice, with the same yardage and needle size, and ended up with enough yarn, I figured I could add repeats safely until I hit the same number of stitches before the border.  I did 9 repeats instead of the called-for 8, and ended up with a little bit of extra yarn.  Otherwise I knit the pattern exactly as written.

The finished size before blocking is 14" deep.  My last Swallowtail was about the same, and blocked out to a nice scarf size of about 23" deep.  I like how the colors pooled, and I think it played nicely with the pattern.  It's often hard to predict how a handpainted yarn will work up, but I've been really happy with the way my projects knit with Handmaiden have turned out.

Hopefully early next week I'll have an FO post... stay tuned!

WIP Post: Swallowtail 2.0, Finished but Unblocked

I cast off Swallowtail this morning - another quick knit and a great palate cleanser.  This is the shawl pre-blocking.  The spine is just about 16 inches deep, which is way too small to wear as a proper shawl or scarf at this point.  My first Swallowtail grew quite a bit in size, though, and I expect the same with this one.  I also had plenty of yarn left over, so no nail-biting on finishing.

So pretty.

Now it's time to swatch for other projects!  Whee!  Maybe I'll even manage to block this guy within a month of finishing it.

FO Post: Miralda 2.0

As often happens with my lace knits, I blocked this one over a month ago and just wove in the ends this morning.  Although this time, I have a totally legitimate excuse - moving across the country.  Right?  Right!

It's amazing how even the 50/50 silk-cashmere and 100% cashmere differ in their drape and hand.  Miraldette has very crisp lines and a slightly crunchy hand, while Miralda 2.0 is nothing but soft, fluffy goodness.  That being said, I've found the pure cashmere to be more delicate and prone to snagging and tearing.  My first Miralda needed two repairs in the year that I had her; so far, in six months, the 50/50 silk-cashmere version has held up beautifully.  When the yarn does snag, it's fairly easy to pull it back into place.  I also love the slight sheen that the silk-cashmere has.  They're just two very different beasts.

I really missed this color in my wardrobe.  I have a dark grey trench that looks fabulous with such a bright pink.  I also love that this yarn doesn't pill as it wears, it merely gets softer and grows a delicate halo.  As usual, the perfect yarn for the perfect pattern.

Pattern: Miralda's Triangular Shawl, from Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush

Yarn: Jade Sapphire Mongolian Cashmere 4-Ply, colorway Vintage Rose

Yardage: approx. 700 yards, or 1.75 skeins

Needles: Size 7 US Addi Turbo Lace

Modifications: Doubled cable-cast on instead of knitted cast-on for bottom edge.  I like the sturdiness and almost braided appearance of this cast-on for lace.

Happy 4th of July to those of you in the US, and happy Monday to everybody else!