Finished: Molly Ringwald in green

Pattern: Molly Ringwald by Michele Rose Orne in Knitscene, Fall 2006
Yarn: Flora (Linea Pura) by Lana Grossa; cotton-soy blend (60 % organic cotton, 40 % organic soy), 140 m/50 g, recommended needle size: 3.5 - 4 mm
Color: green
Price:€ 5.65? € 4.50
Amount: 5 balls
Needles: 3 mm and 2.75 mm (for casting off), a small crochet hook
Gauge: 26 stitches x 36 rows = 10 cm
Dimensions: I cast on the same number of stitches as for the smallest size. Remember though that my gauge is different. The gauge for the original design is 22 stitches 28 rows.
Modifications: I wanted to wear this in summer without anything underneat, so I made this a quite figure-hugging top. Also many knitters said that it was better to go down at least one size with that design. When I look at my back, which is gaping a bit, I'm not surprised.

The piece with the ruffles is as long as in the original design. Since the whole thing had less width though, I didn't have straps anymore where I could attach the sleeves. I find my armholes are a tad small. It's not bad, but surely they could be a bit bigger.

Since the yarn is thinner, I thought I could do what Muhv did and make the ruffles more, uh, ruffly - k, ktbl, m1 out of strand inbetween. By the way, I must add that I like ruffles, but I hate knitting them. I used an Addi bamboo needle and after the ruffles, bits of one needle tip had been chipped away.

Added short-rows. That website was helpful: http://www.thedietdiary.com/knittingfiend/OrderForms/BustDarts.html

And that oneexplains well how to do short-rows without any wraps, pins (Japanese short rows), etc:
http://kaityvr.wordpress.com/2007/05/28/the-easiest-way-to-do-a-short-row-heel/

I was a bit concerned that it would be too tight. In the end, I think the short rows were good, because they also added length to the front part of the top and kept the neckline somewhat straight and not have it hanging. Lengthwise I could have needed a couple of rows more. If I keep the neckline straight, the hem rides up a bit.

Left out the crab stitch. It’s true though, you should do a tight single crochet round with a small hook around the neckline. Doing the single crochet round improved the fit of the top. Doing the crab stitches even more. That makes the neckline less floppy.

Comments: I think it's a good thing I made this top smaller. Cotton is heavy and I can't imagine a loose fitting top made of cotton to look good. It probably would look like a bag. Apart from the ruffles, the whole top is knit in rib, which stretches somewhat, when you fill it out. I've only worn it once and I still think it had grown a bit. My neckline at the end of the day was a bit lower.

Confession: I didn't wash my swatch. I should have done it, but I didn't... I wanted to start knitting and when you wash your swatch you have wait at least a day in most cases. And after I had started knitting I didn't want bad news from the washed swatch. This is the ostrich-head-in-the-sand-method. Sometimes it works well. More often it doesn't. You've been warned...

The top was a big PITA to knit, because of all the modifications, but overall, I'm pretty content with how it turned out. I actually like it better than the original design. I just hope it won't grow too much with wearing.

The yarn feels ok. I have the same yarn in white and that one is quite soft and feels nice though.

The color is more accurate in the first picture.

Finished: Ogee Lace Skirt

Pattern: Ogee Lace Skirt by Gryphon Perkins
Interweave Knits, Summer 2007
Yarn: Rowan Bamboo Tape
Color: white
Price: don't know anymore...
Amount: Less than 4 I think
Needles: When I started with the recommended needle size it was too loose. A year later, when I had to rip back a bit and redo the edge, it seems that my knitting has become tighter, because now I have to use a bigger needle size. Very strange…
Gauge: doesn't really matter, I guess, with warp skirt
Dimensions: ?
Modifications: Made it shorter and turned it upside down, because I didn't like the edge. It seemed to be kind of wavy. The leaves are pointing downwards now. I think I don't really like leaf patterns anyway where the leaves point upwards. That's against gravity and nature.
Comments: I washed it by mistake at 40 °C. After it came out it was a bit stiff and had shrunk quite. I pulled it apart and actually, now I like it better than before, because it has lost somewhat of the drape (it was too much for me before).
I don't really have much information about this project available, because I finished it such a long time ago. Before I made the modifications I didn't really like the skirt, so the it was just lying around.

Finished: Endpaper Mitts

Pattern: Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang
Yarn: Baby Alpaca by Lang, 170 m/50 g, 100 % alpaca, recommended needle size 3 mm, gauge 26 stitches x 34 rows = 10 x 10 cm
Color: red and orange
Price: € 6,.per ball
Amount: less than a ball in each color
Needles: 2 mm for the ribbing, 2,5 mm for the body
Gauge: I'm counting 18 stitches in 5 cm (much tighter than is recommended)
Dimensions: fit my hand like a glove
Modifications: I exchanged the colors on the second mitt, because not only do I suffer from second-sock-syndrome, but also from second-anything-syndrome. I'm so glad that when you do fair isle, you can exchange the colors. I'll probably have to introduce that when knitting fair isle sleeves (just kidding <- I had to add this, I'm sure some people would really believe that I was capable of doing something like that... :D)

Tubular cast-on: I'm trying to gather my diffuse memories... I started like here, but used a thinner cotton yarn to wrap the loops with my working yarn around. I also started with 2.5 mm needles. The first row was purl, *slip purlwise with yarn in front, ktbl, repeat from * until last stitch. Knit that one. Next row: P, then *slip purlwise with yarn in front, ktbl, repeat from * until last stitch. Knit that one. Join in the round. Take the last stitch (a knit stitch) and pull it over the first stitch (purl stitch), so that the first stitch is inside the last stitch, held by the right hand needle and the last stitch is on the left-hand needle. Knit the last stitch. I'm not sure if I continued with two more rows of alternating slip purlwise with yarn in the front and k, respectively slip purlwise with the yarn in the back and p or if I just continued with the regular 1x1 ribbing. When you change to normal ribbing, also change to 2.0 mm needle.

I started doing my tubular cast-ons like this, because for one project I once would have needed 1.5 mm needles, which are not in the standard range of the yarn shops here, you have to order them. If you want your tubular cast-on to look good, you really have to go down with the needle size and then it's still not great, at least that's my experience. If I knit through the backloop it tightens the tubular cast-on a bit, making the whole thing a little neater. Since it makes the whole thing too tight, I have to use bigger needles than I would for the rest of the ribbing. If I do the tubular cast-on this way, the stitches are not too loose, it's still stretchy, I can use bigger needles instead of fumbling with small ones, and the edge is still nice.

Comments: I recommend the mitts as a first time project for anybody who has never done fair isle before. They are supereasy to make and the fair isle pattern is also not too difficult.

The mitts are quite tight. As you can see the false purled seam is not staying on the side, but is moving upward. I like them tight though.

The mitts keep my wrists warm, which is nice, but my fingers still suffer. If it's cold enough to wear handwarmers, then my fingers will also want protection, especially, since I nearly always have cold fingers. Anyway, I think they are really really cute. I especially like the color combination. I'm very happy with this project. :)

By the way, I complained about Alpaca from Drops, that ripping back was difficult, because the yarn had a tendency to felt. I thought that this was due to the quality of the yarn, but the Baby Alpaca from Lang is the same. It's more expensive and the yarn still has a tendency to felt.

Finished: Dress 09 from Rebecca no. 35

Pattern: 09 grey dress from Rebecca #35
Yarn: "Cumba" by ggh, 42 % virgin wool, 28 % alpaca and 30 % acrylic(150 m/ 50 g)
Color: natural white
Price: € 3.95 per ball (that's the offical price for the yarn, but it's been a while since I bought it, so I'm not sure what I paid then. I bought it at Lanaiolo, the same yarn shop where I bought the yarn for the orange dress, also a design from Rebecca. Did I mention that I got the magazine for free when I bought the yarn for the orange dress? :) (I think I got it for free?) )
Amount: theoretically you need 9 balls, but of course I'm so talented that I only needed 7, ha! I say it's 7, because I'm counting 2 balls that are left, but there could be more somewhere else. I had to start one ball to do the neck, but I didn't need a lot.
Needles: 3.75 mm I wish I could say I'm a 100 % sure that it was this size, but sorry, I've been really really tired for a couple of weeks and I think it's taking a toll on my memory. By excluding other potential needle sizes I've come to the conclusion that it's very likely that one. By the way, recommended needle size is 4-5 mm.
Gauge: well, something completely different!!!!
Dimensions: size 34/36, theoretically
Modifications: Many! I started knitting this dress last year, thinking it was going to be a nice mindless project since I bought the original yarn, meaning no re-calculations, you just swatch until you find the right needle and then off you go. That was the plan. I made a swatch and then left it at some place where I couldn't find it anymore. I remembered that the gauge was correct though.

I started knitting the skirt part, which seems so easy but I can't remember how many times I ripped back. It was too short, too long, then I decided that the waistline of the original dress was too high up. I'm not really a fan of baby doll dresses and less if they are knitted. This also meant that that the skirt part was too long again!!!! The good thing is, the yarn endured all the ripping back patiently. You can rip back as much as you want and it's going to be fine. At the end of the skirt part, you do some decreases, which I did, but I also added about 10 rows more instead of continuing with the bodice part, because I was afraid that the skirt would look too puffy and I wanted it to taper off slowly.

The next step after deciding on the length of the skirt and the position of the waistline I proceeded with the bodice part. I must confess that I also derived a lot of pleasure from knitting this - ha, ha, ha! After a couple of cms people started making comments about the smallness of the dress. My initial unwavering optimism deflected any kind of doubt, but after a while it cracked down and I had to admit that it did look indeed small. Which meant - I had to swatch. My new swatch told me that the size was indeed good enough for my waist, but would cause problems later on. The bodice part is knit straight, there is no shapping, which usually would be ok as the pattern is very stretchy, but in my case I had to do work in some increases. I tried short rows, but the pattern is very ungrateful for that kind of thing, so I just increased on both sides until I had the same number of stitches as for the next size 38/40. My swatch told me that it would be ok if I did so, but I think I was just wishing that life be easier, meaning if I didn't have to think too much and just follow the instructions. If it couldn't be the instructions for size 34/36 it could at least be the instructions for size 38/40, right?

Anyway, I also decided that the neckline was too high and I wanted the shoulders to be less wide. I made the decreases and hoped they would look fine. For the neckband, I picked up stitches from every second bindoff stitch and row. I assumed that the pattern would stretch a lot.

The sleeves were knit without any modifications. Halleluja! :D

Comments: It's tight around the bust. I wasn't sure if it was still ok or just wishful thinking. I decided to be brave (also because the friend that I called to check the dress was already at the knitting group) and just go to the knitting group. Thankfully, my friends liked it. If not, I would still not have ripped back!

After blocking it looked a little bit off. I just wanted to finish the damn thing and did not take great care with the blocking, so the edge of the skirt were scalloped and very uneven in height. Strangely, I wasn't much concerned about that. I thought I would give it a good washing and then it would shrink back. And of course, I was right. :D In the end, you can block as much as you want, but there is a limit. And I think, I was also lucky with the yarn.

The yarn is nice and soft. And it seems to be robust. I really liked that you could rip back so much and it still looked fine. I recommend it.



Oh, I forgot to tell. The next day, after I finished my dress, I was doing some cleaning up of my stash and other knitting stuff and I found my swatch! The small one is my second swatch and as you can see, the gauge is completely different. I have no clue what happened. Maybe I used a different needle size for the first swatch. It's possible that I knit the skirt part with a smaller needle and then wanted to switch to a bigger needle. The other explanation would that my knitting is very moody - sometimes I knit tight and sometimes I knit loose - but that strikes me as a very strange explanation.

I think next time I would either add more repeats to make it wider or go up a needle size. I tend to going up a needle size, because I actually like the first swatch it is softer and the stitches don't look so tense.


By the way, I just realized that a couple of images from the blog template are missing!! Grrrrr...

Tim Minchin has a new fan

I just saw this video with Tim Minchin. I think he is awesome. You may not agree with the content of his rant, but you must admit that he is fantastic with words and that the background music perfectly supports his rant.

Here's another one.

Minchin describes his act as a "funny cabaret show" and sees himself primarily as a musician and songwriter as opposed to a comedian; his songs, he says, "just happen to be funny".[12] He draws on his background in theatre for his distinctive onstage appearance and persona.[1] In his performances, he typically goes barefoot with wild hair and heavy eye makeup, which is juxtaposed with a crisp suit and tails, and a grand piano. According to Minchin, he likes not wearing shoes in his shows because it makes him feel more comfortable. He considers the eye makeup important because while he is playing the piano he is not able to use his arms and relies on his face for expressions and gestures; the eyeliner makes his features more distinguishable for the audience.[2] Much of his look and persona, he says, are about "treading that line between mocking yourself about wanting to be an iconic figure. Mocking the ridiculousness and complete unrealistic dream of being an iconic figure."[13] The eccentric appearance removes Minchin from reality somewhat, allowing him to make outrageous statements onstage "without annoying (most) people".[14]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Minchin

Finished: Anemoi Mittens

Pattern: Anemoi Mittens by Eunny Jang (who unfortunately stopped blogging, but her patterns are still available on her old blog or via Ravelry)
Yarn: Drops Alpaca, 100 % alpaca, recommended gauge: 23 stitches x 30 cm = 10 cm x 10 cm
Color: green (a nice pea green) and white (natural)
Price: was in my stash, but I think it's about 3-4 Euros
Amount: less than one ball in each color
Needles: 2.00 mm and 2.25 mm
Gauge: they fit, but I think for mittens they should have more ease to be warm
Dimensions: Small
Modifications: None
Comments:

The yarn:
The yarn does not strike me as of great quality. I used the same yarn once to crochet a small shrug/vest. After blocking I realized that it was too small and so frogged it. I then realized that the yarn had become really sticky and you had to tear at it in order to undo the stitches. It was the same thing with the mittens, once you knit it, you better not rip back. This is one of the few yarns I have worked with that seem to felt just by looking at them. It also became very fuzzy after washing.

The color range is amazing though. I really like the green, it has all kinds of light and dark speckles of green in it. Not a boring yarn to look at. And it's also soft and nice to touch.

There's some bleeding when you wash it.



The gauge:
I just measured and I get 20 stitches over 5 cm, which means I managed to press a lot more stitches into a cm than what the band said. This is a bit weird, but the mittens look ok to me. I expected them to be a bit wider though since I didn't swatch. They fit, but I read that mittens are supposed to have a bit of ease to give the best insulation against the cold. I think next time I would use bigger needles.

Fair isle and yarn dominance:
If you want to do fair isle you need to know what yarn dominance means. The first time I heard about it was on Nona's blog. I didn't have any intention of doing fair isle at that time, but kept this piece of information in the back of my mind. I learned that:

1. One color will dominate and pop out more than the other (take a look at her two swatches that she shows for comparison).
2. It is the yarn that is carried below the other that will pop out more.

If you didn't get point 2, neither did I... But I like that I'm so smart and remember things that I initially didn't need, because when I did want to do fair isle, I remembered this thing about yarn dominance. Since I didn't get it completely then (not so smart maybe? :D), I had to investigate this issue further.

Reading Tia Judy and Très Chic Veronique helped me understand what was going on a bit more.

Then I saw a commentator at meangirl's blog say that she was an English knitter (like me!) holding the contrast yarn in her left hand and the main color in the right hand. I thought that as I had no clue what to do I should follow her like a good lemming and do what she did. I also learned from the blog post that you are not supposed to change the hand that carries the colors at your whim.

3. One hand, one color. Don't change. (We're talking about two color knitting and I use both hands instead of one hand to carry the yarn.)

I also consulted my favorite knitting blog, TECHknitter, that never fails me when I'm in dire need of a thorough and detailed explanation of a knitting technique. She explained in one of her comments that in her opinion it didn't really matter that much if the yarn was carried from below or above unless you have can achieve an even tension with both hands (of course, we all can), but that a color would pop out more when the hand that carries the color is your unfamiliar knitting hand. The tension will be looser and the yarn will be more prominent to see.

4. Carry the contrast color (=foreground color, pattern color, the color that you want to pop out) in the hand that you usually don't use for knitting.

If I understood it right, when you're an English knitter, you're on the safe side twice, because when you carry the contrast color with your weaker hand, the left hand, the yarn will also automatically ride below the other color.

Meangirl also has a nice picture tutorial for weaving in the background color (=main color, the color that predominates and is used most often) yarn when you have to carry it over a longer stretch of stitches. When you want to to weave in the contrast color, you have to wrap the contrast color anticlockwise and then the background color and then unwrap the contrast color. The background color stitch will be mounted with the back leg first, but in the next row simply knit into the backloop.

Useful video from Knitpicks that shows how to carry yarn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2L4Fo82zwk

After knitting the first mitten went so smoothly I thought I didn't need to pay that much attention to the tension with the second mitten and that if problems did occur blocking would resolve them all. The somewhat crappy looking mitten on the left side (I stole the idea with the reversed colors from Très Chic Veronique. Second-sock-syndrome has a cousin - second-mitten-syndrome) is proof of my sloppiness. You might notice that the cuff seems to look shorter and smaller. That's because it is. :( I had to reknit the cuff of the right mitten a couple of time and at that time I still tugged and checked that I wasn't knitting too tightly, etc. The cuff of the left mitten I knit once.




The blocked mitten looks a bit bigger, but usually knitted items shrink a bit after blocking. They are both the same size now.


After blocking:


Well, blocking did resolve nearly everything, except for the very very very tight cuff and the very prominent green. It seems the tension on my left hand was a lot looser than when I knit the right mitten.

Cast-on:
For the cast-on I did a tubular cast-on. I followed Ysolda's instruction for a long-tail tubular cast-on, but I'm not sure if in the end I did the same thing as she did... She said that it differed from the Italian method where you can pull out the yarn, while here the strand that creates the stitches would alternate. Well, my impression was that there was only one strand that created the loops, in the front and in the back and I have been able to pull out the yarn. I also didn't start with a slip knot (I used the needle to pull at the yarn between my fingers and then started making the stitches).

Edit: I was researching how to do a better tubular cast-on for a different project and just found this post by TECHknitter. I thought I had been following Ysolda's instruction, but actually what I did resembles more what TECHknitter did.

Overall I like the mittens. Nice quick project and I learned a couple of new things.

Mittens and a wrinkled dress

I finished the "Summersplash" yarn and I'm quite happy with it. I just don't know what to knit with it? Another Morning Surf Scarf? I don't have one, but maybe I can find something else that goes well with the yarn, too.


Currently I'm working on two items - fair isle mittens and a winter dress.

This is the first fair isle project I'm doing (apart from playing around with swatches here or there) and I'm quite pleased with my tension. The back part with the spirals puckers a bit, but the palm side is quite nice.

The dress might have been finished already if I wasn't ripping back so much. It's not difficult to knit, but I continue to make modifications, which I don't like, but I think I now found a good solution.

When I took the picture I realized how wrinkled the dress looks. I guess, when I knit something I don't really care too much how it looks. I stuff my projects in plastic bags and that shows. But washing and blocking will take all your tears away, so why bother.

Finished Morning Surf Scarf and handspun yarn

Roving: 4.5 oz Domestic Spinning Wool
Colorway: Cyanotrichite
Dyer: TheFiberDenn.etsy.com


Pattern: Morning Surf Scarf by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer (scroll down to click on the link, since she had this introductory text I didn't want to link directly to the pattern instructions)
Yarn: Handspun, see above
Color: Cyanotrichite
Price: ?
Amount: about 4.5 oz (about 130 g)
Needles: 3.75 mm (Takumi bamboo needles, they're really nice to knit with. I think they didn't make this annoying scraping noise that the other bamboo needles make. I stopped using them and mostly used wood needles, but resorted to these, because I don't have many 3.75 mm needles and the others were already stuck in some other project.)
Gauge: I think my yarn was in the 13 - 15 WPI (wraps per inch) range. For this she recommends to cast on 66 stitches
Dimensions: Good size for a scarf
Modifications: None, I was a willing slave to the instructions. The pattern is easy, but it's still not fun to knit. I wasn't able to get the pattern in the beginning for whatever reason and ended up tinking and ripping back (20 cm once!) more than I ever had for most of my other knitting projects.

The pattern is great for highlighting short color repeats, because with the dropped stitches you create bigger color patches than you would with a couple of knit stitches and this yarn was a bit problematic. Since I don't have much experience with spinning, the colors in the yarn blended and mixed a lot, creating a somewhat muddy look. If I had chosen a pattern with a lot of stockinette stitch it would have looked even more muddy, but with dropped stitches it turned out not perfect, but also not too ugly. Actually, everybody who saw it assured me that it looked fine. Yay! :)





I think I need to clean my mirror... On the floor you can see the slippers made with Feltro that I mentioned here.

The scarf was a Christmas present for my mom and the light was usually not so good for taking pictures, so the pictures are not so great. The colors are also of the kind that are difficult to capture properly. And now I don't have the scarf anymore. I also made a pair of felted slippers for her and my aunt. And I finished another Paisley Shawl for my Grandma in a very nice green alpaca yarn from Drops (she will get it after Christmas though... :o).

Some laceweight yarn that I finished recently:

Singles


2-plyed laceweight

I'm pretty pleased with how the yarn turned out. Even when they colors got mixed up, the yarn still looked good (on the first full bobbin you can see the colors of the two plies still match, except for the yellow-red and green orange part on the lower part; the yarn on the second bobbin has mixed colors everywhere).

Roving: 4 oz kettle dyed BFL (Blue Faced Leicester)
Colorway: "Summersplash"
Dyer: marion.etsy.com

Finished: felted slippers

Pattern: Felted DROPS slippers
Yarn: Anchor Wash + Filz-it, 100 % pure wool, 50 m/ 50 g, instructions say that it felts at 40 °C (didn't work for me though)
Color: red
Price: about € 3.50 a ball
Amount: 4
Needles: 8 mm
Gauge:
Dimensions: shoe size 37
Modifications:
Comments: Comfy, but ugly...

The yarn doesn't felt well at 40 °C in the washing machine, although that's the temperature in the instructions. I washed these twice at 40 °C and then twice at 60 °C and I'm *not* happy that the stitches are still visible. I stopped washing them with hot water, because the shoes seemed to be shrinking while the surface didn't change much.

I asked a shop assistant about a different felting yarn (Feltro by Lana Grossa, cheaper and softer than the Anchor, it was less than 3 Euros a ball) that I wanted to use for making slippers and she said that you should wash it at 60 °C even though the instructions also tell you to wash it at 40 °C. I knit another pair of shoes (http://lanagrossa.de/produkte/feltro.html Pretty nice. The heel needs some improvement - I would start with a couple of stitches less than recommended and then increase the number of stitches in 3-4 rows, so you will get a round heel - but the rest is ok, more or less. Three balls are enough for shoes the size 37.) and these looked right after washing them once at 60 °C.

I hated the DROPS pattern instructions (What? Huh??) and they're not very pretty. There's a couple of things I would do differently. I would knit the front part in the round and then do a three needle bind-off. All the sewing is just useless work.

I'm not really thrilled about the Anchor yarn. It's the most expensive felting yarn I have seen so far and it doesn't felt well, not for me at least. The range of colors is also small, maybe 7 colors, compared with Feltro, also mostly basic colors, but plus multivaried combinations, or the DROPS own-brand Eskimo (40 colors (!): http://www.wollkultur-shop.de/epages/15486368.sf/de_DE/?ObjectPath=/Shops/15486368/Categories/drops/Eskimo, I haven't ordered from this website yet though. I think Eskimo is not available in LYS. Of course, brick and mortar shops often carry less colors than online shops, there might be more colors available for the other brands, but they are the only ones I find in the local shops here.). I think Eskimo is not especially made for felting, but according to pictures I have seen it seems to felt well.

Before washing:

That's the wrong side out.

After washing:

I think that's after 40 °C - 40 °C - 60 °C


And that's after 40 °C - 40 °C - 60 °C - 60 °C

Ok, great. I just looked at the Ravelry project pages for this yarn and it seems that it does felt well (there's a very cute Christmas tree here: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/kaita/felted-trees. Just not for me! Maybe it's my washing machine? I actually felted the other shoes with my Mom's washing machine.

Finished: Feather and Fan Shawl

Pattern: Feather and Fan Shawl by Eugen Beuger. Published in A Gathering of Lace
Yarn: Schachenmayr Nomotta Alpaka Fashion
Color: 122
Price: I was lucky that about half of the balls I used were on sale
Amount: 10? about 475 g. I used a tiny bit of the last ball to bind off and one of the balls was not completely 50 g, because I had used some of it for a previous project
Needles: 5 mm
Gauge: -
Dimensions: about 162 cm diameter sorry, after that girl n's comment I checked and it's actually 144 cm
Modifications: I stopped after row 126 and started doing the last edging rows
Comment: I've heard that people knitting the Hemlock Ring Blanket had problems with the feather and fan pattern puckering too much despite blocking (a not so easy task from what I have heard. I got told that someone compared it with fighting with an octopus). My guess was that there are not enough repeats in the round and this causes the puckering (the other variation is that the blanket grows too fast in diameter/length). With this blanket I had zero problems with blocking, just the usual fussing, but there was no excessive use of force needed to whip this thing into shape as other knitters seem to have with the Hemlock Ring, and I also haven't noticed any puckering yet. It's nice and flat without any visible tensions.

I'm counting 8 repeats of the feather and fan pattern in the round for the Hemlock Ring and this pattern has 24 repeats in the round. I haven't looked at the feather and fan pattern version of the Hemlock Ring myself, but from what my friends told me it seems to be knit in a similar as the feather and fan pattern in the shawl. My conclusion is that if I wanted to knit the Hemlock Ring I probably would work in modifications.

The reason I chose the Feather and Fan Shawl was the play of light and dark in the feather and fan pattern (which I'm actually only realizing now as the thought that floated my mind when I saw the shawl the first time was, "I want to knit that one!") and because I liked the flower in the center better. With the flower and the bright color the blanket looks very sunny.

Next time I would choose a thicker yarn though. It's still more like an übersize shawl than a blanket. The yarn is great though. I have a wrap cardigan that my mom made for me in the same yarn and it's really really soft. It's a delight to work with. I have three balls in red which I initially wanted to use for a shawl; now I want to use them for a beret. We'll see.

I washed the blanket in the washing machine (washing programm: wool, cold) with a regular wool wash, because it was too big to wash it in the sink. By the way, I wash most of my wool stuff in the washing machine (cold), even when it's not superwash wool. If I want to give an item a special treatment and when it's not too big I handwash it with Kookaburra, but that's it.

Finished: wedding stole

Pattern: Lead or Follow Lace Scarf by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer
Yarn: Rowan Kidsilk Haze, 210 m (229 yds)/25 g, recommended needle size 3.25 mm - 5 mm, gauge 18-25 stitches x 23-34 rows in 10 x 10 cm, 70% super kid mohair and 30% silk
Color: "Cream" #634 (it's an off-white, the other off-white Rowan offers is "Pearl", but it looks darker. The true white shade, "Bleached", what an awful name for a color, by the way, is discontinued.)
Price: about $13 per ball
Amount: 3 and a tiny bit of the forth to finish the last row before the binding-off row and the binding-off row
Needles: 5 mm
Gauge: -
Dimensions: about 192 x 68 cm
Modifications: I decided to go for a different border since I wanted it to look like a stole and less like a scarf. I kept the inner border though and added a similar row with holes on both ends. For the outer border used the one from the Lily-of-the-valley shawl from the book "Lace Style."

Width:
I did the 12 stitch repeat five times. I left out the 13 stitches part on the right side and the 13 stitches part on the left side. Total cast-on: 79 stitches (including the slip stitches on both sides, one for each).

Length:
12.5 repeats.

Inner border:
I wanted both ends of the stole to have a similar inner border as the ones on the side, which consisted of yarnovers and a garter stitch edge. I started with a provisional cast-on and knit three rows in garter stitch and then knit the row with holes.

Subtracting the slip stitches and the inner borders I had 69 stitches in the middle left. My plan was to [k2tog, yo] until the end. As I wanted to start and end with a yarnover though I had to knit the last three stitches together in order to maintain the same number of stitches.

When your stole is long enough, finish with a row with holes and three garter stitch rows.

Outer border:
For the border you need a multiple of 8 +2 stitches.

I increased 11 stitches on both ends = 90 stitches (it might not be necessary to pick that many for the border. Either that or I should have picked up more stitches on the side. The border on both sides is more stretched than the border on the two ends).

For both sides of the stole you're supposed to pick up three stitches from two slip stitches. I had to drop some of the picked up stitches (three on one side and five on the other? My inner perfectionist ran amok when it realized that things were not working out as expected.) in order to get a multiple of 8 + 2. I picked up 226 stitches on each side.

By the way, there are mistakes in the border (row 11 and 13). In the pictures you will see that the yarnovers are on both sides of the corner center stitch (count them), but the charts will tell you that the center stitch and the yarnovers in row 11 and 13 are separated by one knit stitch. Of course, I did notice that the pattern was kind of irregular, but instead of stopping and investigating further, I ignored the tiny nagging voice in my head that was preventing me from blissful mindless knitting. But it was ok, in the end I just had to figure out how to fix a mistake a couple of rows down in a lace pattern. Why have it easy when it can also be complicated and fun. :D It was fixable though without too much fussing around.

The border is really pointy. That's because I added extra stitches when binding off, meaning after binding the yarnover before a center stitch, I knit a stitch (basically you crochet a new stitch), bound off the center stitch, knit/crochet another stitch, bound off the yarn over. I think the border is a bit too pointy, but I really don't want to deal with this stole anymore. It has already woken up the perfectionist in me and that one exhausts me.

Difficulty: The pattern is doable and not really difficult. It is true lace and you also have to pay attention on the wrong side rows, but it's not too difficult. I recommend that you divide (highlight) the rows into groups of four, that makes it easier to read, but it also disentangles the pattern a bit.

Blocking was a pain in the ass. The stole is huge and I had no clue how and how much I wanted to block it. I spent an hour and half shifting the pins around till it looked right. The pattern seems to look better when you stretch it more lengthwise. The stole is very hole-y and the stitches are bigger than I would usually knit them, but I like the stained glass look here, it goes well with this pattern.

Overall I think it looks nice. I was a bit unsure before, but as a friend of mine said, just look on Ravelry for projects with Rowan Kidsilk Haze, everything knit with it will look nice. And I tend to agree with her.

Now, all I have to do is get this stole in time to my friend!







I went shopping today hence the green summer dress at a time when I have already turned on the heating... I'm not running like that anymore in case you were wondering. :D My intention was to buy winter skirts, but I came back with this summer dress (and a winter skirt). It doesn't look like a very clever idea, but it was on sale, and I know if I buy it now I will have enough dresses next summer. I don't really like this kind of anti-cycle shopping, but it's not such a bad idea for me actually. I don't care about shopping and I just hate having to shop when I need something now (like the winter skirts). I know, when next summer I open my wardrobe and find a new dress that has even already been paid, I'll be happy. :)







Since I have posted masses and masses of pictures it should be clear to you now why it's called "lead or follow lace," right?? :D


By the way, I got these a couple of days ago, too. You have to admit, they are really cute, aren't they? I wish they also had the tights in my size.

Finished: One-Skein Shawl

Pattern: One-Skein Shawl by Clara H. Parkes from Knitter's Review
Yarn: 1/15NM lace weight, 100% camelhair from Colourmart; I asked them to ply it for me, so I received a 2-ply yarn, but then I wanted a heavier yarn and used it doubled. So, what I used was a 4/15 NM yan (fingering weight?)
Color: Kid
Price: $16.00
Amount: I have yarn left, I think I used more than 100 g
Needles: 4.5 mm
Gauge: I made a mini-mini swatch to check if my needle size was right, but it's a shawl, so you don't have to swatch properly and measure how many stitches go into 10 cm. :p (you know who you are :p :p)
Dimensions: 150 cm wide and 75 cm from center to tip
Modifications:

I also modified the cast-on. Instead of casting on 5 stitches, I cast on 3 ((I'm convinced that it looks nicer that way, but don't have proof, because I didn't bother to cast on 5 and compare it with my 3-stitch cast-on. Just trust me. :D).



1. Row: Setup row: k to the end
2. Row: 1. row: k1, yo, k1, yo, k1 (=5 stitches)
3. Row: 2. row: k1, purl to last stitch, k1

Continue with the 1. row from the one-skein pattern (= your 3. row).

Every 9. and 11. row I added some holes:

k1 (edge stitch), yo, repeat [k2tog, yo], k1, yo, k1 (center stitch), yo, k1, repeat [yo, ssk], yo, k1 (edge stitch)

Edit: Sorry, I'm confusing. The first rows with holes are done in the 11. row and 13. row. After that it's every 9. and 11. row.

Picot edge: Using the cable cast-on, *cast on two stitches and bind them off. Bind off two more stitches (I purled them. I find the edge looks nicer that way and I was also hoping that I would get a less curly edge. In the end, I didn't have problems with the edge curling, but I also blocked a lot.).* Repeat from * to *








Yep, that's a spinning wheel that you're seeing in the left corner! :D It's a Minstrel from Kromski. I had a hard time deciding, because at first I like the antique look of this wheel, but then I thought I wanted something less frilly and with clear lines and shapes, like the Ashford Joy (I was also thinking of all the dust that would settle with time in the thousand corners of the Minstrel. While I don't like cleaning, I like things to be clean, if you know what I mean.). Having tried it before I did know that it was a good wheel and after reading Abby Franquemont's post about choosing the first wheel and her recommending it together with three, four other wheels I decided to go with that one (also the others were not really available here.). Sofar I'm really happy with it. :)




Same stuff as here, but spun with the wheel.




The blue yarn is Domestic (a bit scratchy. Or maybe overspun...? :o )