Grudgingly

I blocked.  But grudgingly.  

Mostly I knit and took out knots in the skein of yarn I was working with.  It all turned out well in the end, but note to self:  Next time you wind a ball of slippery stuff like this, Just do it by hand.  Way less headaches.

The knitting was grand though.

I have had years to sort this one out and I am pleased.  I managed to plan it and knit it without a pattern.  The fallback pattern was the Little Arrowhead Shawl by Pam Allen.  I am delighted to say that I will still knit Little Arrowhead, but out of some other yarn.

I knew that working with such a multi coloured yarn can be really difficult.  The pattern couldn't be anything busy.  The yarn takes care of that.  Knitting something with a lot of fancy stitches would  be lost in that garden of colour.  I chose a simple little bead pattern and for a second motif, knit a variation on it by repeating the middle rows several times.  

The search for the last stitch pattern took days.  From the minute I knit the first bead repeat, I was hitting the books.  I have a pretty good collection of edging motifs, but most of them are knit from the side.  I needed something that flowed from the rest of the stitches.  The one I choose is adapted and lengthened from Nancy Bush's Knitted Lace of Estonia.  

It will never win prizes for stunning design, but it pleases me.  The colours and stitches remind of my mother in law's favourite Sweet Peas.  Summery.  Fresh.  Simple.  Pretty.  And just a little old fashioned.  

It isn't blocked yet but I have an excuse.  My pins were busy.  

Blockapalooza

This is the time of year when I open the windows wide and awake to the sound of bird noise.  I wake with the birds.  That is my alarm clock these days.  I have a funny feeling that this is the way humanity was meant to rise, not to the sound of some mechanical or technological wonder bleating in your ear.  I will count this time as a blessing.

There is a thread on the Edmonton Knitters Board called Blockapalooza.  Our founding moderator started it because she had things from December that remained unblocked.  I feel mildly shamed by this.  Most of the things on my blocking pile are older than that.  My excuse is that blocking things takes a lot of room.  

Yeah that is it.  I don't have enough room.  You know that this is an outright fib, right? I usually block on a pool table.  Plenty of room.

It is much more that blocking just isn't something I enjoy a whole bunch and once there is one thing that needs blocking, a bunch pile up.  It is also a function of last falls finishing spree.  I liked the finishing, but just never got these big shawls pinned out.  Lets see if I can sort out the real reasons my blocking pile remains.  (Gee whiz, I hope it isn't the same reasons as why my dishes aren't done.  That would be a real tragedy.)

Shawl one - The Icelandic Lilia Hyrna shawl.  I love this shawl.  I am wearing it right now to fend off the early morning chill.  Shawls are so handy in these waking with the birds hours.  I love this shawl, but it is big.  Really big.  I knit it slightly larger to compensate for my error placing the colour change.  It looks lovely but it is big.  Everything I have ever read about Einband says 'grows a lot on blocking' so this is only going to get bigger.  I am chicken.  That is what comes to mind when I think of why this lovely shawl has not been blocked yet.  

The other large shawl waiting is the spectacular River Valley shawl.  It will remain a something special because the desinger doesn't want to release the pattern.  It is one of my first big lace projects and will forever be the greatest learning experience of my life.  I did not knit on it because it has a magnificent edge. I worried about knitting it.  I don't feel 100 % confident that I can block it as it deserves.   

Then there was a little experimental piece, on which I worked out the complex challenge that was knitting the border of the River Valley Shawl.  It is going to be a challenge to block because there is a lot of border somehow for how much shawl there is.  After the last time I fondled and refolded all the shawls on the blocking pile, I think I realize that this is unique to it but is not the case with the River Valley Shawl. This one could be the source of my worry about blocking the big one.

Mizzle Me was almost blocked three times, but I wanted to get the scale of the half round better.  It stretches more one way than the other and it just didn't look right when I did it freehand.  I just needed to get a good piece of string or a ruler or yardstick.  It just needed 10 minutes, a walk down the hall to get the ruler, and some water. Schmuck.  No excuse for still having this one undone.  Shame on me.

Clapotis.  OK, that isn't really on the blocking pile. That one needs the end re-knit.  I might do that today.  Maybe.

OK.  No real reason for not getting to these things other than fear and doubt.  I hate that.  I think it is time to get past that.  Today is blocking day.

I will probably finish up the last stitches on another shawl today too. Its is a pretty summery thing that I am calling Sweet Peas.  Its soft blend of pastel goodness reminds me of the wash of colours in the flowers of my mother in laws favourite flower.  It would be nice to wear something new with my desperately plain summer wardrobe. 

If I can block these things, then I can put away the blocking stuff, and move on to the quilting...which is also piling up round these parts and which I have to finish so my tuches is cozy when it is cold.  That has been waiting long enough too.

Get it done.  That is my motto today. But first I need coffee. Lots of coffee.

PS. In case you don't go back, Brenda commented ' i don't find it funny at all. I think of it as being bilingual. I do it all the time.'  

Brilliant Brenda! I am so going to use that.

Needle Choices

I have been listening to the Knitmore Girls podcasts lately.  Good Stuff.  I'm with Gigi.  You can't have too many sock needles sets and you can't have too many socks on the go.

I have a lot of needles.  Yet still, on occasion, I don't have the ones I need, or maybe that should be, the ones that I want.  Yesterday, I spent a lot of time searching for my 3.75 mm 16 inch circs.  I know I have them, but at this moment, they are not to hand.

I did use the short cable from my addi needles.  That makes a set of needles just the tiniest bit longer than a 16 inch circ. OK, the needle, once assembled is't much longer, but the tips are.  Just the smallest bit longer than the needles on a short circ.  Circ being circular needle of course.

That tiny bit of extra needle makes the addi lace short tip set my not preferred needles for knitting small diameters.  I love that short tip for everything else, but not for this. Short circles need short handed tips.  

I thought about using dpns, I would love to use dpns for this part, but all I have in that size are bamboo and birch.  This is not a yarn for wood needles.  I'm just about at my grabby limit from the yarn alone.  This yarn would probably become one with the needle in a very bad way.  Sigh.  

I'll use the 4 mm 16 inch circ instead.  And just so you know, the sleeves are well under way.

If you think it is strange that I speak milimetres and inches to refer the same thing...yes.  Me too.  Yet I can't for the life of me seem to change it.  Needles in length are inches.  Needles in diameter are milimetres.  It is what  my brain remembers.  

I don't know how much knitting I will get in today.  The weekends knit-a-paloozza did get a little hard on my hands, so a day of light knitting is probably good for them.  Still in my heart, I would rather be knitting. With whatever needles I can get my hands on.  

I'd rather misbehave

That is my usual modus operandi, isn't it?  And I like it.

So, I thought I was wanting to knit the lovley Bamboo Tape, but the yarns had other ideas.  Bamboo Tape stayed solidly on the shelf, while Domino kept falling off the shelf.  

I have been thinking about working with my boucle yarns.  They are not my usual thing at all.  They strike me as more a novelty, and yet I have some in my stash.  They are not winter boucles, but rather summery things.  Cotton, bamboo, a little acrylic.  Lighter weight more summery things.  Certainly not enough for a Canadian winter.

So, when the Domino kept falling off the shelf...Well, sometimes you go with what is in front of you.  Either that or I am a little afraid that I will ruin the Bamboo Tape if I have to rip it back again.  I already know there is no way, Domino could ever be ripped back.

That is sort of how it started.

No ends.  I pulled from the center and couldn't find the end, but I soon had a clump of yarn that pulled round and round through the centre of the ball.  Eventually, I found the outside end, but I still I hadn't resloved the round and round through the centre of the ball.  

I took a different ball, and started to knit.  I debated leaving the messy ball for the bitter end, but I needed to give my hands a rest.  It took an hour till I had it sorted.  Not even mohair has this kind of cling.

I have a feeling that this yarn struck most people as a 'not on your life yarn' but it really isn't.  It isn't harsh to work with like really cheap wool is or like your basic Walmart acrylic is.  And it is miles and miles above your basic Phentex slipper stuff.  What it isn't is soft.  Not at all soft.  

The resultant fabric is fine though.  While the yarn itself has a little bit of a harsh feel, scratchy almost, but knit up, its textural but squooshy and I do like squooshy as a yarn quality.

 I've managed to get down to just below the armscye.  I'm finishing this ball, and then will knit the sleeves.  Once that is done, I'll keep knitting till I hate it some much that I want to shoot it into a corner, and will knit one last ball so that it isn't too short.  Unless I run out of yarn, somewhere in that process.

I kind of like the way the colours are working out.

No pattern, but I am aiming for a cross over top, which will be paired with a crisp white something or other.  Inside my head, it looks nice.  Let's see if I can bring that picture to reality outside my head.