an ent knits

fiber & knitting from colorado

Because I hadn't flown in over three years, I was a little paranoid about airport security, specifically their potential response to pointy metal 3s.  So I spent a while trying to come up with a reasonably interesting, highly portable project that could be worked on bamboo.  After longer than I'd've liked, I remembered that I had one on my to-knit list: a green version of the lace headband I knit last winter.

It's some green koigu I've had for a couple of years, knit into an arrowhead lace pattern.  It's wider than the red one, 'cause the red one stretched more lengthwise than I'd anticipated, but I'm a little worried that the knot is going to be huge.  Maybe I'll come up with an alternate closure... 

There wasn't, after all, any trouble with my knitting needles at the airport (in either direction), but I wound up knitting on this anyway.

The afternoon I arrived in Boulder, Anne had a meeting at her local yarn store.  I decided to tag along to the yarn store, where I spent a lovely hour admiring the spinning fiber and all of the other things that my local stores don't carry.  (So much space!  So many colors of octopus buttons!  Wheels!  Looms and weaving equipment whose names I don't know!*)  All things considered, then, I probably got off lightly:

Okay, the spindle was already mine, but the silk latte on it is new.  It was just irresistable.  And I'm not quite as protective of it as I am of the other fiber there, which is cashmere-tussah.  Both cakes of yarn are Zephyr; the red will become Mim's Mountain Peaks shawl, and the grey/blue will probably end up as one of the scarves from Victorian Lace Today.

*I'm not learning to weave until after I graduate.  I don't want to start learning terminology until I'll allow myself to do something with it.

knitting update

I've finished the garter-stitch scarf I started for the Rosebuds show a couple of months ago.

It's all handspun, mostly small bits that looked like they'd sort of go with the color scheme.  What with Dulaan no longer needing handknits, and my grandmother having mostly moved in with my parents (where it's colder), this scarf is now for said grandmother.  I hope she likes it.

I've started chart 4 of the peacock feather shawl.  I still love it.

And the wool-mohair sock is growing. 

I like green.   

progress!

I haven't finished anything (maybe I should've focussed on that dratted sock....), but I spent a decent amount of time this weekend on fiberly pursuits.  Here are updated pictures of the knitting.  (Sunny pictures, even!  I'm trying to find a positive side to the icky weather we're getting this week.)

I am halfway through chart 3 of the Peacock Feathers Shawl.  It's still lots of fun, but it took me nearly two hours to knit three rows last night. 

This is the mossy-looking cabled scarf that I started in September or October as a mindless-knitting replacement for the autumn sunset shawl.  It's been hiding in the corner for the last few months, but it grew a bit more yesterday.  I'm liking the 'cable whenever I feel like it' pattern; it's really good for knitting with unpredictable interruptions.

still here, still knitting

I've been doing a lot of things that preclude knitting (or at least enough and interesting knitting) lately, including eating homemade sorbet and ice cream, helping friends move, dancing, and singing.  What knitting I have done recently has mostly been on my peacock feather shawl, but it's slow going, especially since I've been knitting while socializing, and unblocked lace is not the most photogenic of knitting. 

Still, since I hate blogging without pictures, here is a picture of the shawl.  (It's not a great picture; I was going to try to take a picture this morning, but it was still overcast.)

I think a lot of why it's going slowly is that it's real laceweight, and it doesn't exactly help that the needles (knitpicks 3s) are almost too sharp.  It's fun, though, and one of the other reasons it's going slowly is that I keep stopping to admire it...  Anyway, this is the first two charts plus a row or two of chart 3, and I still really love both the pattern and the yarn.  In fact, I think I'm going to stop typing now so I can knit a bit before bed.

diamond fantasy shawl

They're not the most amazing pictures ever, and I still need to weave in the ends, but it's done and blocked!  (I would say the middle picture is the most color-accurate.)

This was my triumph of Saturday afternoon.  I had decided that it didn't need to be bigger, as the unblocked DFS was about the same size as my Flower Basket Shawl, so I finished the last (7th) repeat and the points at craft night on Thursday and did the I-cord bind-off on Saturday.  Much as I detest I-cord, I actually didn't mind this.  I think some of that was the glee of finishing this shawl, and some of it was the inclusion of k2togs instead of just knitting.  Oh, and probably also the fact that I could see how much I had left, and it was finite and manageable.

Now I can knit on the Peacock Feather Shawl without even a twinge of guilt.  (Okay, I take that back.  There's a small twinge from the still-frozen Mountain Peaks Shawl.  Maybe I'll take out the needle and nuke it (and then start it over) sometime before Maryland.  It should be easier now that I've knit other things with patterning on both sides, though.)

edited to add:

Pattern: Sivia Harding's Diamond Fantasy Shawl.  The pattern calls for 6 repeats of the chart for the "scarf" and 10 for the "shawl"; I knit 7.

Needle: Addi Natura sz 7 bamboo circ, I think 29".

Yarn: My handspun.  From Amy Boogie's BFL in Redwood, about 5 ounces.  See this post for my worries about differing grist.  (I alternated skeins for probably ten or fifteen rows (by pairs) and then just knit on with the new skein.  It's not perfect, but I'm happy with the results.  It's amazing what a good blocking will do...)

Begun June 28th, 2006, and finished March 3rd, 2007.

what I've been up to

Despite, or possibly because of, the insanity that is labwork right now, I've been doing a good bit of spinning this week as a way to relax when I get home.  (Especially when I get home at 10 and then need to scrounge some sort of dinner.)   

Here's some of what I've finished:

 

That's ten yards of laceweight from my kool-aid-dyed wool blend and forty yards of three-ply, one ply each of merino in Over the Moon, merino in Peony, and BFL in Red Maple, all from Amy Boogie.  I have lots of plans for playing with three-ply and color combinations....plans are good.  I like having plans whether or not they actually come to fruition.

Speaking of plans that go somewhere, though:

 

This is a closeup (no, really?) of my Peacock Feathers Shawl.  I'm about halfway through the first chart, and I love it.  (I'm also wondering whether the fact that I'm knitting a big shawl on 3s is a sign that my sanity has well and truly fled the scene, but that doesn't seem so pressing in the face of beautiful green knitting.)

project pictures

That last post was long enough that I figured I'd give the pictures their own post.

The lace headband.  It's not blocked yet (and it's shown folded over, so I could get it in the frame), but it took just over a week to knit--I knit the first repeat before going to bed on the 23rd, and finished knitting and wove in the ends on New Year's Eve.  I used Louet Gems Pearl in Cherry Red, a size-6 bamboo circ, and a zig-zag pattern from Beautiful Knitting Patterns.

The alien wool is all spun!  This last batch is a single ply that (miraculously) isn't badly overspun at all.  Clearly, I have improved in the last ten months of spinning (i.e., since I started using a wheel), which is reassuring.  It's still more thick-and-thin than I'd like, but this is clear progress toward my goal of being able to spin yarn like Malabrigo.  (My two gold-standard commercial yarns are Malabrigo and Koigu.  I want to be able to spin like that, plus a good, even 2-ply laceweight.)

This is about ten yards of tweedy, mottled 2-ply, around sport-weight.  It's two of the three rolags I posted about here (not the greenish one, which I haven't spun yet).  I'm so much happier with this than I would've been with the base roving.  I bought the Colonial Top in Shale when I bought my first spindle, at MDSW05, as an alternative to the orange-multi wool/mohair that I couldn't resist, but I didn't much like the color after I brought it home.  I may still wind up trying to dye it with red kool-aid, but blending is a really nice alternative.

holiday knitting

This is the good kind of holiday knitting--the kind that's done over the holiday rather than in frantic preparation for the holiday.  I had decided a couple of weeks ago that I wanted a lightweight scarf-like thing with which I could tie my hair back, and thought a bright red would be the way to go.  So here's a portion of my accomplishments of the last week--I've got about a foot of unblocked scarflet so far.

good fall things

One of the best things about fall is getting to eat lunch outside and enjoy the warmth of the sun (which I can't do so well in the summer except when my lab is particularly cold). And that's even better when eating outside and knitting with friends. These pics are from yesterday; the first one includes bits of Ella.

note that these pics will get much larger if you click on them, 'cause I didn't edit them at all

I love the way my shawl looks in the sunshine! Gotta go now, though, my labmates are getting impatient.

autumn sunset shawl

It's blocked! I finished it on Sunday night, and had to block it immediately. So I wound up just putting my blocking boards on the living room floor in hopes that Mel wouldn't destroy anything. As it turned out, I didn't see him sleeping on it at all, probably because there are so many more comfortable places to sleep right nearby.

I'm thinking I'll reblock it sometime soon to try to get rid of the side scallops, but I really like the overall drape and look of the shawl now that it's not all puffy from the garter stitch bits. I like the colors better now, too.

Specs: one skein of miscellaneous fingering wool (about 700yds) from MDSW 2005, first photographed September 25, 2005, knit on size 7 inox grey circular. Stitch pattern taken from the North Sea Shawl from Folk Shawls.