Snowtop Mountain Shawl -- My Ashton Shawlette is all but finished!

My Ashton Shawlette is stretched out on my spare bed drying! I am so excited about the results of my first lace project and I am already itching to get started on the next one.

I wet blocked this project. After I finished binding off, I carefully washed the shawl in lukewarm water and shampoo. I know that there are other soaps or cleaners that are good for wool, but shampoo is what I had on hand. I carefully rinsed it and laid it out on a towel, rolled it up and squeezed the water out.

I followed a suggestion I saw on Knitting Paradise and used cotton twine to stretch the top edge of the triangular shawl. I carefully wove the twine in and out of the yarn overs. I then stretched the tip at the point of the triangle and finally pulled out each of the points on the bat wing.

The worse thing will be waiting for it to dry.

Happy knitting!!

Convertible Mitten Update -- Thumbs Down

The convertible mitten project is languishing in a bag as other obligations (work) and passions (MHFV) have taken priority over knitting this week. Thankfully, I do have a long train commute out of the city everyday and was able to get a little bit of work done on the mitten thumb. It was, however, all for naught as I soon found out I made a huge miscalculation on the number of stitches that I needed to leave live for the thumb. By the time I had knitted half way up the thumb, I realized that you could have put 3 thumbs in the opening. Of course it looked ridiculous. So much for "winging it."

It is errors in judgement like this that make me appreciate website forums like Knitting Paradise. I was able to quickly get a suggestion from another knitter on how to correct this problem. I am getting lots of practice picking up stitches with dpns. I picked up a row of knitting as close to the original live stitches as possible and frogged down to that point. I then tinked back to the original live stitches.

My next step was to use the kitchener stitch to close up some of the stitches in the palm.  I have never used the kitchener stitch on any project, so I hit YouTube and watched a video by theknitwitch. The video was easy to follow and the repair job turned out better than I expected. I had a rather difficult time because the stitches were a bit stretched and they didn't smooth out really well. The lesson learned here is to use a waste yarn that is not bigger than the yarn in the project. I will obviously have to do the same thing to the second mitten as it has the exact same problem. At least I was not knitting the mitten thumbs two-at-a-time!

Happy Knitting!

I've been Bamboozled!

Bamboozle in Blueberry/Grape
55% Bamboo, 24% Cotton, 21% Elastic Nylon

It's here!

After a (what seemed like) a long wait, I have finally gotten the Bamboozle that I ordered for my summer sweater. Isn't it beautiful?

This yarn by Crystal Palace Yarns has a tight twist and feels quite dense. It does have stretch provided by the elastic nylon. I have heard that clothing made from bamboo yarn can sag and "grow" longer, but Crystal Palace's website says that the elastic nylon assists in  keeping the garment's shape. In my earlier post I put a link to the pattern that I am going to use which was also created by Crystal Palace Yarns.

I posted a question on Knitting Paradise forum requesting feedback on what people thought about bamboo yarns and if they had any tips on using it. Got a lot of good tips on using bamboo yarn (which is always the case on that forum) and some great feedback on Crystal Palace Yarns, too. Interesting note, on that thread, I "ran into" the knitter that knitted the pictured example in the pattern. Fun!