Matching Ginkgo Hat

Making a matching lace hat to the Ginkgo Shoulderette Shawl for my darling daughter has been a great learning experience and I am having fun doing it! The lace is coming a long very quickly as I only have to knit instead of purl. I am actually just as fast at purling as I am knitting, but you don't have to think/count as much when you are going one direction. It is also faster because you only have to do the knit increase. I picked the left side of the chart only because that is the side of the chart which has the stitch legend on it. But I don't think I will need it because I am not switching back and forth between 4 different increases.

Happy Knitting!

Knitting with Lace Weight Yarn and Having the Right Needles

I began knitting another lace shawl. This is the lovely Haruni by Emily Ross. This is one of the first lace patterns that I fell in love with, but have put it off as I thought it was too hard. I even posted about the yarn I bought to do this project over 6 months ago. However, things change and I am doing this project with a completely different yarn than planned. I decided to use the Cascade Alpaca Lace in Garnet that I bought on a lark a couple of months later.

This yarn is 100% baby alpaca and is the finest yarn that I have ever tried to knit. This was the crux of my problem. Through knitting about 32 rows, I was repeatedly tinking back to redo stitches that I picked up under the row beneath that which I was knitting. This error basically un-knits the stitch and creates a slip stitch of the row beneath and a long loose yarn over in the same place. Of course, if not caught, the pattern is  ruined. I was also struggling with trying to SSK (slip slip knit) -- my Addi Turbos just did not have enough of a point.

I had "graduated" myself to Addi Turbos over a year ago when I got a great recommendation from my knitting sister who convinced me to try them. I have been a rabid convert ever since. Today, I am trying the Addi Turbo Lace. So far this has turned out to be a good decision. I have knitted only a couple of additional rows and it has made a huge difference. SSK's are much easier and I am not slipping under the stitch.

In the picture on the left, I think you can see that the points on the Addi Turbo Lace (the gold needle) has a longer and sharper point than the regular Addi Turbos have. In addition, the Addi Turbo Lace needles seem to be slightly less slick than the regular Turbos. This might be a benefit as the only drawback to the Addi Turbos have been that they are almost too slick for lace. It is true that the right tool for the job makes all the difference.

As long as I am talking about the baby alpaca yarn being the finest that I have ever knit, I thought I would give you a visual on different yarn weights.  Here is a graduation of different yarn weight of yarn that I have in my stash. On the left is the lace weight yarn in question, Cascade Alpaca Lace. It is followed by a fingering weight yarn, sock weight, sport weight, DK (double knit) weight, worsted weight and bulky weight. Of course all of these yarns are different manufacturers and fibers, but I think that you can see the differences between most. Prior to the Cascade Alpaca Lace, the finest lace I had used was the fingering weight yarn which I used for my Alexandra Gold.

Well, I have some knitting to get through, so I will sign off. Happy Knitting!

A (Finally) Finished Product

Finished size is 74 X 47.
Knit Picks Shadow Golden Glow Tonal -- 91 grams used -- approximately 800 yards
US 5 Needle
US 9 Needle for cast off

Buying yarn is one of my favorite things.

Two trips to the yarn store netted me some yummy yarn.

Two weekends ago, I bought three skeins of Silky Alpaca Lace by Classic Elite Yarn in Pixie Pink. I have already picked out the pattern to knit with it. As I posted a couple of weeks ago, I bought the book Wendy Knits Lace, by Wendy D. Johnson and I have decided to knit the True Love Stole. I can't wait to get started. This yarn is really soft and smooth with a 30% silk / 70% alpaca blend.

Lucky for me, when I bought the Silky Alpaca Lace, I crossed the points threshold necessary at my LYS, Wool and Company, to get a gift certificate worth $15.00! Of course, almost immediately, this small piece of paper began burning a whole in my wallet. So when my knitting sister came for the weekend (see previous post), we HAD to run by the LYS to spend it.

Look what I got!!! YUM! Cascade Yarns Alpaca Lace in colorway Garnet. It is 100% baby alpaca. I got two hanks with 437 yards each, so that should be plenty for an average shawl or stole. I haven't got a project picked out for this yarn yet, so it will go in my stash for future use.

Knitting Sister bought some yarn, too. It isn't what I would have picked out, but I took pictures so you could see how bright it is. She plans to use it to make a long shawl made with a wrap stitch pattern. The yarn is called Peace Fleece and is a worsted weight 70% Merino / 30% Mohair blend from Casa de Karma Yarns.

Buttons for her almost finished sweater was the last purchase of the day.

Happy Knitting (and yarn shopping!)

Update on Alexandra Gold -- and a Humble Stitch

I have just started the 19th row of the 5th chart of Dee O'Keefe's Alexandra. Now that I have hit this mark, the  number of stitches in each row is well over 300 -- and growing with every row. Some of the rows seem to go much faster than others. I don't know if it is the specific pattern of stitches or my frame of mind that makes some rows so much more difficult than others. But the process is definitely educational as I have learned a lot about how to fix errors as many as eight rows below.

Now I know you must ask "Ledra, how do you get eight rows before discovering an error?"

"Well, I have to tell you that some errors are easier to find than others."

Specifically, errors which are not missing stitches, but misplaced stitches. Take the above picture. Until I mentioned error, did you see the one in this picture? It is there, I noticed it after I took this picture and I am not going down after it at this point. I will just consider it my "humble stitch" and move on.

What is a humble stitch, it is a stitch that keeps you humble. In quilting there is a myth that Amish women purposely made a mistake in one of the blocks of every quilt that they do because only God is perfect. I know quite well that I am far from perfect as I have never had to intentionally make a humble stitch or a humble block -- they are naturally in every knit piece and quilt that I make.

Happy knitting!

2 Corinthians 12:9

Progress for Alexandra Gold

I have made some progress since the last time I posted about my Alexandra Gold shawl. I am currently on the second repeat of Chart 3 -- row 7. I really like this pattern. Like Dee O'Keefe's Ashton, the Alexandra is really fun to do and much easier than Summer Nightsong or Fall Colored Ginkgo. I highly recommend this as a first lace shawl. That is not to say that I have not had to "tink" any rows. I have -- several. But it is more due to trying to knit the lace while too tired or too distracted.




The color on the above photo is washed out. The actual yarn is much richer in color, but I have the old style iPhone camera without the flash. The yarn that I am using, Knit Picks Shadow, is a nice yarn, but it has its problems. It tends to be really sticky. Even tinking only a couple of rows back, I found that the fibers had already started to bond to each other which makes me think that this might be a good yarn for felting, but not for a heavily used item that you don't want to felt. I have read a few on line reviews of this yarn by knitters who sat that this yarn pills, but I have not had the same experience. I did buy 1000 yards of the lavender tonal at the same time to do another shawl, so I will have plenty of work with it to be able to form a solid opinion myself!




Happy Knitting!!

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!!

Ashton Shawlette continues to grow

It has how grown big enough that I can't stretch it out too much or it will extend past my 47 inch circular. I have finished chart 3 and am about to start chart 4. That means there is only 19 more rows to go before I cast off! Yea!

I have been thinking about how I will block it. I really don't have the money to spend on blocking wires right now. I saw one of Dee O'Keefe's posts where she suggests using cotton yarn in place of a blocking wire for the top of the shawl only.  You would have to stretch it really tight and use pins to keep it in a straight line. Of course you would pin out each point on the two wings.

I am trying to pick which of the other yarns that I bought will be the next shawlette.

Happy Knitting!

Snowtop Mountain Shawl - The Ashton Shawlette

As a member of the message board, Knitting Paradise, I have been the recipient of a very wonderful gift from Dee O'Keefe, lace designer extraordinaire. She has been walking several of us through the process of learning how to knit lace with her Ashton Shawlette pattern. It is almost like being in a knitting class. I search the site for "Ashton" and I come up with several postings with other people's works in process, their questions on the pattern and Dee's tireless assistance and instructions.

Last week, I posted my experience of searching for just the right yarn. While I bought a handful of yarns that could work, my pick for the very first Ashton was the Kauni Effaktgarn wool from Denmark. The color is soothing and the picture does not do justice to the gradual change from dark to light. The colors seem to be all natural colored unbleached wool with the color change coming from slowly spinning in more and more light wool.

The yarn is not too soft, nor is it exceptionally clean as it still has occasional bits of hay and other fiber still stuck in the wool. It has a fuzzy aura to it and I think that it would felt very easily. The 2 ply yarn is not tightly twisted and does split occasionally, but not so much as to make it annoying to knit. I think that this yarn will block out nicely.

I am enjoying this project very much!

Happy Knitting!

Knitting updates and lessons learned

First the lace project.  As you can see I have made a little progress.

This now represents about 100 rows of knitting. However, most of them were frogged. Thankfully, I started using life lines or there would be even fewer remaining representatives.  

LESSON LEARNED: This lace has one row of pattern (the even numbered rows) , then one row of all purl stitches (odd numbered rows). I was putting the life line in every 4th row: 4, 8, 12, and 16 but with all of the  jigs and jogs created by the various stitches, when I had to follow a life line back, I had a real problem getting all of the stitches back on my needle. So then I had the idea of putting the life line through the purl stitches. This works much better! Now I put the life lines through rows 1, 5, 9, and 13.

My bamboo sweater is about half done -- the easy half! The back is complete. It only took about 3 hours to knit on my Bond USM. 

The Bamboozle yarn is soft and smooth and I imagine that it will be very comfortable to wear. But it had some issues with knitting on the machine. I had a hard time getting an e-wrap closed hem on it because as I wrapped the yarn around the needles, it took the twist out of it and the 8 ply yarn split up. I modified my method and used waste yarn at the bottom of the sweater. When I was done with the entire sweater back, I rehung the bottom of the sweater and back stitched an edge before removing the weighted hem and waste yarn. I think that it turned out pretty good for an "on-the-fly" change.

Since I am estimating that the cable may add as much as 2 extra hours of time to the front of the sweater, I am going to wait until next weekend to knit the front. I know that I won't have time to do the front of the sweater in one sitting and I don't want to leave it (pardon the pun) "hanging" for a week. I know that I could leave it by taking the weight off of it, but since my Bond is on the dining room table, I would be afraid that it would get bumped or knocked and will fall off of the needles.

Knitting Lace -- or starting another project before finishing any of the others.

I know that I shouldn't have done it -- but I did. I started another project before finishing any of the others. This seems to be a trend. Let's not talk about the 12 partial quilts in the basement, or the needlepoint picture, or the crocheted afghans (two that I can remember), or the still unfinished baby overalls with the cute little ladybugs on them, or the tatted lace, or the . . .like I said we won't talk about it!

Today we are going to discuss my new project. This is as far as I have gotten in a week. I have done several more rows than this; however, you don't see them because they were frogged* -- repeatedly. First I knitted 12 rows only to find I did something wrong and had to rip it out. Then I started again, knit 15 rows and looked at the pattern again and realized I was right the first time. After a 2 day break, I started again, this time adding life lines every 4 rows. It is hard to see the life lines in this photo as they are white yarn. Adding the life lines have helped as I am ripping out fewer lines when I make a mistake. I think that I have knitted close to 50 rows altogether, but you only see 20 rows here.

I read somewhere once that lace didn't look very good until you blocked it. That is an understatement. I can't tell what this lace will look like -- and right now it looks like a "dog's breakfast"**.

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As for some of my other UFO projects:

Actually, I DID finish the scarf that I had started some hundred years ago. And I have enough yarn left over to do a hat with the same yarn to "match" it. I found a pattern for a lacy slouch beret -- I just need to get size 7 dpns.

The old afghan I found in a drawer has been stagnating in my knitting bag. I am beginning to think that I have two choices: frog it and use the yarn for something else or try to run a life line past where I lost the pattern and begin again.

I have a partially done baby sweater which I am knitting on my USM knitting machine. I have done one of the sides and the back, but it too has been languishing waiting for piece number three to be completed.

I have done some work on the mittens, errr, mitten, singular as I have not gotten past the first few rows of the pattern. I think that this evening, after dinner is done, it will be me, the mittens, a baseball game and a glass of wine. 

It is very slow going and I keep finding more patterns to save and dream about doing. Not to mention all the time I spend writing this blog.

Happy knitting!

*Frogging is to rip out the previously knitted work. As in Rip it, Rip it.
**Dog's breakfast is British slang for a complete mess.