The Yarn:

The Swatch:

and I’ve now cast on for the shawl itself and completed 1.5 of the 40 pattern repeats. I’ll need to take some pictures of the progress so far on the shawl since I made a few mistakes on the swatch and it doesn’t look nearly as good as the shawl.

Edited to add:
The Shawl:

(For the non-knitters, the dark yarn knitted on the bottom is a place-holder for the lace border that will eventually go there; my tastes are far too traditional to wear a shawl with a black border on my wedding day, unless I am genuinely in mourning!)

The yarn is fantastic to work with. It was a little ‘grabby’ when I tried to wind it so I ended up undoing a section of the skein (probably about a meter at a time) and then winding that section and then undoing the next section and winding that and so on. Amazingly this got me a better tension when winding than trying to wind continuously.

The only thing that is worrying me now is that I still have no idea how the border gets knitted on to the shawl afterwards. I keep looking at the instructions in the book and they make no sense whatsoever (why can’t lace knitting use the same terminology as ordinary knitting?). I’m also thinking that my plan of waiting until I’ve knitted the rest of the centre of the shawl and then trying to figure it out might not be the best policy. I guess I’m going to have to find some spare time and sit down with some scrap yarn and experiment.

I am loving working with the Knitpicks Options needles on this project. They’re nice and slippery, which is vital, because the yarn really isn’t. They’re also sharp enough that knitting through the backs of stitches or knitting lots of stitches together is very easy to do.

All in all, an excellent start!

as Meatloaf used to sing but three out of three is definitely better!

I got my first set of actuarial exam results tonight and passed all three of the exams that I sat so I’m currently a very happy and excited Susan.

To top everything off the yarn arrived for my shawl and it is just as beautiful as I hoped it would be. It’s a gorgeous slinky 100% silk so feels fantastic without having a ‘halo’ or as much chance of me shedding over all the guests at the wedding as mohair or cashmere would. I can promise lots of pictures to follow!

… about yarn in my entire life! I finally ordered yarn for my wedding shawl at the start of this week and I cannot wait till it gets here. I had real difficulty finding a luxurious laceweight yarn in a suitable colour that was actually in stock somewhere in the UK but eventually stumbled across Knitwitches and fell in love with their undyed 100% silk laceweight. Two skeins will shortly be on their way across country to be turned into the Myrtle Leaf Shawl from the “Victorian Lace Today” book.

Fortunately, the baby knitting is progressing apace and I may even have it very nearly finished before the yarn for the shawl gets here.

That’s the back and the first front in the picture. The second front is nearly done now too, which just leaves the sleeves and a knitted edging (which will match the edging at the bottom of the pieces in the picture and stop the front rolling the way it is in this picture).

It is really nice to get the (almost) instant gratification that knitting baby things brings. It is an entire knitted garment but can still be produced in a matter of hours. I doubt that the shawl will be finished quite so quickly!

I was thinking over the weekend about the implications of changing my name when Steven and I get married later in the year. Over time I have gone backwards and forwards about whether I would take my husband’s name when I got married or not. By the time we finally got around to getting married, I had pretty much decided that while I am happy to go against societal conventions, I do get fed up explaining why I am doing so to people. Hence, mainly out of laziness, I decided that I would change my name. It saves any confusion when we have children and means that I won’t have to get into complicated discussions about why I’m not Mrs. Hanlon.

One of the considerations was the fact that I don’t yet have a professional reputation to worry about. If I was more established in my career, I might have considered keeping my name professionally but at this point, it is unlikely that I will confuse anyone by changing it.

What occurred to me over the weekend though was that I have established a reputation under my maiden name, it is just an online one rather than a professional one. I am registered just about everywhere under my full maiden name: Distributed Proofreaders, Ravelry, Flickr, Facebook, Yahoo, Googlemail. Even the texts that I have submitted to Project Gutenberg are credited to my maiden name. Hundreds of people know me under a variety of usernames, all based on my maiden name. Some of these sites will let me change my userid, so I could change my name but some won’t. I also know that if I only “know” someone online, I struggle if they change their username because I have difficulty transferring the associations to the new name.

Given all this, it looks like I am going to be keeping my maiden name after all, even if only virtually!

Months ago, someone at Distributed Proofreaders pointed out the Antique Pattern Library website and suggested that they could be a good source of scans of public domain needlework and craft books for us to work on.

Fast forward to this week and it has finally happened! Volunteers from the Antique Pattern Library have agreed that we can process their scans to produce versions suitable for submission to Project Gutenberg.

I’m really excited about this! They have a great selection of 19th and early 20th century knitting, crochet, tatting, embroidery and other needlework books up there. That is a huge treasury of patterns and methods and inspiration and I love that we can help make it more widely available.

The projects are still in initial preparation at the moment but will hopefully be available for proofreading soon.

How does someone manage to stub their middle toe so badly it turns a ghastly purpley-black colour without injuring the surrounding toes in any way at all?

I managed to do this while walking downstairs this morning but have no idea how!

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How can I manage to go into a yarn store intending to buy a pattern book, yarn for baby presents, yarn and needles for a wedding shawl, and a bottle of cider and come out having spent only £5.50?

This one I do know the answer to: £2.50 on “Natural Knits for Babies and Mums” by Louisa Harding (I Knit special offer) and £3.00 on a bottle of cider. I Knit just did not have anything I fancied yarn-wise. I occasionally feel guilty for not buying more of my knitting supplies there, since I spend most Thursday nights in the shop knitting and chatting (and drinking organic cider) but they just don’t tend to stock yarn that I like using. The cider is fantastic, though!

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How do I manage to not spend lots of money in a yarn shop that I intended to spend money in and yet manage to spend lots of money on knitting-related paraphernalia over the internet, whilst at work?

I actually think this is a reaction to the above question. I got really excited last night about the idea of buying yarn and needles to get started on the wedding and baby knitting, so when nothing came of it, I just had to have another go this morning. So, I bought the Honeybee stole pattern, some longer cables for my KnitPicks Options needles and some Rowan Cashsoft DK yarn for a baby jumper from the Louisa Harding book. I can’t find anywhere that has laceweight yarn that I like in a colour that will go with my wedding dress in stock at the moment so I also emailed a couple of places to find out when they are likely to get something in.

Meanwhile, I get to decide whether I’d rather do the Honeybee or the Myrtle Leaf Shawl from “Victorian Lace Today”. I’m currently leaning towards the Honeybee but love the idea of making something based on an original vintage pattern (the premise behind the Victorian lace book). Now that I actually own both patterns, I’ll sit down over the weekend to compare them and hopefully make a decision.

… is something I’ve never been particularly good at. But, I’ve finished one thing so that means I’m allowed to start another, right?

The finished thing is Gran’s Lace Ribbon Scarf, which is drying on the floor behind me as I type. I’m not sure it’s going to be dry enough to package up to be posted tomorrow but at least it’s knitted on time! I’ll take a better picture once it’s dry.

The new thing is the Shetland Shorty from the latest issue of Knitty. I bought some Sirdar Just Bamboo yarn on clearance at Hobbycraft last week and have been hunting around for something to make with it.

Although there are only 9 balls in the picture, I’ve actually got 12, four of each colour. The others were off being swatched when the photo was taken.

It’s far heavier than yarn suggested for the pattern so there’s going to be quite a lot of tweaking involved and I’m already thinking that I might lengthen the cardigan to suit me better but that’s all part of the fun!

to quote the Billy Joel song. There aren’t many things that I’ll get out of bed at 7am on a Saturday morning for, there are even fewer that I’ll get up that early and then drive 200 miles for. A town of books will do it every time though.

Yesterday I met up with some fellow Distributed Proofreaders in the town of Hay-on-Wye, which bills itself as the world’s first Book Town. With around 40 bookshops (and not a Borders or Waterstones for miles!) it certainly deserves the title. The town itself is very pretty and the surrounding scenery, provided by the Black Mountains, absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, my camera spent the entire day in my bag so I have not got any pictures to share.

After a quick coffee to gather our strength, Ian, Brendon, Steve and I hit the shops. It turned out that 4 bookshops was all that we had the energy for but since each of those was at least 3 or 4 times larger than a standard second-hand bookshop, I don’t think we did too badly.

Having experienced before how easy it is to get carried away on one of these expeditions, I had set myself a budget and a rough list of particular books and particular subjects that I was going to look for. Everything was going fine for the first 3 bookshops. I picked up a book on South London by Walter Besant. I’ve been putting a selection of his books on London through Distributed Proofreaders so it was great to finally find one that covers the area we live in. (Completed Walter Besant books on Project Gutenberg.) I also found a 19th century children’s book called “The Jolly World of Boxcraft”, which explains how to make what seems like an entire town out of different sized cardboard boxes. This was slightly off-mission but looked like lots of fun. In the last-but-one bookshop, I upset the bookseller by asking the price of an unpriced copy of “Science from an Easy Chair”, a collection of general science articles published in the Daily Telegraph in 1909 and 1910. Some internet research reveals that the £2.50 she eventually charged me was a reasonable market price so she had nothing to worry about!

The last bookshop was where it all went a bit wrong. This was the Hay Cinema Bookshop, which is linked with my favourite second-hand bookshops in London, Quinto. Within about a minute of entering the shop, I had already picked up three books from the “Chats on …” series, an early 20th century series of antique-collecting guides. “Chats on Household Curios” is already available from Project Gutenberg and “Chats on Old Lace and Needlework” and “Chats on Old Silver” are currently in progress (via DP). I had hoped to find more of the series in Hay so was delighted to find “Chats on English China”, “Chats on Old Prints” and “Chats on Autographs” in the Cinema bookshop. So far so good, this was definitely on-mission and nicely finished off the budget.

The bookshops were not done with me yet, though.

The Cinema bookshop has an outdoor half-price sale section that, for some reason, we hadn’t looked at before going into the main shop. Despite being pretty laden with books already and having exhausted my budget, I couldn’t resist a look for a last minute bargain. I ended up with 8! I’m a sucker for “Scottish” books of any description and there on a shelf was a series of 8 of the “Famous Scots Series”, a late 19th century series of biographies of you guessed it, famous Scots. The eight volumes that I bought are Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, James Boswell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Allan Ramsay, James Watt, Thomas Carlyle and The Blackwood group. They’re quite slim little volumes but with beautiful illustrated bindings and decorative title-pages and at £2.50 or less, each, definitely bargains!

The 2008 craft marathon is off to a flying start thanks to a bout of food-poisoning that has kept me at home for a few days.

The Lace Ribbon Scarf is coming along nicely, if slowly. Here it is, roughly pinned out to show off the lace.

The scarf is currently about 18 inches long (unstretched) and has taken an entire ball of yarn. I am hoping 3 balls of the yarn will be enough since I really want to make something for me with the other balls. I had thought that I would use the rest of the yarn to make a second scarf for me but I am not sure that I will want to knit another one straightaway, although, it looks so pretty that I am sure I will make more eventually!

I’ve got a couple of the origami wreaths done for Christmas cards:

These three only took a single evening to fold so I should be able to get the rest done in plenty of time for Christmas. I still need to practise varnishing them and attaching them to cards though.

Finally, the wedding table centrepieces are coming along. We bought a couple more vases and the proper paper arrived.

There are currently 9 flowers folded in the left-hand vase in the picture, so nearly two centrepieces’ worth. Which reminds me, I really should check with the venue just how many tables there are going to be!