Category: craft

At about 10 o’clock the other night, while knitting in front of the TV, I threw down my knitting, announcing that it was completely ruined due to a “bloody great hole” in it. I then explained to Steven that I wasn’t sure I could fix it because it was “enormous”, “I haven’t put any lifelines in” and I didn’t think I’d be able to put an afterthought lifeline in “because of the pattern”.

Having left the shawl alone for a day or so, I thought I would take a look this morning to see if I could fix it. The picture above clearly shows the “bloody great hole” and the dropped stitch that caused it.

What do you mean you can’t see a “bloody great hole”? Take a look at this next picture. See that loop sticking up?

That’s a dropped stitch from what must be a whole 3 rows back and has clearly left a “bloody great hole”. Still can’t see it? Let me zoom out and show you the whole shawl.

Well, um, okay, maybe it’s not a “bloody great hole”, maybe it’s just a little bit of a hole and, rather than being “impossible to fix and I’ll have to re-knit the whole bloody thing”, maybe I’ve already fixed it with a crochet hook.

Lesson learned? Don’t panic — at least not until after you’ve had a good night’s sleep and looked at the problem in daylight.

The shawl pattern is my own design, which I will write up and publish eventually, except that I keep changing my mind. I’ve already frogged and re-knitted the first version completely. This was supposed to be a copy of the second version as a present for my mother-in-law but I’m going to do something different with the border, which means that I’ll end up re-knitting a large part of the first one again so that it actually matches the written-down pattern. Here is a close-up photo of the body of the first shawl, which was shown as a sneak peek in an earlier post.

It’s taken a little longer to get this post written than I thought but better late than never!

The Class

I had signed up for Anne Hanson‘s Advanced Lace Knitting class and, despite a horrible cold, I really enjoyed it. I didn’t learn as much as I had hoped I would — mainly because I’ve already done a reasonable amount of lace knitting involving the techniques which were covered. Anne’s overview of different types of lace knitting and knitted lace, and the chance to look at some of her extensive collections of swatches were very interesting. I also picked up some tips about knitted-on borders which are already proving useful.

I was right about the yarn I selected for the class sampler project though; it was very hairy. By the end of the class, my black jeans looked like I had had a cat sitting on my lap for hours. I don’t intend to finish the sampler since I really don’t have any use for a doll-sized shawl but I’m not really sure what else I would use the yarn for. I think it will go back in the basket till I can come up with a project where I won’t mind it “shedding”.

The Yarn

I wasn’t looking for anything in particular at the Knit Nation marketplace but thought I might grab some laceweight or fingering yarn for future shawl-knitting. I ended up with the following:

Wollmeise Lacegarn in brilliant blues — partly to see what all the hype is about and partly because they were giving away free Gummi Bears (Steven pointed out that there are cheaper ways to acquire Gummi Bears, which I can’t really argue with but which isn’t really the point.) I’m thinking about using this for a Victorian Lace Today project because the yardage is so good. I’m not even sure I suit blue but I just can’t stop admiring the colours in this.

Old Maiden Aunt — This is an alpaca/merino/silk blend laceweight. No idea what I’ll use it for but the colours are gorgeous and it’s so, so soft. 1,300 yards per 100g is also pretty good yardage.

Fyberspates Thick Nef Lace — an alpaca/silk/cashmere laceweight this time. I’m thinking about something elegant for wearing to work. Not that I need to be particularly elegant at work but something about this yarn just conjures up images of high-powered female New York lawyers. (Don’t ask me why, sometimes it’s better not to investigate the inner workings of my brain too much!)

… that struck fear into my heart recently:

“Join right shoulder seam.”

I know that my fear of seaming is completely irrational — it’s not that difficult, rarely takes as long as I think it will and usually ends well — but for some reason, it’s still the number one reason why it takes me so long to finish any project that needs it.

Feeling a little guilty about the amount of knitting that I’ve been doing for me whilst Steven’s argyle jumper has been languishing unfinished, I decided this week that I was just going to have to be brave and get on with it. I got out my trusty Vogue Knitting, followed their instructions for an “invisible horizontal” seam and tah-dah!

I know it doesn’t exactly look “invisible” but trust me, that’s a really neat seam.

Having successfully conquered the seam, I ploughed on and knitted the neckband.

Next up are the armbands and then:

Join left shoulder seam and neckband seam.

Join side seams with mattress stitch.

It’s taken 3½ weeks to get past “Join right shoulder seam”, any bets on how long it will take me to build up the courage to attempt that little section?

If my actuarial homework looked like this, maybe more of it would get done:

I’m attending Knit Nation this Saturday and this is my homework for the Advanced Lace Knitting class I’m taking in the afternoon. I’m really looking forward to the class, although I’m hoping that the summer cold I’ve developed over the past day or two doesn’t get any worse or I’m not sure I’ll be capable of processing any information.

The tutor is Anne Hanson of Knitspot whose designs I love, even though I haven’t actually knitted any of them yet. Her Honeybee Stole was a definite contender for my wedding shawl and only narrowly lost out to the Myrtle Leaf Shawl from Victorian Lace Today.

It was a bit of a  last minute decision to go to Knit Nation meaning that I’ve ended up in my usual position of nearly running out of time to get my homework finished even though all it consisted of was a simple swatch! It didn’t help that I didn’t actually have any yarn of the appropriate weight for either the homework or for the class itself.  Thanks to the usual excellent service from Get Knitted, I managed to order a skein of the now-discontinued Darling sock yarn from Natural Dye Studio in colourway Isabella.  It arrived in perfect time to be wound and swatched and yet somehow it’s Friday evening and I still haven’t finished!

Although I love the colours in this yarn, I’m not sure how I feel about it in general. There is more alpaca in it than I tend to like, which seems to be giving it a quite “hairy” appearance. I’ll report back next week on both the yarn and the class!