Excessive Curiosity

So, I've been seeing all these questionnaires people are filling out on their blogs as part of secret pal swaps of various kinds. I'm not a secret-pal kind of girl (and am in any case under strict orders to myself to buy NOTHING MORE that does not directly contribute to keeping us fed and housed), but I really love these questionnaires. Heck, I love all questionnaires, and silly quizzes, and especially reference books. I like to know things, and I like to see them organized into lists. I particularly like to know about people, and especially about people I like. Obviously, knitters of all stripes are in this group.

I should admit, here, that I'm the one who came up with the Knitter's Geek Code featured in knitty.com a while ago. It was motivated by the same impulse as what I'm about to show you -- to know more about what makes my fellow knitters tick - but here's hoping that this idea will take off better than the code thing (fortunately, it's not technological at all).

Herewith, a questionnaire for Those Who Knit, to be filled out on one's blog (or via email, and passed around to one's S-n-B circle), for the edification of the curious. I guess I'd better fill it out myself. But scroll down for a blank version that you can copy and paste for yourself.

The Knit-Geek Questionnaire (unrelated to any swaps or secret pal exchanges)

1. What's your worst habit relating to your knitting?

A tendency to want an FO so much that I accept small problems instead of doing what it takes to fix them. Then, the problems drive me continually crazy, and the FO ends up getting much less use than it ought.

2. In what specific ways does your knitting make you a better person?

It relaxes me, gives me time to think, and focuses my mind on what really matters. This counteracts a tendency I have to work myself up into fits over deadlines, politics, everyday stresses of all kinds...

3. How might you or your life be different if you were suddenly unable to knit?

Besides feeling absolutely bereft, as if I'd lost a person I loved, I think I'd be even more tense and hostile than I generally am. That's a scary prospect, indeed.

4. If money were no object, what one yarn, and what one tool or gadget would you run out and buy first?

Enough of Debbie Bliss' cashmerino to make the Simply Marilyn sweater. And a Boye Needlemaster set. I already have the Denise set, which I love for its travelability and versatility (how cool it is that you can get extra cord length, change a needle size, put sts on a holder, etc, all without actually moving any sts anywhere??), but I want Boye too for the smaller sizes.

5. What knitting technique or project type are you most afraid of (if any)? What, specifically, do you fear will happen when you try it?

I'm afraid of anything really large-scale -- like afghans or coats or dresses -- because the chances of my actually finishing something like that are about as good as the chances of my getting elected President. Not technically impossible, but -- I think it's best to stick with sweaters. I'm too easily distracted, too quick to fall just as madly in love with some other pattern. Probably a much smaller one. That said, I thought I stood fairly little chance of finishing the Icarus shawl, much less finishing with no visible mistakes or compromises, and I did it in record time (personal record, that is). And it's perfect, I swear. So you never know.

6. Who is/are your knitting hero(es), and why?

Elizabeth Zimmermann. Her sense of humor is my biggest reason for re-reading all her books on a regular basis, but I also think the way she thinks about knitting is just marvellous, and it really changed my own thinking. Instead of thinking in terms of making my sticks and string look like some external thing I have in mind (whether a pattern or just an image), I think now in terms of the structure and possibilities of series of loops, and what they can do. It's just a different perspective - like turning around and looking at a room from a different direction and make you see things you missed before.

But I also really admire the exhaustive technical skill of Montse Stanley. And the Yarn Harlot's sense of humor and passion for knitting make me continually fall in love with knitting all over again, and Eunny's technical brilliance and incredible sense of style hold me completely in awe.

7. Do you consider knitting, for you personally, a mostly social activity, or a mostly solitary activity?

It's been mostly solitary, so far. Partly because it's how I relax and rejuvinate, and those are things I infinitely prefer to do alone. That said, I also enjoy knitting with friends (though it's best if I choose a simple project for such occasions!), and thus have been enthusiastically encouraging more and more of my friends to taking up knitting! I haven't yet gotten around to joining any knitting circles or SnB's yet, just because they're all so far out of my neighborhood, and it's so much more than I can do to keep up with the friends I already know and write a dissertation at the same time. It's just not a stage in my life when I'm into socialization.

8. Is there a particular regional tradition in knitting that you feel strongly drawn toward (e.g., Fair Isle, Scandinavian, Celtic, Orenburg lace)? Any theories as to why it calls to you?

I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Norwegian knitting styles and techniques, as this is what made me truly hooked on knitting. My Norwegian host moms, who re-taught me to knit when I was sixteen, after I had dropped the hobby for a few years, thought it was the most natural thing in the world for me to make a large multi-colored sweater (three colors in some rows!) in DK weight for my first project. It never occured to them that this might be hard, because, of course, it isn't. I'm just so glad that no one told me such things are supposed to be daunting until after I'd already made a few sweaters. :-)

9. If you were a yarn, which yarn would you be?

PeaceFleece, in Katya Pink, of course! (for those who don't know, it's yarn made from half Russian wool, half American)

10. Some statistics:
(a) How many years have passed since you FIRST learned to knit?

approximately 26 or 27.

(b) How many total years have you been actively, regularly knitting (i.e., they don't have to have been in a row)?

about 8 or 9

(c) how many people have you taught to knit?

5

(d) Roughly what percentage of your FOs do you give away (to anyone besides yourself, i.e., including your immediate family)

um... maybe 35-40%

11. How often do you KIP (knit in public)? i.e., once a week, once a month, etc. Where do you do it?

Except for the very occasional subway ride when I'm trying to finish something that happens to also be very portable, I only KIP when hubbster and I are taking a walk to the park - I knit a scarf or socks while walking as well as while sitting on a bench looking at the river. In most other situations ripe for KIPing (waiting in lines, etc), I usually prefer to read (it's easier to throw a book in my bag than all my knitting and all the necessary or possibly necessary accoutrements, plus I have a morbid fear of dropping my yarn on a subway platform).

12. If a genie granted you one hour to stitch-n-bitch with any one knitter, living or dead, who would you choose and why?

The woman I'm writing my dissertation about (a gentrywoman from Russia, who lived from 1799 to 1866 and knitted a lot of stockings and scarves). Obviously, there are a few things I would like her to clarify for me.

13. What aspect or task in knitting makes you most impatient?

I hate, I really really hate, having to do the same thing again. (see next question for reasons). So, second sleeves, second socks, major frogging, doing the same pattern a second time no matter how much I may have loved it -- always a problem.

14. What is it about knitting that never lets you get bored with it?

I'm always on the edge of my seat to see how it's going to turn out. I love that you get to be intimately involved with every step that brings an FO into being, yet you're never sure what it's going to be until it's done. I compare it to sewing -- which I do for the finished object, never just for sheer pleasure -- in sewing, the cutting and the stitching go by so fast that I always seem to have finished before I had entirely decided what I wanted to do (no, I'm not a big planner, generally). And then, of course, you can't go back - I love the malleability of knitting. Any project ever made can always be ripped out and made into something else. It's like each FO inhabits the yarn only so long as somebody wants it there, and then it floats away to make room for something else. I feel like I'm participating in something ongoing, and that something is filled with rich colors, luscious textures, and rhythmic, soothing, yet complex movement. By contrast, sewing to me seems final, full of points-of-no-return, stressful, and usually (in my case!) ends in highly unsatisfactory results.

15. Describe how and where you most often do your knitting - where do you sit, what is going on around you, what tools do you use and how are they (dis)organized?

I usually knit at home, whether in a chair, on the couch or the bed. Usually I have a movie on (or more often, DVD special features from some favorite movie), or I listen to the radio, books on tape, or podcasts. I have a little black travel cosmetic case containing my most essential tools, which stays with whatever I'm currently knitting, while other tools live in my new Craft Closet (ura!). The main, or biggest, WIP lives in a wicker basket (lined with cotton), on the floor near the couch. Various other smaller WIPs sit in handbags, either hung an a chair where I've recently been working on it, or if I've been good about putting them away, in the craft closet.

16. Which one person is the recipient of more of your knitting than any other?

Hubbster, without a doubt. My parents, niece, and a few of my oldest friends have gotten various small items, but I'm ashamed to say that the second sweater I've embarked on knitting for my mom is still languishing, mostly because I keep starting other projects, for hubbster at least as much as for myself. The thing is, he *loves* handknits. His grandmother used to knit nearly all his clothing when he was little, and he still associates receiving handknitted items with love and care. He also really wears wooly sweaters, and scarves, and hats and gloves and slippers, a LOT. He loves natural fibers, particularly. How did I get so lucky? He thinks having married what he considers his personal knitter makes him lucky, but I think it's the other way around - I can justify almost any yarn purchase or any amount of time spent knitting just by whipping off another hat or something for him. >:->

17. What's the oddest thing about your knitting, or yourself as a knitter?

I'm told that I knit funny. This sounds likely, though I haven't studied other knitter live and in person lately to find out. I think I must have been taught the Anglo-American "throwing" method by my Aunt and a school teacher when I was younger, but when my Norwegian host moms reminded me how to knit later, they certainly demonstrated the Continental "picking" method. So, I keep the yarn in my left hand and "pick," but I seem to move my hands around more than other Continental knitters, so that whatever I'm doing, it looks strange to them. Whatever - I'm pretty fast, and my gauge is usually pretty even, even on purl rows in StSt, although I have trouble switching from knit to purl in the same row - the first purl stitch after a knit stitch comes out very loose, so I often wrap that one stitch under instead of over, to tighten it. But my purls in general seem to be odd - for some reason I seem to need to bring the first finger of my left hand way down in front of the work to hold the tension properly. I don't know why I do this or when I started.

18. What do you see yourself knitting - if anything - twenty years from now?

I guess I'll be knitting for my children as much as for myself and hubbster. I'm hoping I'll always have at least as much time as I do now for knitting, maybe someday much more...

19. If you were stranded on a deserted island and could have only ONE SKEIN of yarn, which yarn would it be and what would you do with it?

Himalayan wool & recycled silk, in red. No question. If I could eat this stuff, I would. I would knit it, first in StSt, then rip it out and knit it all up again in garter, then in every other pattern I could think of, and in between I would roll in it. It's not as soft as many others of my favorite yarns, but I could get drunk off these colors. I really could.

20. If you were allowed to own only one knitting-related book, which would it be? (you'd be free to browse others, but you couldn't keep them)

Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Around. Because I love it more as a good read than a knitting book. Her Knitter's Almanac is an equally good read, and also has some great knitting in it (it's why it was the only knitting book I packed for my recent year in Russia, otherwise only scanning in some patterns I thought I realistically might make). But if I could only choose one, it would be Knitting Around because it's history as well as knitting - I gotta love that.

21. Is knitting the new yoga? Why or why not?

Ummm...I don't think yoga is out, at least not for me. Knitting is like yoga, but different. Like yoga, it's very trendy. Like yoga, it's trendy because it's healthy, hugely improves your quality of life, and has the effect of making you feel more centered no matter how chaotic things get "outside." But yoga involves your whole body, while knitting is a relationship between your mind and your fingers. Yoga makes your body feel loose, strong, flexible, healthy, capable. It makes you focus your mind inward, onto your own muscles, joints, and organs. Knitting focuses your mind on the most basic, good, right, healthy things in the outside world -- texture, color, the interaction of your own muscles with the materials of the world around you. It allows you to create a tangible, sometimes useful, object, and therefore to connect yourself and your mind, with the tangible, outside world. In contrast, yoga connect your mind to your own, physical self. Both are important, both are good. It seems natural that both are so appreciated right now, when politics and the internet and globalization are making most of us feel unhealthy, weak, and bombarded for almost every moment of our lives. I like yoga and knitting because, though they give you the same kind of benefits as escape, they leave you physically and mentally better prepared to deal with the world than you were before.

EDIT: This last question added by Caroline:
22. What important thing are you trying to put off doing whenever you knit?"

My dissertation, of course! Works very well, too....

BLANK VERSION for copying and pasting into your own blog, web site, or email:

The Knit-Geek Questionnaire (unrelated to any swaps or secret pal exchanges)

1. What's your worst habit relating to your knitting?

2. In what specific ways does your knitting make you a better person?

3. How might you or your life be different if you were suddenly unable to knit?

4. If money were no object, what one yarn, and what one tool or gadget would you run out and buy first?

5. What knitting technique or project type are you most afraid of (if any)? What, specifically, do you fear will happen when you try it?

6. Who is/are your knitting hero(es), and why?

7. Do you consider knitting, for you personally, a mostly social activity, or a mostly solitary activity?

8. Is there a particular regional tradition in knitting that you feel strongly drawn toward (e.g., Fair Isle, Scandinavian, Celtic, Orenburg lace)? Any theories as to why it calls to you?

9. If you were a yarn, which yarn would you be?

10. Some statistics:
(a) How many years have passed since you FIRST learned to knit?
(b) How many total years have you been actively, regularly knitting (i.e., they don't have to have been in a row)?
(c) how many people have you taught to knit?
(d) Roughly what percentage of your FOs do you give away (to anyone besides yourself, i.e., including your immediate family)

11. How often do you KIP (knit in public)? i.e., once a week, once a month, etc. Where do you do it?

12. If a genie granted you one hour to stitch-n-bitch with any one knitter, living or dead, who would you choose and why?

13. What aspect or task in knitting makes you most impatient?

14. What is it about knitting that never lets you get bored with it?

15. Describe how and where you most often do your knitting - where do you sit, what is going on around you, what tools do you use and how are they (dis)organized?

16. Which one person is the recipient of more of your knitting than any other?

17. What's the oddest thing about your knitting, or yourself as a knitter?

18. What do you see yourself knitting - if anything - twenty years from now?

19. If you were stranded on a deserted island and could have only ONE SKEIN of yarn, which yarn would it be and what would you do with it?

20. If you were allowed to own only one knitting-related book, which would it be? (you'd be free to browse others, but you couldn't keep them)

21. Is knitting the new yoga? Why or why not?

EDIT: This last question added by Caroline:
22. What important thing are you trying to put off doing whenever you knit?"

Avoiding Gauge Problems Still Longer

Newsflash: have found new, good reason to avoid dealing with that nasty gauge problem (see prev. post). We're going to visit mom in a few weeks, and here's that Mom Sweater, still languishing. Can I finish it in time for our trip? Or at least finish it there? The race is on, and the bad, bad Viking Sweater can stay in the corner a while longer....

Transition Projects

Lots of things on my knitting mind lately, but I haven't been able to post for a few days as I had a run of nasty migraines. This post will be bare-bones, too, because hubbster won't let me stare at the computer screen for more than 30 minutes, as this kind of web-work tends to make my head worse. Oddly enough, writing at the computer (as in, dissertation chapter writing, in Word) doesn't seem to be a problem. Er, that is, my back starts to hurt before my head does, in that case. Gawd, I'm getting old. Anyway, in addition to some minor brainless knitting while the headaches were mild, and some total inactivity while they were really bad, I also managed to write 6 decent pages of the diss and do a lot of data-entry. Ura! So, feeling pretty good. Here's an accounting of the knitting done. Little bits of things, as a transition and resting period between the Great Icarus and my next biggish project - fixing the gauge problem and finishing my husband's Viking Sweater.

So, been doing some more Mason-Dixoning:

This is their eponymous warshrag, minus a few rows which I deleted because I like small dishcloths. My husband called it eggy, and I realized only then how close I came to accidently making a fried egg - so lucky I didn't reverse the colors! I actually intended to make the center pink (I thought the color combo kind of flowery), but I got to the center so quickly that I missed it.

This, I feel quite certain, is the world's ugliest Dishcloth:



I made it blind, while watching Nosferatu with the girls on knit/movie night. I just picked whichever color came to hand at any given moment, and couldn't really see what I was doing in the semi-dark. But blame the horrific results on the film...



It's slightly better looking from the back. Which isn't saying much. Oh well, at least this one may actually get used as a dishcloth - hubbster wouldn't use the other ones because they were too pretty.

Then there's the baby bib:




Another stab at random colors, this time with the lights on, and the results are infinitely better. I decided that since the whole point of this article is to get spit up, drool, and already-chewed food particles all over it, that I wasn't going to waste an hour of my life sewing in ends. Tied 'em up and cut 'em. So there.

Note also the presence of a burp-cloth on the needles, pattern also courtesy of the fine ladies at Mason-Dixon. I find that the variegated yarn comes out interestingly in this pattern.

Here's a better shot of the bib colors, taken in-progress, but also in sunshine:



Note the purple plastic needles, with red tops. I got a whole lot of brightly colored plastic needles on Ebay a few years ago, these among them. Normally, I don't use straight needles. But I make exceptions for small projects, when the nature of the needles adds substantially to the fun of the knitting. Like the short tortoise-shell needles that I just adore, for knitting a panel of lace, and like these brightly colored ones for bright-colored knitting. Ya-hoo!

I should mention here that I come from a family of hand-made warshcloth users. Here's my supply from Grandma:





These are, obviously, crocheted, as that's Grandma's forte. I find they're too big for dishes, but just right for wiping counters. So, crocheted cloths are for counters and spills, knitted ones are for dishes (and must be small enough to fit inside a champagne flute!) I have so many of Grandma's, though, and they keep coming, so I'm thinking of sewing some matching pairs together to make little back-pillows. Thus to prevent lower back ache when writing the dissertation...all things are related, all things are useful.

Speaking of Grandma's crocheting, I recently inherited some of her huge collection of hand-made doilies. I've adored these since childhood, because my mom used to have them, on our antique oak furniture, and that combo with oil lamps equals home to me. So now I just need the oak, and the oil lamps. Anyway, here are the doilies, because they should be shown off somewhere:



The one in the middle, if you can't tell from the picture, is knitted. Which means it was made by my Great-Grandma Annie (because Grandma didn't take to knitting any more than I took to crochet). Grandma couldn't tell me whether she or her mother, Annie, crocheted the others, as they both made a lot of doilies in their time. Great-Grandma Annie also used to embroider edgings on pillow-cases and those thingies you put on top of your dresser to set your brushes and perfumes on. I have a pillow-case and the thingy still from my childhood bedroom, and mean to cut off the embroidered edge and re-sew them on new, fine linen fabric as the original cotton is worn to bits. I love this stuff.

But anyway. Back to business. Father's Day has come and gone, but one dad, mine, hasn't gotten his present yet because it still isn't dry. Here it is, unfelted:



And as they look now:



They're the Felted Clogs by Bev Galeskas, courtesy of Fiber Trends. I've done this pattern before (though I forgot to photograph those) and really, really love it. The pattern is so clever the knitting of it is kind of like lace - each moment you've discovered some new aspect of how it all comes together. I don't even mind having to do the sole pattern FOUR TIMES (because they're doubled), even though I normally can't deal with socks or sleeves because of the whole doing-the-same-thing-twice thing. They don't take long, and they're interesting. Cool. Plus, they make great slippers. This from me, who wears them Russian-style, i.e., constantly, and therefore has worn through every other slipper I've knitted remarkably quickly (my beautiful Fuzzy Feet turned to dust and ashes - well, okay, they just wore disastrously thin - after only 3/4 of the winter in Ivanovo). Will be making still more of these. But these, in the picture, are dry now, except for the puffy-paint traction I put on the bottom. 12 more hours, and they can go off in the mail at last.

Oh, and yes, the interior sole is dark green stranded with a lighter green, whereas the trim on the parts that show are just dark green. I didn't have *quite* enough of the dark green, so sue me.

HO-kay. There's no more avoiding things. Must face facts. Deal with it. Grow up, already. Must accept the Gauge Problem, and Take Measures. Literally, and figuratively. Here's the aforementioned problem (scroll down) made pictorial:





I don't know what's wrong with me - it's some of my worst knitting, ever. And I know, I forgot the upper plain stripe on one of the sleeves. Whatever. The whole main-color part has to be ripped out and re-knit on three of the four parts shown here, as all four of them are now different gauges. Argh. But, for once, I'm not going to give up, if only because the color pattern part on the body is SO gorgeous. I have faith the sleeve parts will also look nice when blocked. Sadly, blocking did nothing for the main-color gauge problem, though. Sigh.

Not that it isn't tempting to continue my tour through Mason-Dixon land by starting a log-cabin blankie (I've got it all planned out, now), or to knit those "quick" panels for the skirt I'm planning, or to start that whole new Fair Isle sweater with 27 colors....Sigh.

Oops, my online time is up. Email will wait for another day. Web browsing will wait some considerable time.

Maybe just a little more mindless knitting before bed....

Identity Questions

>>



Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?


this quiz was made by Lori Fury

Well, I did always like her best. Ditto Elizabeth Bennet, which is apparently the literary character I best match according some other of these thingies, which I did before I had a blog to stick the icon on.

Time Out for Technical Difficulties

Our harddrive spontaneously died. Kaput. Three days of extremely painful dealings with Dell customer service later, and we seem to be back up again. Lost data. Lost three days. Hate Dell. Buying Mac next time.

Worked a little on Yak scarf. Did one felted clog, according to the Bev Galeskas pattern (which I've done before, but didn't photograph - will try to remember this time). Am avoiding the Cursed Sweater, because after finishing the first third of the second sleeve, I realized I was getting the fourth totally different gauge (to date) on the same sweater. This has never happened to me before, and I always do many projects at once, and leave things aside for ages before going back to them. And the gauge always stays the same, or close enough. Not so this time. My knitting in the main color seems to change drastically after doing a patch of multi-color knitting. Huh. And there's no blaming Dell for this - it was happening before, too.

The good news is that after the first 8 hours or so on the cell phone with customer service (we had to get rid of our landline phone after Verizon was unable, completely, to uncross our line from our schizophrenic neighbor's, who kept screaming "domestic terrorists! get off my phone!" at us every time we picked up our phone), we finally invested in a headset so we can talk on a cell phone hands-free. You know what this means? It means I can knit while on the phone!!

But seriously, what happened to customer service? Is there no business left in the world interested in retaining a customer past one purchase? Don't even get me started about TigerDirect. Yet, I've never had the slightest trouble with any of my many purchases from online yarn providers. Invariably, people who sell yarn and knitting supplies seem to be wonderful people. Perhaps this is an argument to spend more money on yarn, and less on anything else?

Ancestral Pin Explained

Sophie_vf from the Icarus KAL asked about my ancestral pin: it belonged to my great-grandmother, and I just received it from my grandma, partly because I'm the designated family historian and am trying to sort out and document who's who, and partly because I'm planning to name my first-born girl Anna, after the great-grandmother in question (Annie) and her own grandmother (Antje), who is the woman in the picture (thus, she's my great-great-great grandmother) (and also after my husband's grandmother, Anya). I think it must be a daguerrotype, though it's hard to believe it's quite that old! Judging by the cut of her sleeves, it must have been taken in her old age, late 19th century. She's still in the Old Country (the Netherlands) -- I think it was her children who came over here -- and she's wearing what I grew up calling "kissers" (I should point out here that I grew up in Holland, MI, home of the Tulip Time festival, and I used to be a high school klompen dancer). We had to wear "kissers" with our so-called authentic folk costumes, and were told their purpose, besides being decorative, was to keep the young men from getting fresh. Whatever. I never thought to have a picture of my own ancestress actually wearing them!

While I was visiting Grandma, we looked through a lot of old and very old photo albums and I digitized most of the images with my camera. It occured to me that all these ancestresses I was looking at were probably knitters, though I don't know for sure (Grandma's a crocheter, though she knows how to knit). I found their faces fascinating, and put a collage of them on my old knitting page.

Flower Garden

This morning I took my Icarus shawl and my husband up to Ft. Tryon Park - just up the hill from where we live - to take some pictures of the shawl in the sunshine. For the first time in ages, the sun did actually peek out from the clouds often enough for photographic purposes....

Here's me trying to copy the poses from the original issue of IK:





Here are some other random pictures of the shawl:

















Here's the shawl wearing my ancestral pin, which I think becomes it nicely:



While we were there, I couldn't resist taking more pictures of flowers using the super macro setting on my camera. I can never get enough of these, even though I never know what to do with them later. Here's one with a bumble bee in it (they were everywhere, and all of them very fat):



Here's a bunch of flowers:



And here's the same bunch after I've been playing with them:

Now, back to regularly scheduled programming. Vacation is over, and I need to get back to work!

Alien Landscapes

After much obsession, I’ve finished the Icarus shawl!!

I took a bunch of pictures before blocking, too. I don’t know if all shawls are like this, but I found the shapes and textures of the unblocked shawl endlessly entertaining:

And here it is, looking like it’s dancing the flamenco:

I also got a bunch of closeups, mostly out of focus, that look nothing like the shawl, but which I think make for very interesting textures:

And then there are others which look more like alien landscapes:

Oh, but back to the shawl. This was one of the most singularly delightful knitting experiences I’ve had, and makes me really understand the term “process knitting” for maybe the first time. The yarn was so lusciously buttery, and the pattern was so organic (like I mentioned before), and just boring enough to be meditative, but interesting enough to keep me going. No terrible mistakes to make me hate myself. I think part of my pleasure may derive from this being the first project in ages that I didn’t either make up myself or alter significantly. The result was that nothing went terribly wrong, there were no unpleasant surprises, and I could just enjoy the feel of the yarn and the pretty surprises that kept popping up as the pattern revealed itself. As an experiment in lace knitting, I don’t think I could have picked a better pattern. I also love that it was all in one piece. No sleeves. No handles. No fussy bits at all. Only two ends to weave in (since I felt-spliced the others). A beautiful, wearable finished object, with no shaping, or seems, or ends. How glorious is that? If only I wore shawls more, and looked better in the light colors that look particularly spectacular in knitted lace….

Some stats:
-In the end it actually took about 910 meters of the yarn. That’s about 110 more than the pattern called for, and was needed probably because my yarn is thicker and heavier (18 WPI, a little over twice the weight).
-The last few rows, on c. 500 stitches, took me more than half an hour each. Yikes!
-I knitted this thing in extreme heat and humidity, my fingers constantly sticky from the warmth of the alpaca, and (for the last week plus!) in such rainy cold that I was grateful for the warmth in my lap, and at one point wrapped the bottom part of the shawl over my should while I knitted the edge.

-I knitted this through the season finale of Sopranos. Enough said.
-There hasn’t been even an hour of sunshine in so long that the last decent picture I was able to take of the shawl was somewhere in the first or second repeat of Chart 1!
-Blocking is hard, and I won’t do it again without blocking wires. To find a space big enough that I could stick pins into, I had to pull the futon mattress off our couch and lay it out on the floor, thus taking up all the space in our living room and leaving no place to sit. I couldn’t get the string I was using to hold tightly enough to really give me straight lines, and every time I tried to stretch out one side fully, it pulled the other side’s pins out. My lines are definitely not entirely straight, and the whole thing could probably be stretched a bit further, but not with the equipment I’ve got now!

Tomorrow evening, I promise pictures of the finished, blocked, dry shawl, modeled. But alas, if only I could promise sunlight….