I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do!

We're married! J (henceforth to be known as The Mister) and I went back to work today, so we've been forced to get back to our normal schedules, although we're still doing wedding-related things like writing lots and lots of thank-you notes. We'd like to thank all of you who commented and e-mailed for you good wishes and congratulations!

I'm still waiting for one of our many camera-happy friends to send us pictures, but I thought I'd share the few pictures I had my maid of honor snap with my camera. Here's proof for all of you that I did indeed use my wedding shawl! Although it was about 80 and sunny outside, the thermostat in the room in which the bridesmaids and I got ready was set at about 60 and I was freezing! A little alpaca to wrap around my shoulders was just what I needed.

I'm under all that tulle somewhere ...

I'm clutching my stomach to see if it's still there under that corset of an undergarment I'm wearing.

See the flower baskets now?

Forty Minutes

That's how long it took me to bind off the 455 stitches my wedding shawl had grown to by the time I was finished with the edging rows. But I did indeed finish the shawl yesterday morning, and it looked something like this when I left it before heading out to run errands:

Last night, after dinner, I put the shawl in the sink for a soak, got out the blocking wires and the pins, cleared a big floor space in the loft, and got to work blocking. And it's done:

Pattern: Flower Basket Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark for Fiber Trends
Yarn: Misti Alpaca Lace (100% baby alpaca), color 7120, approximately 69 grams/603 yards
Needles: US 5 (3.75 mm) 32" Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: August 3/August 18
Dimensions: 73" across, 41" deep at center point

In the end, I was concerned about running out of yarn, so I did a total of 16 repeats of the main body chart in addition to the edging charts. I then blocked this shawl severely, restretching it several times. For the first time, I used blocking wires to hold all the points along the side, and I'm quite pleased with the results.

So, my wedding knitting is now done -- and for the record, the shawl was finished two weeks before the wedding, and I didn't stop knitting socks in the interim.

I'll leave you with some other shots of the shawl, with my apologies for the lack of natural light. We had a perfect day yesterday, but today it's overcast and rainy, so I was forced to take only indoor shots. Enjoy!

My Secret Plan for Finishing the Shawl

Today I am home sick with some sort of stomach bug, which, as the Hurricane Knitters will tell you, was bothering me last night. This morning when I woke up still feeling icky, I decided that I'd rather stay home than spend the whole day at work running back and forth to the bathroom (which is no easy feat these days, as the restrooms on our floor are closed for remodeling so we're forced to go to a different floor). I haven't taken a sick day since last fall, so I think they can survive a day without me.

Fortunately I'm well enough to knit (frankly I have to be really sick to not be able to knit!), so I'll make use of the time to work on the wedding shawl. At present I'm two rows into the 15th repeat, with roughly 32 grams of yarn left:

I'm beginning to worry that my yarn supply won't hold out for the 18 repeats I was shooting for, especially considering the edging is another 12 rows past the main chart repeats, so I may be ending this earlier than I thought.

Last night's meeting of the Hurricane Knitters, in spite of my stomach issues, was a lot of fun. We had another good crowd with most of the regulars. Julia was back, as was Lynn, and we were joined by a newcomer, Joyce. Marybeth finished her very first project, an adorable garter stitch hat -- she even mastered seaming garter stitch to sew it up!

Unbeknownst to me, Jen and Jenn had done a little scheming beforehand. They had figured that since this would be my last knit night as a single woman, they'd have a little knitty bachelorette party for me. Using leftover tulle from her own veil, and a tiara-like comb she found in the children's dress-up section of a store, Jen made me this little number and insisted I wear it all evening:

It looks quite fetching on the lava lamp, no? It's actually quite cute; I couldn't believe Jen made it herself! She insisted I bring it home with me, just in case I have a veil emergency on the day of the wedding.

Before I pull out the shawl and get down to business, I do want to give you a peek at a WIP I started last weekend but haven't mentioned. I'm afraid it's rather boring.

Can you guess who this sock is for? This is my usual pattern (Gentleman's Plain Winter Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks) in very boring black Fortissima Socka. I'm not enjoying the yarn; it's very scratchy and rough, and it's drying out my fingertips. But the pattern is so easy and fast that I can't complain that much. These socks fall solidly in the category of long-term planning, as they'll be a holiday gift for J. I know it's only August, but I have several sweaters I want to knit this fall, so in my opinion it's not at all too early to start my holiday knitting!

Technical Difficulties

I have been trying to post for several days now but kept running into power issues. You may have heard that we had some pretty severe storms here in Western Pennsylvania last Thursday. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to make the nine-mile trip home from work -- only to discover that there was no power. I packed a bag quickly and then turned around to stay at my parents' for the night. The power did come back on at home at about 4 in the morning, but then last night we came home from dinner out only to discover it was out again -- and somehow neither of us had managed to remember to bring our house keys (we'd gotten out through the garage), so we were completely locked out. Fortunately my parents were still awake, so we spent the night in my brother's room. Now everything appears to be back to normal, and I can finally tell you about the most recently completed pair of socks:

Pattern: Embossed Leaves Socks by Mona Schmidt (Interweave Knits winter 2005/Favorite Socks)
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM (100% merino), colorway P531, two skeins
Needles: two US 1 (2.5 mm) 12" Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: June 21/August 8
Mods: same as the last pair

You probably remember the story of the first sock of this pair, so I won't recount it for you again here. It took me a little while to locate another skein of this (as far as I can tell) discontinued colorway, and you can see that the two skeins were clearly from different dyelots:

I'm pretending I don't really care, although I'm going to wash the darker sock a few times to see if it'll lighten a bit so that the difference won't be nearly as obvious.

This was the third pair of Embossed Leaves I've knit, and I think I'm done with this pattern for the time being. I still love it, especially how fast it knits up, but I'm pretty sure I could knit this pattern in my sleep now and I'm ready for something a little different.

Guess what else is done and is blocking?

That there is my garter, knit in crochet cotton. I washed it, pinned it, and sprayed it with a little starch so it will hold its shape. Once it's dry, I'll sew it together and put in the blue ribbon and elastic so I can give you a truly final report.

Knitting on the shawl continues (and I've spared you another picture because it looks much the same as it did the last time you saw it, only larger). I'm now in the middle of my 13th repeat of the main chart; I made it through approximately 11.5 repeats with my partial skein, which leads me to believe the pattern vastly overestimates the yardage needed for this shawl. For laceweight yarn, it specifies 750 yards for a small shawl (12 main chart repeats) and 1200 yards for the large shawl (17 repeats). I had nearly enough for the small shawl with a skein that was less than the 437 yarns it would have been had it been complete. I'm now much more hopeful that I'll have enough yarn for 18 repeats (18 being a significant number in Judaism, so therefore quite appropriate and symbolic for my wedding).

Now that I have power again, I'm off to catch up on my e-mailing and blog reading. Hope you've had a good weekend!

Return of the Blob

My, wedding shawl, how you've grown!

Here we are after roughly 7.5 repeats of the main chart (the pattern tells me I need 12 repeats for the small shawl and 17 for the large; at this point I'm shooting for large, but depending upon how long the yarn holds out I may wind up with something in between).

For those of you just joining our wedding shawl coverage (and because Corrie asked), here are the details:

• The pattern is Evelyn Clark's Flower Basket Shawl. I'm using the Fiber Trends version of the pattern, rather than the Interweave Knits version, because it gives instructions for three sizes and four weights of yarn. I was willing to shell out a few bucks for all these options.
  
• The yarn is Misti Alpaca laceweight (100% baby alpaca) in colorway 7120, which they call Sea Mist and which looks decidedly blue on the Web (and apparently in my pictures as well), but which looks green to me in person. I had nearly two full skeins left over from this shawl that I knit more than a year ago. I started with the partially used up skein and have plenty left at this point.
  
• I'm sure this will probably shock most of you, but I'm using US 5 (3.75 mm) Addi Turbos to knit this -- NON-LACE Addi Turbos. As there are no extreme acrobatics with this pattern (the most complicated stitch is probably a sl 1, k2tog, psso), I'm doing just fine with the "Stumpos." When it comes time to knit some nupps, however, I think I'll have to splurge for some pointier tips.

I've got to get back to the shawl, so I'll leave you with a peek at a flower basket and a hint of things to come after blocking:

Can I Get a Do-over?

When I announced my intention to knit myself a wedding shawl out of essentially cobweb-weight yarn (or, as some called it, thread), most of you -- and especially those of you who know me in real life -- expressed some concern but for the most part were extremely supportive. I'm glad no one told me I was completely nuts, although late last night I came to the realization that I must have been completely wacko. I want to show you how far I'd gotten as of last night:

I'd been knitting very slowly to get to this point, in part because knitting with this "yarn" is kind of like playing with a Chinese finger trap; the more I pushed it to try to get to get the stitches to move along the needle, the more resistant it became, and as soon as I relaxed, the stitches were liable to slip right off the needles. In fact, that's exactly what did happen. In the middle of a row, as I took my right hand off the needle to wrap the yarn around to make a stitch, the right needle slipped completely out of the stitches and about five of them fell off the needle. I tried to grab them, but somehow I missed a couple and could not seem to get that area of the pattern fixed correctly. At that moment I realized that this yarn was not worth fighting with -- I'm anxious about the wedding as it is without this added anxiety! I was ready to admit defeat. And it's just as well, because this yarn was knitting up too yellow for my taste.

Don't think this is the end of the wedding shawl, however! I still wanted to get one done for the wedding, but I decided to go with another yarn in my stash that I've worked with before -- Misti Alpaca Lace (I used it first for this shawl and had nearly two complete skeins left). Since we were up anyway -- J had to be on a work conference call at midnight -- I cast on shortly before 11 last night and managed to get through all the set-up rows. Finally lace knitting felt familiar and easy again. I could see what I was doing, if a stitch slipped off it didn't drop down into previous rows (thank you, alpaca halo!), and I was able to watch TV and talk to J without losing my place.

That's nearly three repeats of the main chart finished after only a few hours of knitting. I am getting into my groove now and feeling much more confident. I'm aware of the fact that it's not white, but the bridesmaids' dresses are green, and I wasn't really planning on wearing the shawl for the ceremony or anything anyway, so this will work just fine. Also, I need to make a little product pitch here. You see my KnitPicks chart keeper in the back there? So worth the $9.99 it cost me! It's much easier to move the magnet than to keep moving a sticky note, and I've been able to move my knitting around the house without messing up the chart or losing my place. (I can assure you I haven't been compensated in any way by KnitPicks -- I'm just so happy to find a good, useful knitting product that I felt I had to share!)

I also got another lovely surprise in my mailbox today -- a package from my Sockapalooza pal! Look-y here at all the wonderful Dr. Pepper-themed goodies:

The socks I'll get to in a second; the package also contained a lovely note from my pal, Dawn; Dr. Pepper-flavored Jelly Bellys; instant raspberry iced tea packets; cinnamint gum; and some Harry Potter chocolate frogs. Mmm!

The socks are the most delicious part, though. These are knit out of Claudia's Handpaint sportweight, in a colorway called Peppermint Mocha, but Dawn told me she called these Dr. Pepper socks as she was knitting them. As you can see, they are a perfect fit:

And so incredibly cushy! I'm not sure what pattern they are (Dawn, can you enlighten me?), but they're a nice stretchy rib and will be so cozy to wear in the winter. Thank you so much, Dawn!