Back to Normal

I didn't intend to be away from the blog for as long as I was, but we had a busier weekend than I was expecting. Then, yesterday was my birthday, so after a thrilling day of work, The Mister and I went out for a nice dinner. All in all, it was a pretty good birthday, and I received some nice gifts in the form of yarn money.

As long as I'm playing catch up, here is what I meant to post for Spinning Sunday:

This is a two-ply fingering weight superwash merino. The fiber was from Enchanted Knoll Farm, purchased from the Loopy Ewe. The colorway is "Big Sky." I had high hopes for some big yardage, particularly as I crammed as much as I possibly could onto my bobbing and had to empty it to ply the rest, but in the end I have only about 370 yards. That's respectable, but not what I was expecting.

Still, I quite like the results. After all, this yarn is shades of my current favorite color combination -- chocqua. And I really enjoyed working with this fiber. It had a very nice crimp to it and was quite fun to spin. I also really love that this is a relatively "green" fiber and it's a good price. I will definitely be buying more in the future.

Meanwhile, on the knitting front, I'm devoting much of my knitting time this week focused on finishing a UFO of long standing: Icarus.

I'm on the final chart and am hoping to finish this baby up by the end of the weekend. My office is actually closed on Friday, so I'm taking Thursday off for a really long weekend. I'm planning on spending much of the time doing fibery pursuits.

Yarnesia

First of all, it's Sunday, which means spinning. Very little has gone on this week, given that it was a Hurricane Knitting week, the end of the hockey playoffs, and insanely hot.

I did clear the rest of the March Hare singles off the bobbin to free it up by Navajo plying it into a miniskein. It's not very much and my technique was a little sloppy, so I haven't even bothered to finish it yet and may not finish it at all. I just like looking at it as a pretty skein.

The only new spinning I managed to do all week was to spin singles from the first half of my other Dyeing Arts roving. This was the 2 oz. of pinks and reds; the other 2 oz. is greens and purples.

And that's all for the spinning content this week!

Yesterday I finally made it over to Natural Stitches to enter the sock contest and had the delightful surprise of meeting Lisa and Anna for the first time in person. They had both just cast on for the February Lady Sweater and were showing off the pattern, and the next thing I knew, I was winding the four skeins of Dream in Color Classy I'd just bought in a cheerful colorway called Go Go Grassy. As you can see, I've already printed out the pattern and swatched, so I'm ready to cast on tonight.

And you can't say I'm crazy for starting a wool sweater in the middle of June (when it's about 90 degrees outside), because Lisa and Anna are doing it, too! With any luck, you may see us in an upcoming Natural Stitches newsletter, modeling our fab new sweaters!

I know what you may be thinking -- why am I starting a sweater when I've been working so hard to finish Icarus? Well, let's face it: There is no way Icarus is going to be done in time for the start of the mystery shawl KAL next Saturday, and I think I'd start to resent the darn thing if I was avoiding starting my exciting new project because of it. I think I've just accepted the fact that Icarus is meant to be a long-term project that will get done, eventually. If I can make it before it turns into a year-old WIP, so much the better.

Knitting at a Slow Pace

In the past few weeks, I've been making a concerted effort to work on my Icarus shawl, long dormant in my WIP pile. I started it last August (in fact, I can remember the movie I was watching when I cast on), but it got put down for the wedding and honeymoon, and then the lure of sweaters and socks and other wooly things distracted me for a long time.

Now that it's summer (in spirit if not in fact), I've been hearing the siren call of lace again. Lace is great for the summer because, even with a nearly complete shawl, the pile of wool in your lap is light and airy and entirly tolerable. I've been working on Icarus in part because I feel guilty for neglecting it for so long but also because I have it in my mind to finish it before the Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl KAL starts up. That goal might be a tad bit too ambitious, as the first clue comes out a week from Saturday. At the moment I'm in the fourth of five repeats of rows 19-42 of chart 1 in Icarus. It looks bigger than the last time you saw it, but not by much (for scale, that's a 32" US 3 Knit Picks circular in there):


(I do realize that's a awful photo, but it was the best of several that I took. It's already difficult to capture bright red on camera, and as fate would have it, we're having an overcast, rainy day just when I want to do a photo shoot.)

The knitting on this shawl is going very slowly, even though the pattern isn't very tricky at the moment. This yarn, while labeled laceweight, is actually closer to cobweb weight, and added to that is its tendency to snag on rough spots on my fingers, so I have to be very careful and deliberate in my knitting movements.

I discovered last night that a really bad thing to do when you're trying to knit lace with what is essentially thread is to watch a playoff hockey game, particularly when the Cup is on the line. I had a couple of scary moments where I nearly dropped stitches, and I decided it would be best to put the knitting away after the second period. Fortunately the lace was fine, and the game ended for the best (and no, I didn't stay up until the end).

Depending on how brave I am, I may actually bring the shawl to Hurricane Knitting tomorrow night (7 p.m. at the Waterworks Barnes & Noble) -- but maybe I should be safe and just bring socks. You'll have to be there to see!

Resurrection

Ever since finishing the toys, I've been turning back to old UFOs. For one, the Big Gray Tube v. 2.0, also known as The Mister's second Seamless Hybrid. I've been working on it mainly at knit night, because stockinette in the round is least likely to get messed up while gossiping (or in the case of last night, drooling over Maryland Sheep & Wool fiber and yarn acquisitions). For a while there I was in the black hole of knitting -- you know, where you knit and knit and knit, but your knitting doesn't get any bigger? -- but after last night I seem to be approaching the end of the body. I'm only about an inch and a half from the length of the last sweater, so now I just have to get The Mister to finally decide how much longer he wants this one to be.

My other knitting this week, when I've been able to concentrate, is a UFO that has not seen the light of day for many months -- I think not since before I got married. Remember Icarus?

It's slightly bigger than the last time you saw it, but it's still pretty slow going with this yarn. It's supposedly lace weight, but I think it's actually more of a cobweb weight. I don't think I'll be able to rescue a dropped stitch without a lot of trouble, so I'm being extra careful. I am trying to finish this up in the next month or so because I signed up for the Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl KAL -- my first mystery KAL -- and I feel a weird sort of obligation to finish the lace already on the needles before I start another lace project.

For the next couple of days, however, I am abandoning pretty much all knitting in favor of kitchen cotton.

Somehow last night the thought popped into my head that some knit dishcloths would make really good Mother's Day presents. This is the first; I have three more skeins of cotton in the stash. They're not much in the way of yardage, but they will certainly help me in my goal to reduce my stash yardage by at least 1,000 yards (Ravelry link) in the month of May.

Swatching Party

Thank you for all of your compliments on the shawl! I am really very pleased with how it turned out. I will of course endeavor to get a decent shot of me wearing it, in my wedding dress, on my wedding day, although here's hoping I won't actually need to use it for warmth.

The FBS reignited in me my addiction to lace, and I had no sooner finished pinning it out and leaving it to dry then I pulled out yarn, needles, and charts and cast on for Icarus.

Unfortunately I must tell you that what you see here is the second attempt. After completing the first full repeat of the first chart, I discovered a weak spot in the yarn several rows back -- and by weak spot I mean that it was hanging on by a few fibers and was ready to snap altogether at any moment. At that point I thought it easier to just cut the yarn and start over than tink back and have to weave in more ends. The yarn is Ornaghi Filati Merino Oro, called a laceweight but I think technically it'd be classified as a cobweb weight or at very least a fine laceweight. I'm knitting on size US 3 needles. I'm not feeling any real urgency to knit this shawl, not having set a deadline for myself (although wouldn't it be nice to have for our honeymoon cruise?), so I'm knitting for a bit and then knitting for a bit on other projects.

Like, for instance, some baby bootees. I whipped up this little bit 'o cuteness in less than two hours last night:

I don't have an intended recipient, nor do I have immediate plans to knit the mate, but it was a fun diversion. Plus, it used up some acrylic-blend stash yarn for which I had no other use.

Tonight's plan is to knit some swatches. With the weather being so unseasonal and the wedding only 12 days away(!), sweaters have been on my mind. There are at least two I am planning to knit this fall: Jenn and I are doing a mini-knitalong of the Central Park Hoodie, and I would like to knit J a Seamless Hybrid for Hannukah this year. Plus, there's also the Tangled Yoke Cardigan, whose yarn was my big splurge at the Yarns by Design anniversary sale, but I am happy to push that a little further down the queue for the time being as I think I may need to acquire some longer circular needles for it. Okay, maybe there's three sweaters I want to knit. And don't even get me started on the socks!