Serendipity

This post has been a long time coming.

Pattern: Mystery Stole 4 ("Serendipity") by Georgina Bow Logsdon
Yarn: Aisling Yarns superwash merino lace weight, colorway Perfect Storm, ~1.75 skeins
Needles: US 4 (3.5 mm) Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: September 7/November 28
Mods: none

This stole was an interesting knitting experience. It was the first time I'd incorporated beads into my knitting -- 6.0 mm hematite beads, applied through the use of an almost impossibly tiny crochet hook. The beads are mainly on the two ends of the stole, which give it a nice weight when worn.

As far as the construction of the stole is concerned, that turned out to be the one tricky part. It's knit in two halves, from the outside toward the center. When the two sections are complete, a row is knit in waste yarn, which is then followed in order to graft the two halves together. This proved to be the most difficult part of the process for me; I spent a good hour and a half weaving the yarn tail through the stitches and then tightening up the grafting row. I'm not too anxious to do that again.

I really, really liked this yarn. It has a nice tight twist and a lovely shine to it, and I think it feels a little more substantial than a typical lace weight. The dyer names all her colorways after movie titles, and I do think this one looked rather like rough ocean waves. I had set out to knit this stole in a solid color, but once I saw this yarn, I knew I had to have it.

Now that I've been through two mystery knit-alongs, I think I've gotten them out of my system for a while. I'm happy with the results of this particular stole, but it's not a pattern I would have necessarily chosen on my own. I think I will stick to the many lace shawls I have in my mental queue for the foreseeable future while I enjoy this addition to my accessory closet.

Chugging Along

Knitting continues here chez Knit/Wit. I'm still working on the socks for my brother-in-law; miraculously, I'm already into the gusset of the second sock, having finished the first last Friday night. They're not much to look at, so I'll spare you the in-progress shots for now. (I'll bet you can imagine what a ribbed navy man sock looks like anyway. Right? Okay, moving on.)

I had to take a break from my stranded knitting last week when I had cold brain, so I decided to do a little charity knitting and whipped up a chemo cap with some, well, interesting novelty yarn that Jen forced on me donated to me last year.

This would be the No Hair Day chemo cap or, as I like to think of it, the I-Skinned-a-Muppet-and-Made-a-Hat chemo cap. I know this picture is blurry, but trust me when I tell you that it looks very much the same in real life.

I was ready to get back to some patterned knitting after dealing with all that fuzziness, and I've made some progress on my Ivy League Vest since last you saw it. I'm now through the waist decreases.

Meanwhile, I also have some blocking going on. Full reveal to come later this week!

The Run Down

Run down of WIPs, that is. It's been a while since I've shown you what's on the needles, and as no one of them is particularly exciting at the moment, this is all I've got to blog about.

First, there's the Blue Tube -- my father's birthday sweater. I'm several inches into the body and, as you can see, quickly approaching the end of the first skein of yarn. I'm doing the body first because it'll take the longest.

Next up, and considerably more exciting, is my Mystery Stole. You can see the interesting interplay of lace and beads going on here (and I swear it doens't look so much like camouflage in real life; I think picking the brownish carpet as a background was not the right choice).

I'm really enjoying working with this yarn. It has a really tight twist (you all know how much I love a yarn with tight twist!), so somehow that makes it feel more substantial than "normal" laceweight. I'm about two-thirds of the way through the second clue, so I'll be trying my best to finish up this clue tonight before the next one is released tomorrow.

Taking the place of my lunchtime sock knitting is the sock yarn blanket, which, for nothing but garter stitch, has been surprisingly exciting. Maybe it's the fact that I'm using up a good portion of my sock yarn scraps. (By the way, you might recognize the yarn from my Hederas and my mother's Pomatomus socks. Yes, I did have leftovers that are more than two years old!)

Finally, although I don't have a picture (because it wouldn't be much to look at at this point), I'm still spinning. I'm working on the first bobbin of singles of some All Spun Up merino/alpaca, hoping for a two-ply laceweight. It's a dark gray with touches of deep purple -- not exactly an optimal shade for photographing.

What projects are you working on now that fall is on its way?

How I Spent My Labor Day Weekend

An Essay in Pictures (and a Few Words)
by SJ

I finished spinning up the second bobbin of my CMF superwash merino and started in on the third bobbin (not shown).

I swatched for Mystery Stole 4, which begins this Friday.

I got started on New Pathways with my learning socks (Little Sky and Little Coriolis) in some leftover Cascade 220.

I took my last two pairs of socks in to be weighed at Natural Stitches and rewarded myself for a job well done in the contest (I won't win, but I'll make a respectable showing) with some more sock yarn specifically for New Pathways socks. First up will be this Araucania Ranco Multy, which I wound a little bit ago.

How did you spend your holiday weekend?