Via Flickr:
Unblocked, and modified for a narrower scarf with a longer straight section. Love the non-matching ends.
Yarn: Zen Garden Serenity Silk Single, bought in Ithaca when I was at a conference there.
Pattern: feministy.com/triptych-shawl/
Tag Archives: pink
Breaking knitters’ block
(Also bloggers’ block, I suppose!)
I’ve been working on Arietta for nearly a year, and have been stalled on it for only slightly less time. Every time I pick it up I make a mistake, or get confused, and stop again in favour of patterns which require less attention.
But because of getting confused about quantities and washableness of Koigu when planning a present for a brand-new baby, I had a 50g skein of sock yarn in rather fetching reds and pinks, and decided to make a mini-Arietta with it, in the hope of finally getting the pattern.
And I think, cautiously, that it’s worked. This is my mini-Arietta blocking:
It’s 48″ long and 14″ wide at the widest point, which is plenty big enough for a small shawl or a scarf, and it’s lovely. And now I’m working again on its red laceweight sibling…
Long time no blog
Over a month ago, I was half-heartedly whining about having only one thing on the needles, and the need to go and cast on for something else. Now I once again only have one thing on the needles (the same thing – selbu modern, which I’ve hardly touched in the meantime), but in between I have knit lots of things. My course kindly provides the required reading in A4-photocopies, which are conveniently flat, making it easy to knit and read at the same time as long as I choose my knitting carefully, and I’ve been doing a lot of reading since I last blogged. Sadly, I haven’t yet worked out how to blog and read at the same time.
Immediately after hitting ‘publish post’ on my last post, I did indeed go and start preparing to start something else – I wound some handspun yarn (peacock) into a ball and started swatching. I’d been thinking for a while that this wanted to be a scarf in a peacock-tail lace pattern, and now it is! (Although it still needs blocking…)
While knitting the scarf, I decided that I really needed a new hat. This is my own design, although I misjudged the width of the ribbing – it’s this wide so I can fold back the hem, but I don’t like how it looks folded, so I wear it unfolded and covering most of my face 
I’m planning to make another, with less ribbing, and then perhaps publish the pattern (heh, I’m always saying that and never do. Eventually!) The hat got christened on a very rainy Reclaim the Night march, and kept my head warm and toasty and dry throughout, so I am declaring it a success!
When I said I only had one thing on the needles, I was using a rather strict definition of the term, because one of the off-the-needles things is a single mitten, the pair for which I’m going to cast on next. This is a modified version of Susie’s reading mitts, worked upside down, with a different gauge and thumb gusset, and with the hem edges knit into the fabric rather than sewed down later. The lace pattern, which was drew me to the mitts in the first place, is unaltered 
I spun the yarn for this over my birthday weekend, having given myself the weekend off all study-work and work-work (I’m still behind on both kinds of work because of this, but it’s an article of faith that I don’t work on my birthday). The yarn is rather more brown than I usually like, but I think the colours suit the pattern, and I’m enjoying how the colour shifts in different kinds of light, looking sometimes more purple, sometimes more brown, and sometimes more grey. This is chain-plyed to keep the colour changes intact, but I’ve got half of the fibre still unspun, so I think I’ll two- or three-ply that to see the difference in finished colours. I’m getting quite interested in achieving different colour effects in finished yarn from the same fibre, and I’ve got some ideas about other ways to play with this, which I’ll blog about if I get round to doing it before I lose interest in the idea!
If this doesn’t sound like quite enough knitting in a month to be called ‘lots’, it’s because about half of my November knitting has been on gifts for people who might conceivably read this blog, so the rest will have to stay unblogged until after Christmas!
More double knitting
This is the state of the Selbu Modern:
Since doing a stitch count spreadsheet for Wisteria, I seem to be hooked – I’ve done another one for this, and it’s serving the dual purpose of being a place to note which row of the chart I’ve finished, and telling me how far through I am (currently 36%).
Now I’ve got enough of it done to get a proper look at it, I’ve more-or-less decided that I prefer the dark band, and the light base colour for the pattern. Luckily, these are on the same side of the hat Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind later, which is why I’m glad I’ve made this as double knitting instead of stranded. It’s loads of fun to knit, as well – I prefer double knitting to stranding anyway – and now I’m over some early clumsiness with the pattern, I’m sailing along and only needing to look at the chart occasionally. I still need to look at my knitting most of the time, which is a bit of a pain because it limits what I can do at the same time, but it’s fun enough on its own that I mostly don’t mind.
Project promiscuity (swimming Coriolis)
While knitting Wisteria, I’ve also done some other knitting…
After I’d finished the heel (eye of partridge, which looks gorgeous with this yarn) of the first sock, I weighed the remaining yarn, and discovered that it’s not going to be enough for two full socks, so I immediately put the live stitches on waste yarn and cast on for the second sock with the other end of the ball. These will have contrast legs, but I haven’t decided on yarn for them yet. The available one that goes best is the dark red Dream in Colour Smooshy that went with this yarn for the push-me-pull-you socks, but there’s more of that leftover – probably actually enough for a whole pair – so I’m reluctant to use it. None of my other sock yarn goes as well, so these might end up being very short socks. On the other hand, the DiC is a suspect in a hat-in-planning I’m thinking about, which would probably leave enough to finish off these socks…
Knitting while camping
Just back from a weekend of camping, swimming and knitting (report on the camping and swimming on my personal blog, and photos on Flickr), during which J and I both cast on for coriolis – she wanted to try a toe-up sock and had beautiful but very dark and rather subtle yarn, and I wanted some simple, portable camping knitting, so coriolis suited both of us. We spent a lot of time sitting at the tent or on the riverbank knitting, and both got to about halfway through the spiral increases. We’re planning to cast on the second ones together at the Reading Festival in a couple of weeks (even if we haven’t finished the first by then), so these should probably be called my “camping socks”, but the swimming trip was so much fun it’s taking precedence, and I’m calling them “swimming coriolis”.
(This is the variegated yarn I used in my push-me-pull-you socks, but it’s so much more beautiful on its own.)
Finished grey cable socks
Neither of these photos is very good, sadly, but the socks themselves are lovely
The cable panel is much more visible in the flesh than in photos, the yarn is soft and fuzzy, and the colour is a bit more muted than it looks above.
And having finished knitting these, and now having nothing actively OTN, I need to quickly decide what I’m doing next, because I’m going on holiday tomorrow. Yay!
One finished sock!
First sock completed less than a week after beginning, which is probably a record for an adult sock Second sock to be begun tomorrow, and I might make an attempt at writing up the pattern (although with adjustments, since I used Cat Bordhi’s ridgeline master pattern.
This was my first attempt at EZ’s sewn bind off, on Frax‘s recommendation, and it is just as stretchy as the underlying knitting. I’m a convert! And I really like the cable as an inset panel, rather than continuing onto the cuff, and the plain rolled edge instead of ribbing, which seems to suit the soft, slightly fuzzy yarn. Impatient now to start the second, but that will wait until tomorrow.