What I've Been Knitting
I haven't shown y'all what I've been working on for a while. I have one more little FO, but I need to do a little finishing first, so I'll wait on that. I also have been knitting up my Yarn of the Month samples. When I was trying to get the baby stuff done before Jason got here (or before his baptism, once that was a lost cause), I didn't knit up the samples that came in the mail. I thought it was a couple of months' worth, but when I gathered them all together, I'll bet it was at least 5 or 6 months. Shame on me!! I thought about cancelling the subscription, since I obviously wasn't knitting them up, but now I'm going to keep it. There have been some samples I've knit up that were fantastic and I'm excited to discover a new favorite. There have also been a couple that I was surprised I didn't like. So, I still think it's a useful service and I'll just be better about knitting them up when they arrive. I'm knitting them into strips and sewing them together into a blanket. I thought it might look kind of cool and patch worky, but it actually looks God-awful, so I guess this will be a cage liner at the Humane Society once it's bigger. No pictures to save your eyesight. Maybe when it's ready to send off.
What's not so awful is this:
A bunch of us in one of my knitting groups fell in love with the Zephyr yarn, so we all picked out our favorite colors and decided to do a knit along. I'm making the Weeping Willow shawl. Here's a little bit closer look so you can kind of see how it's going to look:
Pre-blocked lace is not that pretty. I do love the Zephyr yarn. It's soft and pretty and the silk gives it a little sheen. Lace just gives me fits, though. I spent one entire night just working on one row - figuring out what row I was on, fixing problems, trying to figure out where I was in the chart, etc. When I'm chugging along in a rhythm, it's great. When I lose my place on the chart, ugh! Last night I started one row with k1, yo and it was supposed to be k2, yo and I didn't figure it out until I got to the halfway point and I had one too many stitches. I had to pick all the way back to the beginning through a billion ssk and k2tog. ARGH!!!
I started this on my Knitpicks Options needles and then last week I bought one of those new Addi lace needles. Comparing the two, I like the Addi better. Both have about the same pointed tip. But the Addi tip is longer, so it seems easier to "scoop up" the stitches for decreases. The KP Options join is perfectly nice and smooth for regular yarn, but for laceweight, it did drag over the join a little. The Addi join is much smoother. Both cords are about the same flexibility. Addi turbos are brass needles, but the lace needles aren't coated in nickel like the regular Addis. They have some sort of resin coating, which makes them a little less slippery than regular Addis or the KP Options, but I found I actually liked the little bit of drag for this yarn. It's not as much as a wooden needle, but it does help keep those tiny little stitches on the needle until you manipulate them. I will definitely use Addi lace needles when I knit lace in the future.
I also started a pair of socks. It's so close to the end of this Project Spectrum colorgroup, but I didn't want to cheat and start the next colorgroup. So, I straddled the line:
I've got the green and yellow of the current PS group and the red of the next PS group. I even threw in a little blue for the first group and some purple and orange in case it takes me until August to knit these. Colorful, eh? This is the Lorna's Laces yarn I bought at Yarn Over last month. The pattern is Shimmer Socks from Magknits. It's my first short row toe. Kind of neat and I think it'll fit pretty well on my toes. I didn't do such a great job of knitting the wraps on one side, though, so it looks kind of messy.
What's not so awful is this:
A bunch of us in one of my knitting groups fell in love with the Zephyr yarn, so we all picked out our favorite colors and decided to do a knit along. I'm making the Weeping Willow shawl. Here's a little bit closer look so you can kind of see how it's going to look:
Pre-blocked lace is not that pretty. I do love the Zephyr yarn. It's soft and pretty and the silk gives it a little sheen. Lace just gives me fits, though. I spent one entire night just working on one row - figuring out what row I was on, fixing problems, trying to figure out where I was in the chart, etc. When I'm chugging along in a rhythm, it's great. When I lose my place on the chart, ugh! Last night I started one row with k1, yo and it was supposed to be k2, yo and I didn't figure it out until I got to the halfway point and I had one too many stitches. I had to pick all the way back to the beginning through a billion ssk and k2tog. ARGH!!!
I started this on my Knitpicks Options needles and then last week I bought one of those new Addi lace needles. Comparing the two, I like the Addi better. Both have about the same pointed tip. But the Addi tip is longer, so it seems easier to "scoop up" the stitches for decreases. The KP Options join is perfectly nice and smooth for regular yarn, but for laceweight, it did drag over the join a little. The Addi join is much smoother. Both cords are about the same flexibility. Addi turbos are brass needles, but the lace needles aren't coated in nickel like the regular Addis. They have some sort of resin coating, which makes them a little less slippery than regular Addis or the KP Options, but I found I actually liked the little bit of drag for this yarn. It's not as much as a wooden needle, but it does help keep those tiny little stitches on the needle until you manipulate them. I will definitely use Addi lace needles when I knit lace in the future.
I also started a pair of socks. It's so close to the end of this Project Spectrum colorgroup, but I didn't want to cheat and start the next colorgroup. So, I straddled the line:
I've got the green and yellow of the current PS group and the red of the next PS group. I even threw in a little blue for the first group and some purple and orange in case it takes me until August to knit these. Colorful, eh? This is the Lorna's Laces yarn I bought at Yarn Over last month. The pattern is Shimmer Socks from Magknits. It's my first short row toe. Kind of neat and I think it'll fit pretty well on my toes. I didn't do such a great job of knitting the wraps on one side, though, so it looks kind of messy.
rdladd@arnan.com
