Resurrection

I haven't quit knitting, just blogging. I'm going to make an attempt to start this up again, but with a fairly good dose of weaving content. I took a weaving class last summer and have been doing quite a lot of it lately.

I recently finished my first waffle-weave project. These towels were from a kit I got from Halcyon Yarns. The kit was to make 3 towels, but I had enough warp for an additional square dishcloth.

I've only hemmed the dishcloth so far. Even though I used sewing thread for the weft on the hems, the flare is quite pronounced compared to the draw-in of the waffles. I'm going to have to mess with the hem on the others a bit to get it to look nice.

These towels are for us. They should go nicely with the green kitchen walls!


During the WEBS anniversary sale, I picked up a few cones of 6/2 unmercerized cotton. I used almost an entire cone of the "oatmeal" color for some huck lace towels for my cousin's wedding (Coming up this Saturday!). I'll post another picture of the completed towels. I'm going to be cross stitching a monogram on some of them in white embroidery floss.

I got the lace pattern out of an Interweave Press compilation of huck lace articles from Handwoven magazine. I'm really impressed with the book. It gets into detail about the structure and how to create your own patterns. It also has instructions for a form of huck that can be done with pickup sticks on the rigid heddle loom. I'm planning to try that out with panels for an afghan one day.


And finally, the next project on the loom. I'm making some shawls for Afghans for Afghans. Syne at weavecast sent me a pre-wound warp (major time saver!) in these crazy colors. I've gotten started on sleying the reed but a diversion to go hear some jazz at the Missouri Botanical Gardens last night has put the brakes on that project for a bit. I might get some more done today, since I got some Alias dvds from Netflix in the mail yesterday.

I'm planning on doing the shawl in an undulating twill pattern from the Davison book. That'll be my first try at undulating twill and at an EPI of 30. Previously I've only done as high as 25.

More of the Shawl Mystery

Clue three was released this week and I spent much of the afternoon working on it. I finished just in time to get a photo in the waning afternoon sunlight.



It's definitely looking like "something" but I can't for the life of me think what the theme might be. Obviously the faggoting is making very clear points. Not sure if that has a meaning or not. Hum. Oh, and to answer Jessica's question from last week since I don't have a great way to respond to comments--The beads are indeed red.

In other knitting news, a couple weeks ago I finished the knee socks I was making with the April yarn from the rockin sock club. This was the "silkie" wool/silk blend and it feels diving. I have to use straps as garters to keep them up though. I might thread in some elastic instead.

My apologies for the poor photo. There wasn't any good light and I haven't persuaded brent to take another photo on a better day.

On the Mystery Stole Bandwagon

So I was browsing around Ravelry the other day when I was struck by all these lovely pictures of a stole in progress. It was the Mystery Stole 3. I saw that signups were closing in a few days so I hurried over and signed up, and immediately started knitting.

The instructions said that it was best worked in black or white, and I had some off-white alpaca/silk blend laceweight that would be just right. I hopped off to the craft store and picked up some beads, and off I went.

Yesterday, clue 2 was released (more of the pattern), and I just finished it today. Here's what it's looking like:


Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what the main motif on this end is supposed to be? Here's a closeup



Also, for posterity's sake, here's the photo I took at the end of clue 1. I didn't want to make a separate post for it too. It was also taken in better light so it looks white instead of blue :)

More swatching

My laptop was out of commission for the weekend as the cord broke and I had to have a new one shipped to me. During that time I did a fair amount of swatching for the master knitter stuff. I misread the instructions for my first cable swatch so I'm using it as my test swatch for the Cable Flare solution. Here are the cable ones I did finish, plus a very pretty lace swatch that ended up being too big :(



You can kind of see some little black lines on the lace swatch. Those are extra T pins in my "cat prevention" attempt. I do not know what it is about knitted swatches but they are cat magnets. Even with the pins, I caught one of them sneaking a paw or two onto it. Sheesh.

As for the cables--wow you can really see the flare problem. I'm kind of surprised they don't have us resolve it on all 3 swatches.

I also did some seaming work. I seamed an exceedingly beautiful 1x1 rib seam, but realized after the fact that my cast on edges aren't the same (one's bumpy, one's smooth), so I have to redo it. I might rework the entire swatch to use a tubular cast on anyway since those are so pretty.

I'm struggling a lot with the seed stitch seam. I got my copy of IK from Spring 2002, and it's helpful but translating it to the reality of my swatch is being troublesome.

Some Lace

My airplane knitting for the week consisted of lace swatches for my level 2 tkga stuff. I used the Barbara Walker Treasuries (books 1 and 2). One of the fun parts of this has been charting the patterns. I prefer to work lace (and cables) almost exclusively from charts, so before starting each swatch, I charted out the lace pattern.

Here are 3 of the swatches I did. The bottom one is a Milanese Lace, and I don't think I'm going to use it. I got lazy and made it too small I think. The top left is "Starlight" lace. I really like this pattern. It's clever and open and pretty. The top right one is "Elfin" lace. It's a very straightforward pattern--easy to work and pretty.


I'm working on another lace swatch now, to replace the Milanese one. It's a wider pattern, and more of a panel than an allover stitch as these were. I'm a little worried that it might end up exceeding the 7" square limitation, but we'll see how it goes.