Lace Shawls

I love lace shawls.  They are so delicate and pretty! I have been reluctant to make them for myself though because I wasn't sure if I would wear them. This past winter, some of the women of my knitting group have been making and wearing some beautiful lace shawls though so I decided to try my hand at them too.

I made the Multnomah shawl in a small size last fall. It was easy garter stitch and Feather & Fan lace. Only one ball of yarn required. I wore it with the point in the front and wrapped snuggly around my neck under my coat all winter. 

There is more information about it on my Ravelry listing here: Multnomah Shawl
The pattern is available free from this web site:  http://helloknitty.net/  
It is made in a sock yarn with a slow color change. I found the yarn at the Double Ewe yarn shop in Circle Pines, Minnesota. A fun little shop.

I really enjoyed using this shawl, so when the group started talking about the shawls they were making I decided it was time to make another one. Summer is a great time to work on a shawl because it is much lighter in your lap than a heavy sweater or blanket! 

The Adamas Shawl came up in the discussion.  After taking a look at the pattern, I decided I had the perfect yarn to make it.  A few years ago, I dyed some lace weight yarn with the left-over Easter egg dyes. Fun, bright colors!

I am enjoying the pattern. It is really knitting up fast.  The changes in color keep it interesting.  I am actually farther along than this picture shows.  I have about 2 inches of green after the yellow.

More info on my Ravelry listing: Easter Adamas Shawl
The Adamas pattern is available free from MimKnits:  Adamas Shawl  She has other beautiful shawl patterns for sale. I may have to try some of those later.
The yarn is KnitPicks Bare, an un-dyed, 100% Merino wool yarn which comes in lots of different weights.  

This shawl will be great fun to wear.  It is such bright, happy colors.  I seem to wear a lot of basic dark colors in the winter, especially black.  It will be fun to throw this on over things.

First Grandbaby on the way!

I love to knit. You all know that by now! My knitting enthusiasm had dipped a lot though this spring and I wasn't sure what to knit any more. Then my daughter, Jessie, announced that there was a baby on the way and when were her blankets coming! Ha! She knows me well!

I started a blanket, of course but it got a bit off course somewhere. I think I was mathematically challenged. I started making a round blanket and calculated how many stitches I needed to have the lace edging come out right. I kept knitting and knitting. I had to go back to the store for yarn twice! You would think that would have given me a clue, don't you? But I kept knitting, all the time thinking that it was getting awfully large.

It suddenly dawned on me that I was using the number of stitches in each section instead of the entire number of stitches to calculate and I could have stopped in at least 2 places already. So the blanket is almost 5 feet across! Jessie and the baby will be able to snuggle up together under this one!

I can't seem to get the colors to come out right in the photos. It is a dark teal and purple.

Iowa State Fair

I entered the fair for the first time this year. I have thought about it before but never followed through to get it done. Some of the knitters from the Ames Public Library's Knit and Crochet group were talking about entering so I thought maybe this year should be the year I finally did too. I found that there were lots of categories in knitting. I thought I might be able to enter a few things so I started making a list of what I had and which categories they would fit into. I came up with 15 items!

Click on the picture for a better look.
If you make it to the fair check out the Fiber & Threads, upstairs in the Varied Industries Building.

Trekking Pro Natura Dublin Bay Socks

My Tofutsies sock was finished so I started another sock on the size 1 needles. They had barely cooled off!

I am using the Dublin Bay Socks pattern from here. It has a pretty lace inset on the sides of the socks but otherwise is a simple sock to knit.

The yarn is Trekking Pro Natura wool and bamboo blend. It knits up really nice and doesn't split at all! Lovely yarn!

Pi shawl--Is it big enough yet?

I am still working on this shawl. I have almost finished with the first 880 yard ball of yarn. I was afraid for a while that the ball would never quit. It seemed to go on forever!

Is it big enough yet to add the edging? When I grab the center and give it a gentle tug it comes just past my shoulder. I wonder how much it might stretch when it is wet?

I have another big ball of this yarn. I know I won't run out of yarn for my border at least!

Pi is growing

Well, we didn't go on vacation and I am just now catching up with my blog. Our daughter had to have her appendix out so we were in the hospital instead of traveling. Fortunately we caught it early and she has recovered very well. We have been busy finding her an apartment at school and collecting furniture for it. This week I have been babysitting for a friend's 2 little ones. Busy, busy times.

I have accomplished some knitting in the meantime though. The Pi shawl is growing as you can see. It even looks a little like a pie here.

I am at 576 stitches and maybe a little over halfway through the first 880 yard ball of yarn. When I hold the center of the circle in my fingers and stretch it out it goes from my fingers to just above my elbow. I think it needs to be quite a bit larger yet to make a nice shawl.

Pi shawl--A Fresh Start

So, I was knitting along on my shawl, and noticed that the circular needle was giving me much smaller stitches than the double points that I started this with. I kept knitting for a while hoping that it was just my imagination but no, it was true.

Since the beginning was a little shaky anyway, with the ladders that had formed between the needles, I sought out a second opinion from the LYS owner, Rosemary, at the Rose Tree Fiber Shop. We decided that it must have been the fact that this needle was more slippery than the dpns. I have had that happen with heavier yarns before but somehow thought that it wouldn't make that much difference in this lace weight on such small needles.

I wasn't liking the 16 inch circular I was using anyway because it wasn't very flexible. While I was at the shop I bought 16 and a 24 inch circulars in the size 4 so I could restart and hopefully have all of the stitches come out approximately the same size. I used the 2 circular needles to do the cast on and the first few sections. I still have a bit of a ladder between the needles even though I tried to keep those first stitches very tight. I think it is just the yarn!

Now I am almost back to where I was and things are going smoothly.

My knitting bag is packed for vacation. I probably have way more than I will find time to work on I wouldn't want to be sitting there just wishing I had some knitting!

EZ as Pi Shawl

I had a quiet moment today so I decided to get my Pi shawl started. I want to take it along on our vacation next week so I needed to do the fiddly part beforehand.

Bob and Larry helped me keep the needles from slipping through those first wobbly stitches! I had read that you should put it on a pillow and turn the pillow as you go instead of trying to turn the needles around. It worked very well!


When it got big enough, I added another needle. I prefer working with 5 needles rather than 4. Here it is at the 36 stitch stage.

And again at the 72 stitch stage. The ladders at the corners got rather big. I am hoping that with some washing and blocking they will even out more. But if not, this is a learning experience right?

I now have it at 144 stitches and on a 16 inch circular needle so it is ready to go on vacation with me!

Feather and Fan border for Pinwheel Blanket

Several people have asked me how I did the border on this blanket so I thought it might be helpful to post it here.

The only thing you need to add this border is to have the right number of stitches. I was thinking wrong at first. I counted the k2tog six times and the yo, k1 six times and thought I needed a multiple of 12--oops! You have to have a multiple of 18. I did a row of yo, k2
and then a plain row of knit first to make an eyelet row for a ribbon or string. Then it can be used as a bag later or it can just be decorative. After this round I didn't do any more increases.

Round 1: I started at the beginning of the round with (k2tog) six times, (yo, k1) six times
Round 2: purl
Round 3: knit
Round 4: knit

Repeat these rounds twice or as desired ending with a round 1 then purl a round, knit a round, purl a round and bind off loosely in knit. I used a needle 2 sizes larger for this.

I did find that when you come around to the beginning you have to start the next round 1 with k2tog three times instead of 6.

I hope that helps. Let me know if anything is still unclear. I love to help people with their knitting!

Easter Egg dye

Did you guess it? I was dyeing Easter yarn! Lots of little skeins of lace weight yarn.

I was surprised at the intensity of the colors. I thought that once I added more water for the dye jars that the color would be more pastel but these are nice bright colors. The red and blue separated a bit in the purple one.

I used an 880 yard skein for lace weight Bare yarn from Knitpicks. I made 9 skeins from it approximately 100 yards each. Then I dunked them in jars filled with the leftovers from dyeing the Easter eggs on Saturday night. I put them in the microwave and zapped them for 2 minutes at a time, letting it rest a few minutes between. It seemed like it took a long time to exhaust the dye.

I was thinking of doing something with a color blocked look when it was knit up. That's why I made them each about 100 yards. I would love to knit a lace shawl. I have been reading about Elizabeth Zimmermann's Pi Shawl. I have only done simple lace patterns and would like to explore some new ones.

I am not sure about these bright colors though. They might be a bit much. They are not the pastels that I was imagining for this. Well, I guess I can always make it into socks!

Happy Easter!

Guess What I have been doing?