Friday, September 7, 2007

My - Time Does Fly!



Back from Tahoe, a little tanner and somewhat chagrined from the plunge into fairly cold, deep water while learning how to STOP the kayak! I have finished the body of the "Syrian" shawl and found a wonderful edging to put on it.


It is from a 1989 Rowan/Brother Designer Machine Knitting Book by Stephen Sheard. The lace is from the pattern on page 93, done by Erika Knight. They provided the option for a hand knitted collar. The lace is "true" lace, i.e., patterning and yo's on every row. I like the fact that it is a 12 row pattern, fitting nicely into the 6 st pattern of the body of the shawl, and I think it will block out quite well. I decreased the amount of garter stitch sawtooth and added a row of faggots to enable joining.



My "Hanami" shawl is at a standstill. I am spinning the yarn for it and am about half through (490 yards of two ply so far!) I want to dye it eventually but am unable to spin any more yarn for a while. After reading a lot online and at the Schacht website, I finally perfected scotch tension to be able to spin the fine yarn I want. This spurred me on to purchase, at last, the smallest high speed whorl. And of course, (this IS a 20 year old wheel) the whorl doesn't fit. I emailed Schacht and they are going to alter it to fit my flyer as well as fine tune all my bobbins. So spinning on THAT wheel is out for a while. It is my "old reliable" - such a versatile wheel!

And - just to keep me occupied, the apple trees actually have apples this year, and I am drying apples like crazy. Kimberly's favorite!