Thursday, February 7, 2008

Margaret's Shawl


I finished Margaret's Shawl this week. Margaret raises Llamas and contributes fleece to a "wool pool" with other members of her Llama organization. She gave me a skein of her light tan two ply, about 800 grams, about two years ago. I kept trying to figure out what I wanted to do with this springy yarn. Finally I decided to make an original shawl, I have knit enough of other's designs already!
I found an old lily of the the valley edging design in an old German pamphlet, altered it to be able to have it symmetrical on both sides of the triangle, and invented a meeting point design.
Then I proceeded to just chart out some yo's and K2tog's and SSK's on a chart till it pleased me.
Voila! MY OWN DESIGN!

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Little knitting

Found this on Ravelry this morning. Good fast project, I can use leftover alpaca from previous cardigans, shawls and scarves I have knit. Started it right off:



Smarty pants that I am, I decided to use a modified applied I cord method on the the edge stitches, but am knitting them on as I go, with a width of 3 stitches on each side. I forgot that this really ends up being essentially all slipstitched every other row, so now the middle section with the argyle features is really "poofing" up. I will have to decide what to do, it is sorta interesting.
The other day I saw another item on Ravelry , and was inspired. So - I spent some time with my Walker books, found a suitable lace edging altered it a bit and graphed it:


I used the "Double Edging" on page 375 of her second book, got rid of the middle and smaller lace section and decreased repetions to 24 from 30 to make the actual design a comfortable "scarf" size. I also added my favoirte "YO, K2tog" loopy edge to each right side.

I had to change some of the K2togs to SSK to make the scarf lie flatter and have more of an equal pattern on both sides. And, as indicated by the two pink lines in the middle of the pattern, I decided to have a gradation of triangle sizes (1 small, 3 middle sized), though to the main part will be all large size. Easy pattern to get in the swing of. The yarn is heavenly, "Mountain Goat" by Mountain Colors out of Corvallis MT. It is a 100 gm. skein of "Winter Sky" in a worsted wt. I am using size 8 needles and plan to use the whole thing!

















The color is absolutely fabulous, and the slight sheen from the mohair seems to deepen the depth of the colors.

Here is a pair of pre-felting "Felted Clogs", lying atop the wonderful suede I bought on eBay for soles. It is wonderful heavy suede, all one needs is the patience to punch the holes. I have made many many pairs of these clogs, and the suede bottoms really do make them more functional. These are you the Mensa scholarship auction in May.
But I am happiest that I am gradually cutting down my spinning stash. And using the old Ashford with the bulky head. I really tried to use my Schacht Matchless to spin bulky yarn, but the Ashford is simply easier, with much less frustration. For all the bobbins/whorls I own for the Matchless, it really seems (for me) to have a limited range of yarns spun to my satisfaction.