Engeln's Spitzenstricken Trachtentuch B

I finally began this lace collar/shawl pattern I have loved for years. I bought "Orenburg" lace yarn from here during their New Year's Eve sale. Not my most favorite color, but now that I am knitting with it, I love it. The yarn itself is core spun mohair, I assume Kid Mohair, but it seems a little thicker at times. It is core spun on a silk thread, and the shimmer of the silk shows thru here and there. Thinnest laceweight I have ever knit with, and I am using Addi Lace size 3. I am doing the "B" version.

The pattern is available two places, Lacis as part of the booklet:

"Spitzenstricken Von Erich Engeln Bk 3 "

Or the pamphlet alone is available Here

In looking at the finished products others have knit, I am not enamored with the edge stiches (this is knit from the center neck down).
So - I charted out the first two blocks of the pattern using my charting font and open office spreadsheet. I HAD to chart it out, and will have to chart out the rest, the symbols he uses are so non intuitive to me.

The original pattern makes no definition for the "3" indicated on the edge stitches, though it is evident from the pattern progression that it is an increase of three from one stitch. I added a 3 stitch garter edge, followed by a YO, twist stitch, YO, and then proceed to the first knit stitch.


I also have finally gotten brave in my combination knitting style, and I am not bothering with reseating the stitches in order to twist them the usual way (knit in the back of the stitch) and am instead just knitting the as it is seated thru the front of the loop. My single twist stitches twist to the right instead of to the left, and it doesn't seem to matter.

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!

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.

Bloody Stupid is Right!

Finished a particularly time consuming hat this weekend, BS Johnson from the Winter Knitty. I will ADMIT I altered it to make it fit tighter since it is intended as a chemo hat. But the math just doesn't make it attaching the cabled band to the half knit hat. The edge stitches of the band are ({6x16} (96) plus {3x16} (48) plus 20 = 164. Three quarters of 164 (the pick up rate along the hat edge) is 123. This is nine stitches off. At least the designer could have mentioned this uneven p/u rate instead of detailing it finely on the pattern. I altered it to 120 stitches and it fit better, but still ended up stitches off. But it sure makes me understand that I am a PROCESS not a PRODUCT knitter.
Lovely hat, by the way. I have never used Cascade Indulgence, and it is heavenly soft.

But, on an interesting note, it did snow here yesterday, all day, on and off. The euphorbia seemed to like it!

Rain and my Favorite Search Engines!

Wish I could figure our how to make the rain fall on this image that I got from Stumbleupon. Well, later for that.

But - here are two search engines (I think the same guys make both of them) that I love because they present results like I think):

http://www.ujiko.com/
http://www.kartoo.com/

But I DID manage to figure out how to take a screen shot of Kartoo's results for "Ravelry" - but you lose some of the excitement of just passing your cursor over all the parts and seeing the connections. Try it!



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Hellebores

It is approaching the middle of December. Here on the coast of Southern Oregon, it is time for the Hellebores to bloom. Some of my favorite flowers, blooming in the cold.

I am still alive, still knitting!

Waiting for a new faster Internet connection to be installed, we will be geting "Wild Blue" satellite soon, should be about 10 times faster. With this dial-up, we are getting left in the dust and composing for the blog is getting slower.
But I have been busy:

The two shawls went to my two
Aunts in South Dakota. The giant slippers still need to be felted, as does the hat for my uncle Rudy that ended up WAY too big! The skeins of yarn are dyes with mushrooms, cedar bark, and alder berries.

And I can't move the pictures around to save my soul for some reason!

Diva is doing better all the time, but still gets limpy when we push her too hard.

Ravelry is keeping me way too busy as well, what a cool cool site!