Watership Down - Finished

I finished up the knitting Saturday evening, and blocked it Sunday morning and took this picture before unpinning it.  I finished up Clue 7 two weeks ago, but didn't feel like pinning it out to get a photo of it.  To start clue 8 you have to pick up the slipped stitches on the edge of clue 7 and knit into the front and back of each one.  I did the picking up first, slipping each slipped stitch (both legs) onto a knitting needle in the proper orientation.  As you can imagine, this took a little while.  Then I knit into the front and back of each stitch.  This took me two evenings.  Clue 8 went reasonably quickly, for a Never-Ending-Border.  I used my Knit Companion app on my iPad for both clues.  It is really great when you have to repeat the same chart multiple times.

Here is a beauty shot on my dress maker dummy and a close up of the beads in the border.

This shawl design has lots of possibilities for playing with color because of the two knit on edges.  The body of mine took 44 grams of yarn, the first border took 36 grams and the second border took 28 grams.


Project:  Watership Down by Janine le Cras
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Selene in Insecta
Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Watership Down - Clue 7 - Half way done

I spent most of yesterday working on my Watership Down mystery shawl and managed to get through half of Clue 7.  Clue 8, the final clue, came out this past Friday and one of the test knitters has posted a picture of her shawl on the spoiler thread, so it is no longer a mystery.  Clue 8 is another knitted on border, so after I finish this one, I get to pick up all of the slipped stitches on this border and then knit into the front and back of each one and do another border using skein 4 (on the left).

That will get me more into the browns.  This is an interesting shawl design and you could have a lot of fun playing with colors.

I have been using Knit Companion on my iPad while knitting the border (I also used Knit Companion while knitting my Open Eye Tunic).  I have found that the app is very useful if you are repeating a chart multiple times.  If you use the smart counter you can even set the number of repeats that you are supposed to do and it will keep track of them for you, which makes knit on borders (also know as never ending borders or NEBs) more bearable.  I did not use it when I was knitting the body of the shawl because there were three charts, and we were only going through each one once.  Plus they all fit onto a single page.

Project:  Watership Down by Janine le Cras
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Selene in Insecta
Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Open Eye Tunic - One Side Insert Done

With Bloomsbury blocking I am finally able to start on my Open Eye Tunic.  I received my yarn from The Unique Sheep on June 24 - Electric Blue Flame on Tinsel Toes.  It is not as electric as it would be on a pure silk, but I am not a big fan of pure silk yarn.  I decided to start with skein 6, the left-most skein in the above photo and start by knitting the side inserts.  Then I am going to switch to skein 1, the right-most skein when I start working the body.

One of the really frustrating things about this pattern was the fact that the lace has written directions only, no charts.  I charted both lace patterns, and then made some mods to the Eyelet Lace Chart that is used for the body.  I use Knit Visualizer as my charting software and was able to export the lace charts as .png files and then import them into Word Perfect and convert the file to pdf, which I then pulled into Knit Companion, a knitting app for the iPad.  This is my first time knitting from Knit Companion and I have to say that I love it.  As an engineer I appreciate things that are well-designed (one of the main reasons I bought a Honda Element) and this app is extremely well-designed.  It also has terrific in-app help.

After getting my charts set up in Knit Companion, I cast on the first side insert.  I did 9 repeats of the chart as instructed and went to check my measurements.  I was fine on the stitches, but there was no way that I could stretch the 9 repeats out to 15 inches, so I kept knitting.  Unfortunately, when I had done my calculations I had figured that I could get both side inserts out of skein 6, but only if I was doing 9 repeats.  I ended up switching to skein 5 on row 3 of the 10th repeat and did 12.5 repeats to get to the right dimensions.

The piece is actually upside down, the cast off edge is at the bottom and the cast on edge is at the top.  If I were a really aggressive blocker I could probably have gotten by with fewer repeats of the pattern, but I am not a really aggressive blocker and do not believe in stretching yarn to within a millimeter of its life.

Pattern:  Open Eye Tunic by Deborah Helmke (Interweave Knits, Summer 2013)
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Tinsel Toes in Electric Blue Flame
Needle:  US 7 (4.5 mm)