Open Up Mystery KAL - Clue 2 Done!

Joji dropped Clue 2 yesterday, a day early, as she was in Australia for a teaching gig.  It was a pretty quick knit, especially as I was thoroughly familiar with the patten.  I do like where this is going and I see picking up stitches and some wings in the future.  I really like the subtle variegation of my yarn.  It provides interest without overwhelming the patterning.  The pattern is definitely challenging a lot of the knitters in the KAL.  It has stockinette, reverse stockinette and cables, and some folks are really struggling.  There are 3 edge stitches on each edge that are not charted, and I think that may also be throwing some folks.  If it were me, I would have charted those stitches.  I mean why have them explicitly in the written directions, but not in the chart?  I’ve always felt that the chart and the written should match, and my charting program automatically creates written directions from the chart so that they do match, not having them match just seems odd.

Pattern:  Open Up Mystery KAL by Joji Locatelli

Yarn:  PennyRose Yarns Benji

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Open Up Mystery KAL - Clue 1 Done!

Back on October 19, Joji Locatelli announced a one-skein mystery knit along.  Seeing as it was my birthday, I thought, why not.  I bought a copy of the pattern and did some virtual stash diving as most of my stash is catalogued on Ravelry and found this skein.

This yarn is Benji from PennyRose yarns, which has been discontinued.  It is 100% Merino and has about 470 yards in 100 grams.  The pattern calls for a single skein of approximately 420 yards, and warns that it uses most of the yarn, so having a cushion is recommended.  Although I have lots of fingering weight yarn in my stash, most of it is 400 yards per 100 grams, so I went to my light fingering, which is a much smaller group.  The dyer is Ruth Greenwald and I discovered her through Zen Yarn Garden yarns, when Roxanne was doing a Light and Dark Lace Club where she and Ruth would take turns dyeing the yarn, and Ruth created the patterns.  Ruth also had PennyRose yarns as her fiber business and I bought several skeins from her.  This one was stashed back in 2011, so it came from pretty deep stash.  

Before I started working on this clue, I checked out how to work the slip-slip-knit (left leaning single decrease), and the center double decrease in Patty Lyons’ book “Knitting Bag of Tricks”.  She has a method of working both of those as a single move, which gives a very neat result, and is fun to do, although working the CDD as a single move can be a bit fiddly.  Funny thing, when I pinned this out for the picture I initially pinned it out wrong side up.  I didn’t realize I had done that until I unpinned it.  I think the reverse looks pretty good.

Pattern:  Open Up Mystery KAL by Joji Locatelli

Yarn:  PennyRose Yarns Benji

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Transitions Shawl - Beauty Shots

Now that the weekend is here and I am actually home during daylight hours I was able to get some beauty shots of the Transitions shawl.  It is an ample shawl, and quite floaty and ethereal.

Now I just have to figure out what to wear it with.  I am sure it will be a big hit at Bead & Button next year.

Transitions Shawl - Finished!

Finished this morning.  I almost finished last night, but started to fall asleep while I was knitting.  It was hard to put down though with only 3 repeats of the border left so when I woke up a little early this morning I decided to finish it before going to work.  It always amazes me when I am working the knitted on borders because the first half seems to take so long, but the second half seems to go so fast.  I know this is all perception and the fact that the amount that you have knitted is greater then the amount that you have left to knit once you get past the half way point.  Those last 3 repeats took me an hour.  The other thing that amuses me about knit on borders is the designers who tout them as a way of avoiding binding off hundreds of stitches.  I don't mind the bind off.  I do a lace bind off with a crochet hook rather than a knitting needle, which makes it go a lot faster and is a lot less fiddly, and it certainly takes a lot less time to do the bind off than to do a knit on border.  I do like the look of knit on borders, however, so from a design perspective, they are a definite win.

Pattern:  Transitions Shawl by Ruth Greenwald
Yarn:  PennyRose Yarns Carrie in Cucumber and Cantaloupe
Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Transitions Shawl - NEB Half-Way Done!

Finally a better picture of the shawl.  I am half way done with the Never Ending Border.  I have been plugging away at it steadily during the evenings after work.  I weighed my ball of yarn before I began and was concerned about having enough yarn as I only had 16 grams left.  I did 6 repeats of the border and weighed the ball again and my suspicions were confirmed so I ripped back and did some stash diving.  Fortunately I had another skein of the same yarn in Cantaloupe so I decided to do a contrasting border.  The Cantaloupe skein was originally purchased for a Goddess Knits mystery knit along (Mystery Shawl 19, according to my notes), but obviously I never knit that shawl.

Pattern:  Transitions Shawl by Ruth Greenwald
Yarn:  PennyRose Yarns Carrie in Cucumber and Cantaloupe
Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Transitions Shawl - Clue 4 Done!

And another not so great picture taken with flash and pretty scrunched up (I'm only using a 40" needle), but you get the idea.  It is pretty hard to get good photos this time of the year.  By the time I get home from work it is too dark.  Sometimes I manage to snap one before I go in, but the light isn't really the best until late morning, and I really want to get started on the border tomorrow, so I couldn't wait.  It has been a pretty solid 4 days of lace knitting, which I haven't done in a while.  I seem to do this when I have to be around people a lot (have visitors, or go visiting), not that I'm antisocial or anything, but I do find lace knitting to be very meditative.  I have an increase row to do and then I get to start on the Never-Ending-Border (or NEB).  I had totally forgotten about the NEB, hadn't even printed it out.  The kids are gone and the house is quiet once more.  You know what really amazes me when they visit?  How much trash they produce.  We barely produce a bag of trash a week (13 gallon kitchen trash can size), but in the few days they were here we produced two.

Pattern:  Transitions Shawl by Ruth Greenwald
Yarn:  PennyRose Yarns Carrie
Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Transitions Shawl - Clue 3 Done!

Sorry for the not so great photo, but it is dark here and I had to use flash.  I spent the day knitting Clue 3, working rows in between basting the turkey.  We did our dinner today, rather than yesterday because the kids were perambulating, visiting relatives, and didn't get here until late last night.  I actually like doing Thanksgiving this way.  I made the stuffing yesterday and only had to do the turkey, mashed potatoes and the cranberry sauce today.  It actually made for a much less stressful holiday.  Last year I was cooking the whole day and poor Bruce was constantly washing pots for me.  I think we have just established a new tradition.  Every one has gone back to bed except for me, so I am sitting here on my daybed, with my kitty, knitting and watching X-Files on Netflix.

Pattern:  Transitions Shawl by Ruth Greenwald
Yarn:  PennyRose Yarns Carrie
Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Transitions Shawl - Clue 2 Done!

Last night I picked this shawl back up again.  I had actually started knitting on Clue 2 a month or so ago and had gotten over half of it done when I lost steam.  But last night when I came home from work I decided that it was a good weekend to work on lace and that I would see how much of this shawl I could get done in between cooking and cleaning.  I usually don't spend a whole lot of time cleaning (I would much rather craft), and with it being just the two of us we don't actually make much mess just some clutter, but the kids are coming home for Thanksgiving and the boy is bringing his fiancee, so I have to do at least a little cleaning, and herd some of my unfinished projects into a semblance of order, or at least get them out of the way.  Not that I am going to go all Martha Stewart or anything, but I thought I could at least change the sheet on the day bed (cat fur) and clear it off so that someone else could sit on it besides me.

Pattern:   Transitions Shawl by Ruth Greenwald
Yarn:  PennyRose Yarns Carrie
Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Transitions - Clue 1

This is the latest offering in the Light & Dark Lace club that Ruth of PennyRose Yarns and Roxanne of Zen Yarn Garden present.  Ruth has always done the designing, and she and Roxanne alternate on the dyeing.  Ruth does the light colors, and Roxanne the dark.  The yarn is Carrie Lace, a very nice 2 ply (80% merino, 20% silk), the color is Cucumber.  I am using US 3 (3.25 mm) needles.  The clue came out over a week ago, but I have been busy finishing up my third Diadem shawl (a previous club offering) and didn't really get to it until yesterday.

And speaking of Diadem #3, here is a slightly better shot that shows off the variegation better.

Wilhelmina Shawlette

I cast this on early in December (the 8th, according to my project page), but it took a back seat to a couple of other shawls.  I finally got back to it this past week.  The design is from a book published by The Cooperative Press of projects inspired by literary characters called What Would Madame Defarge Knit?.  This shawlette was designed by Chrissy Gardiner, and was inspired by Mina, the heroine of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.  I made mine in Serendipitous Ewe Fate Fingering in Blood Thirsty.

And here a beauty shots of my latest shawls (I seem to be making a lot of them lately).

The Wilhelmina Shawlette

Arachne's Delight

The Jungle Book Shawl

The Christmas Shawl

I also have the Dickens colorway (red/green) for this shawl, now I just have to decide which color to start with.

Arachne's Delight - Finished

I am spending a quiet day at home knitting and watching all of the "Thin Man" movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy.  This is the October 2011 Light and Dark Lace Club Shawl.  The yarn is PennyRose Lili, a 100% merino lace weight in Toffee.

Arachne's Delight - Charts A & B

So Friday I cast on the latest offering in the Light and Dark Lace Club.  For this one the yarn and pattern are both by Ruth of PennyRose Yarns.  I've never done a shawl of this shape before.  The pattern called for size 5 needles, but I went down to size 3.  I just can't knit yarn this fine on size 5 needles.  By the time I cast on the first two clues had come out, so I was able to work off of the combined chart.  The lace pattern is super easy.

I finished up the last row after we got back from a day in Charlottesville with the kids.  We finally got to meet the son's girlfriend.  We all went to the Veritas Vinyard for the tasting and tour.  I highly recommend doing the tour.  We even got to taste some wine in process from one of the fermenting tanks.  We liked the white wines, but weren't too impressed with the reds, they didn't really have much body.  The vinyard is located near Afton Mountain, and the countryside is just gorgeous.

My cat is curled up in her chair under her blanket.  I leave the chair set up for her, with the blanket in place (she gets perturbed if humans sit there, or if humans put things there).

And when she gets up and settles down, I pull the blanket down.

Creating a nice cave that gets warmed by her body heat.  I always figure she curls up there when the world gets to be too much.  I totally understand.

Lacy Angles - Finished

I spent most of last week fighting off a migraine (successfully) with caffeine and salt (kind of nice to have an excuse to eat chips) and doing some mindless knitting - a summer top - but finally returned to this project last night.  I never did post clue 3 because my mind was occupied figuring out when to start the knit on border.  You see, the pattern instructions called for 5 rows of stockinette and specified that you had to increase the stitches to 240 on the last right side row.  Now this just bothered me.  According to the designer she had come close to running out of yarn and so she had removed a couple of rows and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe she had that final stitch count in her head, and when she removed those rows that number stayed.  Now 240 stitches does give you 40 repeats of the border, but I didn't see anything magical about that number.  But what really annoyed me about those increases in the last row was that you had to do an odd number of them (15 stitches), so they wouldn't be symmetric.

The first thing that I decided was that I wanted to finish with a complete repeat of the central pattern, so that dictated the number of rows of stockinette that I wanted to do (I think it was 7).  Looking at the stitch count I saw that this would result in 231 stitches, but the border pattern is 12 rows, with 6 live stitches being used up with each repeat, and 231 divided by 6 is 38.5.  So, on the last row I only did 2 increases at the outer edges and omitted the 2 increases on either side of the central panel, resulting in 38 repeats, with 1 stitch left over, which I needed for the very first row, which was not part of the border pattern (the border pattern started with a right side row, but the cast on leaves you with a wrong side row as your first row).  The border pattern was easy, and quickly memorized.

Lacy Angles - Clues 1 & 2

When I got back from Bead & Button I curled up with some yarn.  This is third offering in the Light & Dark Lace Club.  The yarn is PennyRose Yarns Rachel, 100% Superwash Merino in Tiger Lily.  The designer is also the dyer - Ruth Greenwald. The first two clues came out while I was at the show.  They were quick and easy knits.

Diadem - Clue 4

I finished up Clue 4 this afternoon.  This shawl has been a pretty easy and fun knit.  All I have to do now is the border.  I am on a bit of a finishing kick, and want to see how many projects I can get done before I start something new.  The next Light & Dark Lace Club will start in June.  I already have the yarn.

Diadem - Clue 3

I knit Clue 3 of the Diadem shawl today while watching the Women of Ninja Warrior marathon on G4.  I don't actually recommend knitting lace while watching Ninja Warrior, it is just too distracting.  If you've never seen Ninja Warrior it is a Japanese show where people try to make it through these crazy obstacle courses.  They have been doing the show with men for a while now, but they also started a women's competition after some women started competing in the men's competition.  It is a lot of fun and you can see some pretty amazing demonstrations of strength and agility.  This picture shows the colors better.  The picture below was taken with flash and shows the pattern better.

Shawl basic info:
Pattern - Diadem, Light and Dark Lace Club, April
Designer - Ruth Greenwald (Pennyrose Yarns)
Dyer - Roxanne of Zen Yarn Garden
Yarn - Serenity Silk in Verde Oliva (80% Superwash Merino, 10% Cashmere, 10% Silk)

Mystery Sock 2011.1 - Finished!

Just finished my second sock.  I am finally getting the hang of the Kitchener Stitch at the toe.  I am actually good at Kitchener Stitch in other knitting applications where I can lay the two pieces of knitting flat so I can see what I am doing, but in the toe you don't get that luxury and working in the small space and with the needles in the way makes it more challenging.  I used the tutorial at Knitty.

And here is a beauty shot of the Avira shawl:

Avira - Finished!

The last clue came out yesterday and I spent last night and today finishing it.  I love the shape of the shawl, especially the spine of yarn overs going up the center.  The shawl is not large, more of a shawlette.  The only real challenge is the cast on because the shawl is knit from the bottom up.  There were 311 stitches for this size, a larger one would probably have twice that many.  The main advantage of a shawl knit this way is that the rows get shorter rather than longer.

This is the first project for the Light and Dark Lace Club.  The yarn is PennyRose Yarns Benji in Light Orchid, 100% superwash merino.  The design is by Ruth Greeenwald of PennyRose Yarns.

Avira - Clue 2

I spent most of this past week in California for work.  I left Monday afternoon and came back on the red-eye Wednesday night, arriving at Dulles International Airport at 0545.  After stopping in briefly at work to check my email I came home and relaxed, watching musicals on TCM, and knitting.  I have found that when traveling to California it is better if I take a red-eye back.  I hate being away from home, and I can sleep on the plane almost as well as I can sleep in a hotel.  It is far better than getting up at 0300 to take an early flight back.  And the drive home from the airport is easy because the traffic is all going the other way.  The other advantage is that by the time I have gotten home I have effectively put in my eight hours and can go home - to knit and relax.

Avira - Clue 1

Yet another club - I have joined far too many this year, but I really like the surprise factor, and who can resist packages of yarny goodness arriving at regular intervals.  This is the first project for the Light and Dark Lace Club, hosted by Roxanne of Zen Yarn Garden and Ruth of PennyRose Yarns.  For this project the design and the yarn are both from Ruth.  The yarn is PennyRose Benji, a 100% superwash merino, 100g, approximately 470 yards.  The color is Light Orchid.  The shawl is being knit from the bottom up, so we started out with 311 stitches.  This clue is the border.