Summertime

Peaches in season, here in New Jersey.

Jury duty is over; verdict rendered; justice served, more or less. I managed some knitting during recess and finished a face cloth in Peaches & Crème yarn.

Appropriately enough, I'm calling it my Peaches and Cream face cloth. I also started some experimental knitting: trying out Crystal Palace chenille on size 6 needles for face cloths and such like. It's not the knitting so much as how the chenille will hold up to wash and wear. For the record, I dislike working with chenille. It's less elastic, if possible, than other cotton yarns. I don't mind working with Peaches & Crème at all (I like it more than Sugar 'n' Cream, will say that). I never minded working with Bernat's cottons (Gloucester, I'm talking about you). But the chenille- ugh! At least I got the 5 hanks pretty cheaply, and if the experiment goes well, I'll make some nice soft gifts for folks.

Signed up for unemployment, and had my unemployment interview. That means I explained why I no longer work for the Department of Veterans Affairs. As if I had a choice. NJ Department of Unemployment is so dysfunctional I received contradictory instructions from 3 different sources. Not having patience for that sort of thing, I called the governor's office and demanded action. Yes, I did. I was put through to the Commissioner of Unemployment herself, who recruited someone with a name and phone number to help me. That person, from Trenton, recruited a supervisor in my local (Newark) office to expedite my case. No one should ever be told that their case will not be reviewed for 5 weeks after receiving a last pay check. Just unconscionable. I'd heard of folks in NJ who were at a new job and had yet to receive unemployment benefits. No excuse, NJ. You can raise great summer fruit and veggies; you can do better for your working people too.

New Blog: New Lace, Old Traditions

There's a new lace blog around the knitting blogosphere, one devoted to Haapsalu shawls and Estonian lace stitches. It's called New Lace- Old Traditions. Its aim is to popularize the Estonian knitting tradition, and enrich it by developing new motifs and using motifs to create triangular shawls. Patterns for shawls are expected, and from the little I've seen so far (this blog started only in January!) it's one I'll be perusing a lot for inspiration. The latest post (March 11) shows a little daisy stitch and its variant, with and without added nupps. There are links to Ravelry download pages, and a link for a pdf download. The March 2 post has a pattern for a shawl right there, with links for downloads and to the Ravelry page. It's a rectangular shawl, similar to a Crown Prince pattern according to the designer. It looks a bit simpler to execute (I did not read the pattern yet- please note!). The pattern is charted.

I think, er hope that this blog will satisfy some of my Estonian lace knitting urges (I'll still have the urge to own the Haapsalu shawl book that commands impressive prices). I've been wanting to knit more triangular shawls using Estonian stitches. I have some lovely fingering yarn just begging to be made into shawls. I'm looking forward to many more patterns on the blog.

On a different note, I have to share this little gem with you. YouTube won't let it be embedded, so please go and watch it here. (h/t Julie of Knitting at Large for this.)

Baby Blankets and Back-Lit Lace

In the spirit of showing rather than telling, here are photos of the baby blankets I'm doing in lieu of the Log Cabin:

That's the progress so far on the one of Peaches & Crème. I should add a third solid color to it, according to DD#1, to make it more unisex. Blue or green? Let me know in the Comments section, please, before I get back to another solid color!

I love how this wool is knitting up. After I soak it in Eucalan, it'll soften (from previous experience).


I just wanted to show off a little here. I like the way the light shines through the lace of Peacock Tail and Leaf lace scarf. It's about half-way done. DD#2 spied it and squealed. Warms a mother-knitter's heart.

The Loooong Scarf, Finished at Loooong Last

Yes, it is finally finished, DD#2's loooong scarf. I don't even remember when I started it, it was so long ago!

The pattern is Hugs and Kisses by Dorothy Siemens, and the yarn is JaggerSpun Zephyr laceweight in Mahogany, used doubled on size 6 needles. The tassel maker was a coaster I had sitting nearby. DD#2 will be home tomorrow for spring break; I'll report on how much she likes it.

Now the full moon is nearly upon us. This one will be a super-super sized one, so says NASA. Fourteen percent bigger, being it is a near-perigee moon (perigee = close to the earth), off from perigee by one hour. So be sure to view it Saturday night at sunset. We'll be out and about, on our way to synagogue to hear the Book of Esther read for Purim. Have a happy Purim!

I Still Knit

Honestly, I still knit.

In fact, 2 days before I left for Israel I made another Brambles beret so as to have another hat, in case the nights turned cold. This one is made from stashed Yarn Chef Mulligatawny in Bramble Bush, used doubled on sizes 4 and 6 needles. Of course because I rushed to finish it, it fell out of my carry-on bag and was left behind in the car. Such is life.


Then I agonized over whether Rivendell would give me enough in-air knitting (no, probably not) or should I cast on another item from my inexhaustible queue (yep, that's the right answer). After lassoing DH to help me wind 450 yards of Dream in Color Starry, I casted on Peacock Tail and Leaf Lace from Nancy Bush's Knitting Estonian Lace, this one for DD#2. I completed the edging before heading to Newark airport, then knitted 2 rows in the air, nothing more during my travels but have been working steadily since my return. You'd think I'd finish the other lace scarf I'm making for DD#2 first, but I find that pattern a bit boring after a few feet (she wants a l-o-o-o-n-g one in that pattern).


Now that I'm back, I finished Rivendell.


Still have those Lupine socks to complete. Would you believe I'm still on sock #1? I'll finish them and the thermometer will hit 85 degrees.

And maybe, just maybe I'll feel like finishing up the big projects that have been languishing for many a long day.

Iced in Today

It's Groundhog Day (think of the scenes in the movie where BillMurray repeats the previous day over and over again), it's dejà vu all over again,it's winter, it's disgusting, and it's several inches of new snow followed by inches of ice followed by semi-solid precipitation (rain that's almost in a gel state). It's awful. I used to like winter. No more. Even Rocky would rather do this than play in the snow:

On the knitting front, I finally put the finishing touches on DH's new vest. He models it here (he wanted to look very serious and professional for you):

To help me cope with the cold, I'm making myself a cowl out of some lovely Sundara sport merino I was saving for a special occasion. This winter qualifies as special.

The color is Shell Over Cocoa Butter and the pattern is Rivendell by Susan Pandorf. Don't think it ever snowed in Rivendell: Elrond wouldn't let it, I'll wager. I'm using a bigger needles (4 mm in place of 2.75 mm) and making fewer repeats, so my 250 yards just might be sufficient (pattern calls for 300 yards). I did a cable cast-on very loosely and that seemed to be a good choice: you can see how the edging is shaping up so nicely.
Last week I made a beret out of the Venezia I bought for myself. Not for me after all; DD#2 on the day before she returned to college decided she needed another hat (not as if I hadn't asked her for months). One look at the photo of Brambles plus a touch of the Venezia and she begged me (well, didn't take much begging).

Now I need to find yarn - again - to make Brambles for moi. I really liked that Brooks Farm yarn I used the first time; maybe I'll call them and see what colors they have in stock (they don't update the website very often).

Sunday I'm off to Israel (G-d willing). I'll be there nearly 10 days to observe the 30 day anniversary of my mother's passing and to be present at the unveiling of her monument. My father and one brother, one nephew, and some cousins will be traveling from the US. Other assorted relations already live in Israel, most of whom I've never met. I'm excited and sad at the same time. Camera, batteries, local cell phone, shopping list, color-coordinating outfits: I'm making lists and starting to pack. L'hitraot until I return.

Enraptured by Wrapped in Lace

While I was away, USPS delivered an early Chanukah present to me: Margaret Stove's new volume, Wrapped in Lace. If you don't know who Margaret Stove is, she's the New Zealander who brings a fresh approach to knitted lace. She incorporates New Zealand flora and fauna in her lace designs with great results. In her previous book, Creating Original Hand-Knitted Lace, she walked readers through her design process for a shawl, ending with painting the shawl in the most beautiful saturated pastel shades. The shawl featured sea life found around New Zealand such as sea ferns and urchins and whelks. It is utterly amazing. Go to your library and take a peek at it sometime. The earlier Stove book gave me a bluebell motif I used to design this scarf:


The new book gets my juices flowing just as much, if not more. Maybe because I've grown so much this past year in my lace knitting, I'm no longer intimidated by designs like this:

A Faroese-style shawl like this would be pretty easy:

I think my favorite of all may be the Christening shawl, which Ms. Stove writes replicates her very own shawl. She recreated the pattern from a fragment and a photo, helped along by a friend who sent her an old pattern for such a shawl:

There are clear charts, a section on preserving and repairing old knitted lace (marvelous to have!), and lots of encouragement to design your own. One of the best aspects, in my opinion, are the wonderful discussions Ms. Stove had with the likes of Barbara Walker and Elizabeth Zimmermann and Nancy Bush. Ms. Stove is not too arrogant to show any gratitude she might have to other knitters, and she says so. She includes a bibliography that I think many of us have in our libraries. I have to contrast this attitude with another recent book purchase, one on cabled knitted from the Aran Islands, in which if you didn't know better you'd think the author invented the entire genre (hardly, since the redoubtable EZ published the first Aran sweater pattern in the US around that time this particular author was born).

I have one peeve with the book: one pattern, the New Zealand Tribute to Orenburg shawl, is not included in the book. It's free on the Interweave site, but you have to sign up with your e-mail address first. I was already signed up; if I weren't I'd call this a major peeve (in my opinion, it should have been included and not used as a tool to get more people to sign up for the site).

To sum it up, Wrapped in Lace (ISBN: 9781596682276) should be included in the library of many knitters. I can't think of another single book spanning the styles of lace from Shetland to Estonian to Orenburg that this book does. Even if you are not interested in knitting big lace projects like shawls, you can incorporate the lace motifs into socks, berets, and scarves. The photos are lovely. The information is timeless.

If you have or do get this book, please let me know what you think in the comments.

While Waiting for the Cavalry

While waiting for the US Cavalry to arrive (being the VA's payroll service has merged with the DoD's it's apt), I finished a bunch of stuff with yarn on hand.
First, I modified Elaine Fitzpatrick's slipped-stitch bib (find the stitch pattern on her website at Down Cloverlaine, it's called Rhonda's Delight) to make it into an over-the-head bib. I sent it along with the blanket, and have heard that it fits the recipient.

Next, the matching fingertip towel to the facecloth:


The rainbow blanket for DD#2 is ready to go down to Baltimore with her next week (so soon?):

And finally, I figured out another way to make an over-the-head bib; I think I like this one better (pattern is just garter stitch but it looks fancy in the ombré yarn; I'll be writing this up and posting it as a free download to Ravelry):

Betsy-Wetsy agreed to model this one, though she is up in years:

Sure hope the cavalry arrives soon, before I run out of stashed yarn!

Yes, You Can Knit Lace!

If you can make a yarn-over (YO) and knit 2 stitches together (K2tog), you can knit lace.

In fact, you can knit this lace scarf in a weekend while watching TV or listening to an audiobook, once you get into the pattern. The pattern stitch is an old Shetland pattern often called Feather and Fan, but sometimes called Old Shale, although Elizabeth Lovick writes they are different pattern stitches here, and that "shale" is Shetland pronunciation for "shell." A neat thing about it is that it forms its own scalloped border at cast-on and bound-off edges, so all you have to do is knit the thing. Four rows make up the pattern, and it can be modified to suit your taste for more or fewer scallops, or to make a stole or blanket, or to use any weight yarn you have in your stash. For learning this pattern and making the scarf, you'll need about 350 yards of fingering weight yarn (sample shown is a 75% wool/25% nylon blend from Southern Girl Knits and size 7 needles. Gauge is not terribly important; mine was 5 stitches and 8 rows (4 ridges) to the inch in garter stitch (I didn't want the ends to curl), unblocked.

Two important things to know:
1) You must cast on loosely so the edge will scallop. I used a long-tail cast-on, and casted on over 2 needles. Use whatever cast on method you like, but make it loose.
2) You'll be binding off loosely as well, so I advise using the bind off method in the instructions. It'll help the bound off edge to scallop nicely.

You'll see, the scarf will have a pretty scallop at each end even before blocking. The top photo in fact is of the cast on edge before blocking.

Feather and Fan Pattern Scarf

Cast on 52 stitches loosely. Knit 2 rows.

Begin Feather and Fan:
Row 1 (wrong side): K2; *K2tog 4 times, YO P1 8, K2tog 4 times,* repeat between *'s; K2.
Row 2 (right side): K across.
Row 3: K2, P to last 2 sts, K2.
Row 4: K across.
Cont in Feather and Fan stitch until scarf measures 44" or desired length from beginning (blocking it will stretch it about 25% percent in length). End row 4. K 2 rows and bind off loosely as follows: K2, then stick left needle into fronts of 2 sts just knitted and K2 tog through back loop; K1, then stick left needle into fronts of 2 sts on R needle and K2 tog through back loop. Continue to BO sts in manner described until all stitches have been bound off. Block, pinning out scallops. Weave in ends.

That's it. You have now knitted a lace scarf. Congratulations and wear it well!
(PS: There's a link to the pdf version of this pattern on the side bar at left).

Baby O Baby!

So a buncha people I know are having babies- must be in the water or something. One, a former post-doc, is about to become a papa for the second time. He's from Peshawar, Pakistan, and whenever his mother comes to visit from home she always brings me exquisite jewelry. So I'm making a nice cuddly blankie for the child-to-be, in Caron Simply Soft Brites. Based on comments over at Ravelry, Simply Soft has a nice hand coupled with easy care. I ordered a skein in nearly every color, to knit into a rainbow of feather and fan stitch (hey, it's easy and fast and needs little blocking). It arrived the other day and I set to work. Casted on 180 stitches, worked 4 rows of garter stitch in Blue Mint, then switched to Berry Blue and the FnF pattern stitch. Two repeats of FnF, then switch color to Grape, then to Watermelon, and so on. When I've done a rainbow of colors, I may switch to 4 repeats for a couple of rainbows, then end with 2 repeats of FnF in the rainbow sequence and the garter band. Oh, and I have 6 stitches of garter on each side. See how it's looking?

Now I remembered that DD#1's oldest friend and his wife are expecting their first child too. I have known the young man since he was 2 1/2 years old, playing Haman at the synagogue's Purim pageant. Cannot miss marking this event. So what should I make the baby blankie out of for this one? In the end, I decided to make it out of Pisgah Peaches and Creme in Rainbow. Love the colors, and think the mother will like that it's cotton. At least, I hope so.

Bluebell is finished; pattern will be uploaded to Ravelry soon.

When it is, the link will be on the sidebar at left. The Lily of the Valley scarf is slow-going. Two reasons I can think of for this. One, the yarn is darker than I normally work with, so I require fairly bright light. Two, the nupps really make me nuts; even though I do them easily enough, they just slow down the knitting a lot. The Estonian Lace Group on Ravelry discussed this pattern and quite a few members found it boring. I don't finding it boring, but I can see their point. And to think at the end I get to save live stitches, reknit the edging, and graft together. Oh joy, I can't wait. /sarcasm.

Bluebells, Maikells, and Other Flowers

Maikell is Estonian for lily of the valley. In case you couldn't tell (you could, I'm sure), I love flowers. I also love flower-themed needlework (I haven't shown off my embroidery or needlepoint but flowers are there too) and flower-themed knitting. Usually that means lace, like the Bluebell pattern I'm working out or the lily of the valley scarf I just started. Sometimes it's other motifs like the tulips on this Sidna Farley afghan square I made into a pillow.

Even Aeolian has a floral or botanic theme, being the main patterns comprising it are called agave and yucca.

The Bluebell scarf has passed the halfway mark; here's a close-up of the join, which I think came out pretty nicely:


Note to self-- Always check to be sure you have rejoined the yarn to the picked up stitches in the correct orientation, else face tinking back 1/4 of the second half. (Yes, I actually did that. Please learn from my stupid mistake.) I am pleased with the maikell edging, with the join (my error aside), and the symmetry of the pattern constructed this way.


I like the look of the bluebells looking up like tulips; in the Stove book, they are oriented down for the borders. The pattern lends itself to making the flowers taller, like Fosteriana tulips or shorter like tulip violacea.

The lily of the valley scarf, gift number 5, is taking shape. The funny gathered stitch that Estonians use in place of a SK2P really flares the border out more than a SK2P does- nice to see the points of the lace even without blocking.


I'll need more yarn to complete Aeolian; the $6 bargain was only about half the amount needed, so I ordered 4 more skeins (and 4 more skeins in a lovely sea foam green just happened to find their way into my basket while I was shopping, wouldn't you know?). I do not care if the dye lots don't match- I'll alternate them for a subtle striped look anyway. I still have to order beads (I'm still on the fence about beads for it).

One day I will have to get back to practical knitting for the family; I owe DD#1 a hoodie, DD#2 a jacket and scarf, and DH a vest. And I need to complete that top for me that I really need. But not just yet.

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with a photo of a flower from my garden; something I haven't found rendered in knitting- yet.

Have a happy - and safe- 4th of July!

Aeolian

aeolian [iːˈəʊlɪən]
1) adj: of or relating to the wind; produced or carried by the wind [from Aeolus, god of the winds];



2) n: a group of islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea;


3) n: a type of harp;


4) n: a drop-dead gorgeous shawl I'm dying to knit.


As if I need an excuse to make myself another shawl, I'm going to make this one for wearing in my (sometimes) frigid office, out of the bargain Jamieson and Smith yarn I grabbed the other week, in my favorite color. One question remains (apologies to Shakespeare): to bead or not to bead, that is the question.

Meanwhile, I casted on the last gift last night.

Lace Knitting? Knitted Lace? Who Cares??

On Ravelry, Knitter's Review, and Knitty the subject of lace knitting vs knitted lace sometimes comes up. "Purists" maintain that knitted lace is patterned every row, while lace knitting (sniff here to signal contempt of this lesser art form) has resting rows of all-knit or all-purl stitches.

So what do you call this pattern?

It's patterned on every row, yessirree Bob, it is- but it doesn't have lace stitches (YOs and decreases) on the wrong side rows. Hence I say, who cares? Many knitting designers don't make a distinction, and absolutely drop-dead gorgeous Shetland and Estonian lace patterns have resting rows. Who cares, indeed.

Some more info on the little blue piece I'm showing you: the lace pattern is from Margaret Stove's book Creating Original Hand-Knitted Lace. She used it as a border pattern for a baby's outfit. I've had the book for years, and for years this border pattern of bluebells has intrigued me about its possibilities as an all-over lace pattern. At first I thought I'd design a sock using it, but the swatch shows me it doesn't have enough lateral stretch (it has a nice vertical stretch though). I'm using it to design a symmetrical scarf that will have an Estonian lace border knitted on to each end. Having just received Nancy Bush's definitive book, Knitted Lace in Estonia, what can I say except that the breathtaking designs beg to be used. If all goes as planned, I'll write this up and post it on Ravelry and the sidebar as a free pattern. Oh and the yarn is Dream in Color Starry, color is Midnight Derby. And the finished product, if it turns out as I hope, will be gift number 4 for my 5 friends.

Crochety = Crochet?

I've been under the weather with some kind of miserable virus for a few days. I've been sucking it up and going in to lab (I need to supervise students, run a fluorescence-activated cell analyzer for data, and be around to help my lab assistant). When I get back home, I eat a little dinner and collapse into bed. It doesn't help that DH won't turn the AC on, with the constant brown-outs (2 years ago a brownout fried the AC compressor; he doesn't want to pay $2500 for a new one this soon and I can't say I blame him). If I knit a few rows of Lime, it's a big deal - I just feel too ennervated and cranky to hold 2 needles right now.

Enter the art of crochet. Now this is a fiber-art I've never quite taken to, not that I don't appreciate it's beauty (I do) or its utility (DH wears crocheted kippot - skullcaps - every single day, as a matter of fact). Nah, I think it's more to do with a) I never saw it around my house (my mother never crocheted), and b) it's a real one-handed thing (I never saw a lefty crochet). Let me expound a bit: I knit like a righty, cast on as a lefty, but as a knitter, I'm engaging both my hands as I knit (YMMV, of course). I use both hands in different ways: the left guides stitches while the right works the needle and tensions the yarn. Crochet is, well, crochet: one hand does all the work while the other sort of holds on for the ride. I could do a single crochet stitch trim, but that's all I was able to master in all these years (and I even have a book on left-handed crocheting).

Yesterday I must have been a little feverish or something because all of a sudden it hit me: How to crochet. I mean, really do it. In my fevered hallucinatory state, I looked up left-handed crochet on the Interwebs and found these tutorials:


This talented lady has more videos up on YouTube; I watched them all, then grabbed some blue worsted weight wool (Baruffa Maratona, if you want to know) and a size H hook (true story: when DH and I were first dating, we stopped in an EJ Korvette's - remember those?- and in a bargain bin were Susan Bates crochet hooks for a quarter each; I bought one in every size they had). Pretty soon I had made this lacy kippah for a doll, bookmark for a really short book, and this Band-Aid cover for a finger. Someone tell me if the biasing of the bookmark is due to the cabled construction of Maratona, please? Or does it block out?

Here's a peek of my crochet skills at work on the edge of the now-completed Lime scarf:

I like it better than tassels or pom-poms for this pattern. Adds just the right bit of panache.

I'm on a roll. Or should I say, I'm hooked. One day I'll use the crochet cotton I have for its intended purpose (instead of heel and toe reinforcement) and make DH's kippot. Indeed, when I showed him what I made out of the blue Maratona, his very words were, "So why don't you make me a real kippah?" Such faith he has in my skills!

Neater Nupps At Last

So I decided to finish up another UFO languishing too long, Dorothy Siemen's Hugs and Kisses scarf. This is for DD#2, who is in love with the Zephyr I used for Evenstar (I'm using it doubled). I haven't made anything for her in a bit, so I really ought to finish something for her. I'm truly half-way done, just haven't taken a recent shot of it.

I haven't looked at Swallowtail in a bit.

Part of the reason was Evenstar, but I have to admit, a bigger part of the reason was getting bogged down in nupps. Nupps (rhymes with either soups or sups, depending upon whom you ask), are lace-speak for bobbles. Bobbles are easy to do in worsted or Aran-weight yarn, tricky as the dickens in fingering or lace weight, even with sharp needles. A very clever person figured out a much easier way to work them using a crochet hook:



Just the excuse I needed to buy a set of these, right?

After Blocking

And here in her blocked glory is Evenstar:

Backlit (courtesy of DH and DD#2):

It's Finished!

At 9:30 pm Thursday night June 3, I grafted the lace edges of Evenstar together and proclaimed her complete. Techknitter's COWYAK provisional cast-on worked like a charm, leaving me the correct number of stitches to pick up as I unlooped the cotton yarn. The graft is not quite invisible, but who will notice it (I am not the best at Kitchener stitch)? I had to go looking for it and I know it's there.

Blocking in progress using the string method, with much help from DH. Some people curve their blocking wires around for circular shawls, but I didn't want to put an arc in my wires. Also I don't think I have enough wire for the circumference, which I estimate will be 188.4" or 15.7 feet. DH was dear enough to locate some nice unused plywood in 4 x 4 ft increments, to create a platform. And he brought up from the basement a spare round table we use when we have a lot of company to dinner. That'll keep my collie, his visiting brother, and occasional wandering bird off the shawl as it blocks. I set up a fan to speed the drying (the humidity hovers around 90% some days here). So that it might dry some time this summer.

Some new yarn found its way home to me.

First, some Sundara sock yarn in Creme de Menthe, perfect for Evelyn Clark's Twining Lace socks (they need a green yarn, IMO). Next, more Sundara yarn, sport merino in Reaching Out, a deep coral over salmon. I love the entire family of coral/salmon/apricot/shrimp colors; I might just look at this yarn forever. Last, some Yarn Chef Mulligatawny in Bramble Rose, which is more brown than rose. Likely I'll whip up a couple of lacey scarves as gifts for friends out of this.

Now the question is: finish more UFOs or start a new project from my Ravelry queue? Decisions, decisions!!