Beautiful Harebell Lace.......

Another finished object has risen from the blocking bed....


Modelled on my apple tree....


And on my garden bench.

Finished Object Stats

Yarn - Laceweight Merino from Yarnsnob (100g skein - I had 11 yards left)

Needles - 3.75mm addi lace turbos, 80cm long

Pattern - Harebell lace Fichu from Victorian Lace Today - heavily modified (some explanation later on)

Cast on - 11 August

Finished - 27 September

Finished Dimensions - 13" by 64" after blocking


This is a picture of the origional pattern.



I took the harebell part of this chart, and knit 25 repeats of 4 sets of it across the scarf. These were offset so that the difference in stitch numbers was evened out.

I then knit on the picoty pointy border using the same attachment method as the myrtle leaf shawl.



And the combination makes a lovely squishy warm scarf that is just perfect to be a birthday present for my mum. Her birthday has already been (and she has no idea I have a blog) but I will deliver it in person in about a month!


The next project has been conceived - I have 2 skeins of Colinette Skye in neptune colourway, and I am going to make bedsocks!

Done

I have just finished (having taken queen of froggers advice and knitted faster and faster) with 11 yards to spare. What a relief.

Now I just have to graft something that has slip 2 k3together and yarnovers in it.

See you in about 15 hours when I have done it wrong about 56000000 times. I hate grafting.

Am I going to make it?

I have been frantically knitting all night - and I am now very very worried....


(I still love the border and think that the picot pointy edge is fantastic)


Though it doesn't totally come across in the picture, I have two corners and one end of edging still to apply, and there really isn't that much wool left. The former fat and squishy centre pull ball has only a few turns left. I have weighed on my kitchen scales, but that was inconclusive because they only weigh to 1g accuracy and that isn't accurate enough to be able to do any calculations. I tried. I can only hope........

See the photo from before the weekend - nearly 1/3 of the way up the side of the scarf and there is a comforting thickness to the ball. This edging is really really eating up the yards! I didn't expect to be anywhere near in this position considering that I had only used a smidge over half when I started the border.

Keep your fingers (and toes) crossed for me - I have to go to bed now, be up early in the morning to go on a site visit (and the forecast is good) and then I have tai chi in the evening (regular class followed by an extra hour with my teacher) so it is going to be ages until I can solve the will she/won't she mystery.

My (ever optimistic) view is that there is going to be JUST enough wool, and there is always my swatch!

Knackered.......

I am really really really tired. I had a day off work today to put a concrete floor in our cellar.....


I know it is a really fuzzy dark photo, but I am too tired to do anything about it (like get up and walk to the cellar to take another one). Anyway, a very very nice man came with his concrete lorry with it's very long chute and dropped about 4m^3 through the window. So even though we didn't have to carry the concrete anywhere, there was an awful lot of shovelling involved. But it is a very good floor, flatter than I could have hoped (flatter than any other floor in our wonky old house) and means that we can put the wall back together (only half this room is ours, the other half belong to next door) and finally be my utility room.

This afternoon I was bushed, but managed 3 hours vegged out on the sofa, comforted by my lizard ridge blanket, adding edge to the harebell lace shawl. Nothing very interesting to say about it (the pattern is very pretty, I have made lots and lots of picots, even slip2 k3tog psso doesn't go too badly on the wonder addi turbo lace, and there are lots and lots of repeats to go).

Weekend Distraction

Mostly this weekend I have been distracted from everything that I should be doing. I finally finished stripping, sanding and finishing a cupboard that I rescued, when clearly judging by the state of the washing pile I should have been sorting the washing and doing the ironing.

Then my brother in law phoned to announce that we have another niece as of yesterday. We have been designated as god parents, so on finding out that it was a girl of course needed to knit somethings. I am really looking forward to having a god daughter - so far everyone I know has managed to produce boys, so it was a welcome change to be able to knit in pink! I am really exited about being able so spoil/be a bad influence/knit for a girl.

Introducing the very pink stripy hat.........


Finished object statistics....

needles - 3mm addi turbos, 80cm long
Yarn - King Cole anti tickle merino in shades 1, 146, 67 and 29 (white, salmon, fuschia and a slightly pinky red).
Pattern - made up as I went along, inspired by one that I saw someone else knit, but I have no idea who it was.
Cast on this morning and took about 6 hours to complete - with a break to bake coffee and walnut cake in the middle.
Gauge - 7 stitches per inch
Finished circumference (unstretched) - 12.5 inches, which is sort of large newborn size.


The pattern was really simple. Cast on 90 stitches, and join in the round. Because this was always going to be a fairly simple little project I thought I would try out some new skills and so knit it all using the magic loop technique.

Knit 1.5 inches in red. The colour sequence goes salmon, white, fuscia and then back to red.

The stitch pattern is 1 row purl and then 5 rows knit. This makes very pleasing little bumpy coloured lines where the colours change. I also slipped the first stitch after the purl row to make a sort of jogless join.

Work until the desired length (in my case the red starter row and the four stripes) - 90 stitches.

The decreases are all worked on the last row of the stripe. Change colour (to salmon for me) purl one row, knit 4 rows and then work one round of knit 4, k2tog (75 stitches).

Change colour (white), purl 1 row, knit 4 rows and then work one round of knit 3, k2tog (60 stitches)

Change colour (fuschia), purl 1 row, knit 4 rows, and work one round of knit 2, k2tog (45 stitches)

Change colour (red), purl one row, knit 4 rows and then work one round of knit 1, K2tog (30 stitches).

Change colour (salmon), purl one row, knit 4 rows, and then work another round of knit 1, k2tog (20 stitches)

Change colour (white), purl one row, knit 4 rows, and then again work a round of k2tog, k1 (this will end with a k2tog) (13 stitches)

Change colour (fuschia), purl one row, knit 4 rows. Work a round of K2tog, k1 again ending with a k2tog (8 stitches). Knit 4 rounds. K2tog four times (4 stitches). Work about 2 inches of 4 stitch i-cord, break thread and pass through the 4 stitches pulling tight to secure.

The russian splice does have one fantastic advantage, which was that the only finishing required was to darn in the end from the casting on. I generally thought it was a bit of a pain in the ass, but once I had got into the rhythm it wasn't too bad. It is worth a bit of practice of working out where the join is going to fall and getting the colour change in the right place. Bear in mind that it did tend to move a bit on the next round for me. By the top of the hat it was all looking pretty good though.

I did like the magic loop as well, not so sure I don't prefer 2 circulars, but this did have the advantage of only needing on needle and not having so much dangle. Definitely more portable.

The hat is great fun though, and I think it is going to be repeated in a slightly larger size for my brother's girlfriend this christmas. The decreases worked exactly how I intended in that they give a point at the top of the hat but aren't silly santa hat shape. I might even quite fancy one myself (in green though.....)

Much progress has been made on the harebell scarf as well...... another few repeats of the main pattern brought me to the point where I had to start experimenting with the edging.

I had a look at a few books for some ideas, but in the end I decided to use the outside portion of the origional chart. Miles and miles of picots ahead! I am applying it using the same join as on the myrtle leaf shawl - which is joined on the front of the scarf rather than the normal method on the back. I quite like the effect though. What do you think?

A sneaky little bit of knitting.....

Well....... I really really wasn't going to taking any knitting with me this weekend, but the harebell lace scarf snuck it's way into my bag and I accidentally ended up taking it with me. And as the weather was awful on Saturday there was enough time to finish a few repeats! I am really liking the way the colours are making stripes across the whole scarf.......

A dry blocked measurement shows that each repeat of the pattern is just over 2" long, so I am looking at doing about 25 repeats before thinking about a border. 8 down so only 17 to go. About 2/3 of the way there!


But the hotel was lovely, the food was totally fantastic even though the portions were so enormous that we both ended up feeling rather bloated. The breakfast included hot chocolate that was 50/50 milk and melted chocolate. Very very lovely, but rather rich for first thing in the morning. Anyway, if you are ever hungry and in the highlands and fancy a really nice place to stay in the highlands then I would defiantly recommend Grants!

This week is going to be low on exiting knitting - I am off to belfast for a night, and that is going to disrupt things totally. Sometime I really need to graft that other sleeve or I am going to have 2 odd lengthed sleeves and that is going to look most odd.

Pretty Yarn makes Pretty Harebells

Well - what a fantastically productive knitting weekend. The weather today was (as forecast) totally pish, and so I haven't even left the house! I really should do some tai chi practice: I am feeling the effects of mostly sitting and lying around. Maybe tomorrow morning if the rain has stopped.

It has been quite social though- a work colleague came round for the afternoon and we baked cakes in honour of his birthday. The nutella cake from Nigella's domestic goddess (how can any combination of nutella, nuts, chocolate, butter and eggs go wrong) and a carrot cake. He really enjoyed it and so did I. It was lovely to bake with a novice who was enjoying himself and was fascinated by all the funny things about baking that I take for granted. He was transfixed by adding eggs to oil and sugar - the mixture emulsifies and thickens quite drastically. And making ganache was fun too. After the cake making bit we drank plenty of tea while they cooked and cooled, and I didn't even have to do the washing up. I did remember to make little cupcakes of each so that we could have a sneaky try of them both though. We get to eat the big ones at work tomorrow.

And plenty of phone calls. I wonder if I normally get so many calls but we are just always out?

There was plenty of knitting action though.....

The harebell lace experiment has got about 1.5 repeats done. Somewhere the inner mathematician has let me down - I calculated that I would have enough stitches for 5 rows of harebells, but somehow when it came to starting the pattern there were exactly the right number for 4. Ho hum, it was obviously meant to be!

The pattern is working out really nicely. I discovered that the printer doesnt work, so I have had to be looking at the screen while knitting, but I will take advantage of work facilities to fix that tomorrow. I am really glad that the harebells fit together so well though, this is the first time I have attempted to totally change a pattern so I wasn't that sure of it working out.

I am knitting on addi turbo lace needles - 3.75mm. This gives a lovely stitch definition to the stockinette sections, but still nice yo's. The needles totally rock, all the others I swatched with were ditched after a couple of rows, so I was glad that this size worked. I only have these and a 4mm pair in the collection, but that might change sometime soon.

And Meagaidh is also doing well. I have slogged through acres of plain knitting, ripped and reknitted the armhole shapings, done (and redone) some short row shaping at the top and picked up what feels like 1000 stitches for the button band. I am reckoning on completion tomorrow if I can find some appropriate buttons. I am quite taken by the idea of nice wooden ones, but have no idea if I will be able to get them in town. The craft shopping potential in Inverness is slightly limited (one craft shop that sells some random mostly acrylic wool, crappy needles and a few novelty buttons and one haberdashery that is fine for sewing supplies, but the wool is cheap and mostly not what I want to knit with) but I want to wear this in 2 weeks so I will have to put up with what I can find.

Pretty Yarn in the post

I got home yesterday to find a lovely parcel in the post........


Yes - that is order from the Yarn snob. Fantastic!


I immediately set about winding the pale blue skein and swatching and hatching for harebell lace. Here is one repeat of the pattern from victorian lace......

The general plan is to have 5 repeats of the harebell pattern, with 2 of them offset by about half a repeat to try and even out the width variation (the lace varies from about 6 stitches to about 16) so that is the main challenge. My inner mathematician is thinking of all sorts of complicated ideas to make it work, but who knows.

Fortunately the husband is away and I have the whole of tomorrow (when the weather forecast is bad enough to make me want to go into hibernation) to play with it and hopefully get one pattern repeat done! I have miles and miles of stockinette to do on meagaidh for if I get brain fry.