The Swallowtail

This week I finished my Swallowtail Shawl. I got it blocked, and it is ready to go for the silent auction benefit.

I would not mind making another one to keep, but I think the next time I will use lighter colored and heavier guage yarn. I would like it to be a little larger than this one, although this one did block out to the finished size on the pattern. As I looked at the points, which are not as pronounced as I would have liked, I wondered if the "Swallowtail Butterfly" has points as pronounced as some of it's namesake shawls. Google produced this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papilionidae with a beautiful picture of the Swallowtail butterfly.

This project was so intense that I had difficulty getting started on something new. It took a couple of days, but I managed. I started my first pair of toe-up socks, using the lessons learned from Lucy Neatby's class. (I'm thankful I bought the DVD's). I'm using the garter stitch short-row toe and short-row heel. I'm not really happy with the way the garter stitch sticks out bigger than the rest of the sock foot, which is stockinette stitch, but that is the nature of garter stitch. Ilm going to try to live with it . We'll see. I've already had to frog the heel, but I'm ready to try again.

Of course, I spent time on line, in addition to Lucy Neatby's DVD's, to check out techniques for the short row toes and heels. There are many sites that explain the how-to's. Here are just a couple:
http://knitty.com/ISSUEsummer06/PATTuniversalsock.html , http://misocrafty.squarespace.com/journal/2006/9/21/short-row-heel-tutorial.html , http://www.knitty.com/issuewinter02/FEATtiptoptoes.html

till next time...

b

Math Is the Solution!

This weekend is an exercise in good old perserverence. I am pressing on to finish the Swallowtail Shawl, which is promised to a friend for a silent auction. Time is of the essence. It has to be finished and blocked by the end of next weekend. I think it is totally possible to accomplish. At least, I did think that until I realized that I might be a little short on yarn.

So, I've been watching this skein slowly collapse, but now it seems to be caving in at a much higher rate. I can tell you that I am nervous. All this work could be for naught! If I don't have enough yarn, I'll have to frogg the whole thing or just put it away for another season. UGH!

So I posted on the "Lace Knitters" group on Ravelry, asking for help in determining if I might have enough yarn to proceed with this pattern, or in the alternative, make some modifications to the remainder of the pattern for my shawl. I also contacted my LYS owner for her suggestions and, of course, to ask if she has more skeins of the TREKKING (XXL) yarn that I am using.

In true Ravelry fashion, I had several suggestions within minutes! Thanks again, Ravelers! I was pointed to http://www.rose-kim.com/rose-kimknits where Jennifer has linked to an Excel worksheet she created to determine the percentage of a shawl that has been knit. She calls her creation a Shawl Progress Calculator. After plugging in the total number of rows in the Swallowtail Shawl, I followed down one column to find the number of rows that I have completed and TA-DA! I'm 77% of the way finished with my shawl.

When I talked to the owner of my LYS, she suggested that I weigh my un-used yarn on a postal scale, which I do have, to see how much yarn I have left. Of the 3.5 oz originally in the skein, I have 1.2 oz remaining. So, 3.5 divided by 1.2 is 2.9. While math and I have never seemed to think through problems the same way, I think I am correct in saying that I have almost 1/3 of my yarn left. AND since I have knitted over 3/4th of my shawl, I should be safe! Yeah! Onward to completion!

till next time...

b

Learning New Tricks

May is almost over, and summer is just around the corner. For some knitters, it is time to store the needles until fall and cooler weather. But I can't; I have to be knitting on something.

Socks are great for summer knitting. They are light, knit up fairly fast, and new lessons can be learned from every pair, if one chooses to move away from the standard heels and toes. With all this in mind, I spent my Mother's Day weekend with my friend Mary, enjoying classes with Lucy Neatby! Now I don't get a chance to take lessons from the masters very often. As a matter of fact, I've Never taken a class with any of the big names of knitting so this was truly a treat!

Saturday's class was on multi-directional knitting. We learned how to attach a garter stitch edging, as you might do with a neck band or i-cord trim. One of the really neat things that Lucy teaches is the use of waste yarn. I mean she uses it a lot! One of the new uses for waste yarn that I learned is in the edge stitches where you would want to come back in later and attach stitches. The technique is to lay a piece of waste yarn on top of your working yarn before you knit the first stitch of the row. If you do this all the way up the side of your piece, it will give you the ability to see those stitches that you want to later pick up to knit in a parallel direction. Such a simple idea that can save time in the long run. I wish I had known to do this when I was adding all those different sides of my Moderne Log Cabin Blanket!

This definitely takes the guess work out of how many and where those picked up stitches should be.

Then we knitted up the neatest group of equilateral triangles. (see bottom picture). These were so cute and so easy to do. Lucy has several patterns where she uses these triangles to make garmets. Her patterns can be found at http://www.tradewindknits.com/

The second day, which was Mother's Day, we focused on socks. Lucy taught the Channel Islands Cast On. I had never tried it, but it makes a very pretty picot-like edge on your sock. This CO is found in Lucy's book Cool Socks Warm Feet on page 76. My not so great attempt is on the top of my class sock. Definitely has potential, but I need a lot of practice! Then, I tried the garter stitch heel. OMG! It will be so much easier than the conventional heel, if I can get it where it doesn't have a gillion holes in it! (See the holes!) Again, practice, practice, practice.

Of course, one of the really nice things about taking a class is meeting other knitters. I met several other Ravelers, one who was already in my friends list and a couple whom I have since added. It was so nice to put faces to those web pages. I'm hoping to have some lasting knitting friendships to develop from this weekend.

Finally, if you haven't check out Lucy Neatby, you should. Her DVD's are awesome teaching tools. She actually uses them for her classes. The segments are all closeups of her hands, very clear to see. And she is just an awesome teacher!

My whole weekend, from not being home for Mother's Day to re-thinking some of my knitting techniques, can probably be summed up with the old cliche "Think Outside the Box!"

...till next time,

b

Humbling Life Lines

I am constantly amazed at the thoughts that come to me while working on my knitting. This week I started the swallowtail shawl.
http://www.interweaveknits.com/Galleries/bonus/fall_2006/Swallowtail.asp It is a beautiful shawl, and so many people are enjoying making it. I just happened to have some TREKKING (XXL) sock yarn and thought I would give it a try.

Everything I read about the pattern talked about how easy it is (and it is fairly easy for lace). I read alot of the threads in Ravelry to get an understanding of the best way to proceed and discovered that putting in a life line would be a reasonable safety precaution. (It is lace, afterall.) If you are not familiar with life lines here is a site that explains in detail just how to put one in: http://www.heartstringsfiberarts.com/lifeline.shtm .

So I began early in the week to knit this shawl. Got through the Budding Lace 1 and on to Budding lace 2. This consists of 6 rows that have to be repeated 14 times. I decided to add my life line at the completion of Row 6 each time. As I knit all day Friday and part of the day Saturday, I was thinking this is fairly simple; why, I underst00d it so well that I was catching mistakes as I made them (notice I'm not saying I didn't make any mistakes!) and was able to fix them right away. Hey, who needs a life line?! So last night, Saturday, at about 9:00, my eyes were so tired from working on this small yarn, and I was knitting along on what I had declared to be my last row for the day when the stitch count didn't come out right at the end of the row. Ok, back up. Check every stitch after the stitch markers, since it worked out before the markers. Nope. Too many stitches. Well, another thing I thought I had gotten pretty good at was looking at the pattern formed by the last few rows and being able to spot the mistake. Oh yeah. I spotted it all right, about 4 rows down! (Did I hear someone say "Being humbled by knitting happens all the time"? At least to me it does.)

This afternoon, Sunday, I picked my Swallowtail shawl back up to fix the mistake. Since I had my life line I was able to take it off the needles and rip out all four rows instead of frogging one stitch at a time. What I had at this point was a lot of kinked up, unknitted yarn, just laying in a heap on my table. As I was re-inserting my needles along the life line row, it hit me that this is a lot like life. Just when we get confident in what we are doing or where we are, life throws us a kink. Might be big or could be small. When that happens, dealing with the challenge is so much easier if you have a "life line" to back up to. Then hopefully after the chaos is cleared up, we can pick up and continue to move forward. I'm thankful for life lines; how about you?

...till next time

b