Lace Shawl

Sigh. Started another project without much thought or advance planning. Then I (rather foolishly) told the Maryland State Fair that I would be submitting it for judging. So now I have a bit less than three weeks to finish it.

All that said, it is coming along beautifully. It is a lace shawl, and I am actually following a pattern (no really, the only change is to the yarn. Well, and the needle size. But, the rest, I swear, is following the pattern). The pattern is Ilo, by Heidi Alander. It is a two-color, triangle lace shawl using something akin to the feather and fan stitch.

For my main color, I used some rough handspun. I spun from the lock, and I mixed mostly white lincoln wool with colored mohair locks in pink, purple and blue. It came out quite pastel. You can read more about it here, here, and here.

Mohair locks

Lincoln locks

Singles yarn on the spindle

Pastel yarn in the skein

For my contrasting color, I used a gray yarn that has been sitting in my stash for awhile. It is either laceweight or cobweb weight, and I once made a lace shirt out of it.

Fine gray yarn

It is a mystery yarn, since I bought and balled it before I documented every purchase on Ravelry. I think I bought it in college though, and I know that I got it from a vendor at the science fiction convention Arisia. It feels like wool. It is VERY fine, and quite delicate. I am doubling it for this project, to more closely match the weight of the other yarn.

Yarn across my hand, for scale

So, the project started out well.

Beginnings of the shawl, with balled yarn

I was a little worried that because the shawl is a triangle, the blocks of color would look odd: early on, the blocks would be large, but later they would be narrow. So far though, that hasn't happened. It looks fine, I think.

Current state of the shawl, as of Aug 5th

What has happened is that I have discovered that one of the balls of the gray yarn has gotten damaged. I don't know what caused it, but there are many breaks in the yarn. This means that I have to splice a new thread every row or two. An unpleasant surprise, to be sure, but not insurmountable.

Well, since I have some baby-free time today, I should be knitting, not blogging! Off I go.

Sheep to Shawl: Part V

Part I covered washing the fleece, Part II covered prepping it, Part III covered spinning singles, and Part IV covered plying and finishing yarn. This part will cover starting to knit the shawl.

I know it has been awhile. I had to spin and ply a third skein for the project, then I put it on hold while I finished some presents for the holidays. But last week, since I finished the astronomy hat, I decided to jump into the next step with both feet.

So, what is the next step? Choosing a pattern.

I knew that I wanted to do a lace shawl, but that still leaves a lot of patterns.

The first step to choosing a pattern is to set parameters. So, these were my parameters:

• Lace
• Looks good in white (no dyeing for me!)
• Rectangular
• Uses lace-weight yarn
• Airy
• Minimal looking at the pattern required (nothing where each row is unique)

As you can tell, some of these were structural, and some were design elements.

The next step, for me, in choosing a pattern, is to look through my stitch dictionaries to see if there was any stitches I could use without modification. I like using the stitch dictionaries, because it allows my piece to be "mine," but I didn't find anything that particularly inspired me.

After that, I looked through my lace books. I didn't find anything that matched my criteria - most of the shawls available were not rectangular (though beautiful, I may have to go back and do another some day).

Finally, I used Ravelry's pattern search. Some of my criteria (lace, rectangular, uses lace-weight yarn) could be put into the search directly. Other criteria would have to be judgement.

My final selection was the Lattice Lace Wrap designed by Lou Schiela, although I will be skipping the beading.

Something in the pattern just called to me. It was nice and repetitive, without being boring. I like criss-cross patterns - someday soon I will do a post on entrelac. It looked very airy, and could be expanded to a different width without much trouble.

Before I made the plunge, though, I had to do a test knit or two. These are especially important for hand-spun, since there is no other way to get a gauge - My finished yarn looked lace-weight to me, but there was no way to make sure that it would work in the pattern, or which needles to use, without testing.

I did two test swatches. The first, on size 5 needles:

Lace swatch #1, unblocked

The second was on size 6 needles:

Lace swatch #2, unblocked

If I was a good planner, I would have blocked them and measured the gauge, maybe kept them in my pocket for awhile to test their wearability, put them through the wash, and otherwise tested them to see how the shawl will look over time before starting to knit. I recommend that you do these things, especially if you are making a shaped garment.

But I don't have the patience. I started knitting right away, as soon as I chose my needle (size 5, I think it looked a little nicer that way), and have one repeat of the pattern finished.

A good start on the shawl

Close up

And, even though I have already started knitting the shawl, I did do a light blocking of the swatches to see how they might turn out. I am worried that the pattern won't be very visible without the beads.

Swatches, lightly blocked (no pins)

It should be awhile before I do another of these posts. The shawl is likely to take a long time to complete. But I will attempt to amuse you in the mean time with other projects.

Four Hats

Hats are a great, quick project. They are more interesting than scarfs, and more versatile than gloves.

I love wearing hats, and I love making hats, so let's look at some hats I've made over the years.

Let's start with some of my favorites: two sun hats I made in college.

The first hat was the Picture Hat from the book "A Gathering of Lace". The second was the same hat, but I modified it by adding the pattern from the Spiral Shawl in the same book. The hardest part of the pattern was finding a good starch to keep it from being floppy. The first hat, I used corn starch. The second, I used a glue-like stiffener from the craft store. These are definitely the fanciest hats I have ever made, though they are made with a very simple cotton yarn.

Moving on to warmer things...

Sorry for the poor pictures, but I no longer have access to the project in question.

For a summer in college, I worked as a telemarketer. Of course, I knitted the whole time. One of my fellow employees seemed really fascinated by the idea that I could design him any hat that he wanted, and he asked for one that was red and blue and said "Boston" and had his lucky number on the back. He bought the yarn (there was a LYS down the street), and I made him a simple rolled-brim hat. I got to practice my intarsia, he got a custom hat.

One more for today (although looking through, I have made a lot of hats. This may be a recurring post).

This is another hat that has sadly disappeared into the ether. I went through a phase where I was making hats that were reversible, and looked completely different on one side than the other. This one was done by simply making two hats without bottom brims. Both were started using a provisional cast-on. Then I removed the waste yarn, and finished with a brim for both.

The spiral pattern on the gray hat was done with duplicate stitch, so there was no intarsia involved.

That is all for today. More hats will be appearing in the future, I am sure.