Sarah's Ramblings

Lace rehabilitation

(Note: Blogger's photo loading is being tres lame. I'm just going to link to the photos, and I'll put them into this entry when Blogger starts to behave itself.)

Remember way back when (when you were blogging regularly, you mean? oh hush), when the Cobweb Doily broke my heart with its fiendish, crochet cotton ways? Well, SUCK ON IT, COBWEB! I publicly declared my love of the pretty lace, especially a particular German doily. And then I went and MADE IT. That's right, I finished a whole knitting project. Cower at my knitterly skillz, foo.

An artsy shot, perched on my dad's grapevine.

A head-on shot spread out on the grass. Yeah, that bit of string on the side there? That's because I haven't woven in the end yet. Shame, shame.

I made it out of less than half a 50g ball of Scheepjes Invicta Extra (75% wool, 25% nylon) - as you may have guessed, it's a plain Jane sock yarn. But put it onto some 4.5 mm dpns and you've got magic! [spirit fingers]
I really am very enamoured of this doily. It's slightly oval because I blocked it on an ironing board, so I had more room to stretch it in one direction than another. But I don't mind. The keen-eyed among you may notice that the edging on my doily is similar to the edging in the pattern illustration, the same way a duck is similar to a nuclear submarine. Basically, the original edging was crocheted, and I don't crochet. So I looked through every pattern book I have and online and did complicated math-y calculations, and eventually gave up and did a picot bind-off. I experimented until I found one I liked, which was *cast on 3, bind off 6*. There were 182 sts in the final round, so I wound up with 91 picots, which I pinned individually. Oh yeah. I went there.

In other sock-yarn news, I finally bit the bullet and learned how to make a toe-up sock. That's Knitpicks Sock Garden in Daffodil, a colour that looks way better knit up than on the ball. I made the figure-8 toe from this Knitty article. It is, as the author states, a bit finicky (it took me three tries before I got going knitting), but I like it because you don't need a crochet chain and waste yarn like the others. You can just go!
The rest of the sock is the larger size from this standard vanilla toe-up pattern. I've always wanted to make a short-row heel, but I feel dissatisfied with this one. I don't like picking up wraps and knitting them together with the stitch anyway, but this pattern has you picking up two wraps, then k3tog. I found it dang hard. Am I doing this right?
Oh, and see that huge ball of yarn to the right of the sock? That's the rest of the ball of yarn. I've already knit a women's size 10 US foot! That yardage is unbelievable.

Oh, and I'm making another sweater. I've loved Mariah ever since she first came out, and now I'm finally making her! I'm so excited, and really enjoying it so far. Here's what I have of the sleeve so far. Gorgeous, eh? That's Cascade 220, and the sleeve colour is completely off; it's more like the colour of the ball in the shade.

The astute among you may have noticed the supremely adorable Secret Pal 8 button over on the sidebar. (Seriously, click on that and look at the choice of buttons I had - it was a dilemma worthy of King Solomon.) Anyway, I got my first package from my secret pal yesterday! I'd been thinking about taking spinning classes at one of my LYSes in Ottawa, but left before I could get around to it. And then my SP told me she would teach me to spin! Isn't that just marvelous!!! Oh, I am so excited. And then I opened up the box and what should I find but a veritable glory of riches.

There was this red linen. It's so lovely and summer-y feeling. I feel like making something with lace out of it, but I have no idea quite what. Any ideas? And then there was this handpainted wool, which is actually more vibrant than it appears in that photo. I think it's going to become that modular zig-zag scarf from Handknit Holidays. Then, of course, there were the spinning supplies.

My spindle. I'm not sure if you can see, but it has flowers painted on the top. So pretty.
And the roving. Potential yarn posed with potential tomatoes. Kinda poetic, don'tcha think? Thank you so much, SP! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some yarn to make.

posted by Sarah @ 2:51 PM