Blocking Lace!

This is mokatiki's BRANCHING OUT, which she gave to me as a birthday present. To preserve my rapidly failing dignity, I won't tell you which birthday it was for. But today, with the help of a £15 playmat from an Amazon Reseller, I've pin-blocked it. Woohoo!

So, you know. I got yarn. I didn't pay for all of it, and what I did pay for was cheap, cheap, cheap.

( Eight photographs below the cut tag )


MCA Direct
The Knitting Goddess

I'm really loving the way the colours are coming out on this sock. Thanks to everybody who encouraged me to knit this one: I think it's going to work out fine.

My only concern still is that the 3.25mm needles are not giving a very firm sock and that both the pattern itself and the garment will suffer for this. Then again, I still have my first pair of socks, made in sockweight Fortissima Socka, on 3.5mm needles, and they've held up fine. I can't help but think the pattern might look nicer with a firmer tension. The largest size for this fairly complicated sock is 70 sts around, so I had to find a tension that would give between 9.5 and 9.7 stitches per inch on 70 stitches. I settled on 7.5 stitches/inch on the 3.25mms, which will give me a sock 9.5" around -- half an inch smaller than my foot, but the sock should stretch.

It's still possible I'll rip this out; I need to see how the lace pattern looks once it's built a little more. I'll make a decision probably in the next two or three inches.

I am loving knitting with the Zauberball! It's unlike any other sock wool I've ever used in that it appears not to be plied. It's almost like a sock weight Lopi, only very soft and more than a little bit fuzzy. Despite its appearance in the ball, it does have variable thickness.

In order to knit the Summer Sliding socks, I had to go up several needle sizes, so depending on how the patterning looks, you may see a reluctant frog have to happen here. If that does happen, I'll drop back to the Magic Mirror socks, which have very similar construction. I'm thinking that the fuzziness of the Zauberball may make up for the 7.5 st/in tension, which is really working very well. I'm using Addi lace needles, which also help with the fuzziness. The designer wants 9 st/in, so I'm hoping that the general stretchiness of lace will forgive my tension sins.

You can see that the green is just beginning to lighten into yellow at the top of the toe there; I'm very interested in seeing how and where the colour changes will take place. Although I've experimented with Turkish cast-on before (and taught it in class -- that was the first time I ever did one!), this is the first pair of socks I've done a Turkish cast-on for, and I am in love. The seamless appearance of the toe is, to quote a world of supervillains, 'sheer elegance in its simplicity!'. And it allows an easy wedge toe on a toe-up sock without the bumps and jogs you get from the QK double cast-on or doing a provisional cast-on and picking up stitches!

I completed these last night and wove the ends in this morning.

( Three photos beneath cut tag )

I picked up this lovely wool on Wednesday at I Knit London, and now I'm thinking I may get a second ball of it if they still have it on Saturday.

Zauberball translates to 'magic ball', and I think that even in the ball it live up to its name. It's just alive with possibilities, isn't it? The wool comes in an astounding array of colours, not all of them this bright, I promise!


( Photos and pattern photo links below cut tag )

As if I didn't already have enough to do, I thought, "Hey, I'll design a pair of lace socks that will work well with self-patterning jaquard sock wool! Yeah! Let's do that!" Well, they've at least given me a chance to experiment a bit more with the square DPNs, which I still like.

( Three photographs, plus technical notes, beneath cut tag. Pattern to follow. )

Not just a modification; a "real" design this time. These were cast on last night, and they are moving pretty quickly at this point.

( Single photo below cut tag. )

Mm, this is a fun project.

( Three photos below cut tag )

Well, let's see.

I'm just not a monogamous knitter; it's obvious. And I neglect projects for months, sometimes years, at a time. Sometimes I come across a neglected project when I'm going through my stash, usually looking to start something new, and although I know in my heart I might never finish it, particularly that replacement pair of Camelot socks that I've lost the pattern for (and I had two copies of the pattern at one point; can you believe that? I should really just scan everything and turn it into .pdfs for my iPhone). Still, I can't bear to give them up. I think I can remember most of them.

1. It wouldn't be fair not to list those gorgeous Camelot Socks,* after having whinged about them up there;
   
2. There's the Ragna,* which I put aside because I was knitting Christmas gifts. The bottom mitres are all joined for the front, and I'm about to start knitting up;
   
3. There's filceolaire's spiral tank top,* which is temporarily put aside because I have to make a couple of design decisions and I'm not ready yet;
   
4. There's onebrightroad's Twisted Flower Socks,* one of which is complete. I just need to knit the second sock;
   
5. There's Harmarnii's (winolj) Malabrigo lace socks* from DROPS design, one of which is complete. I think I even cast on for the second one at one point. I was on the bus;
   
6. There's the gorgeous Rhiannon* knee socks from Cookie A that I have found to be incredibly frustrating and will come back to when I'm feeling like a challenge (yes, they are more challenging than the Ragna!);
   
7. There's bardling's Harika Socks,* one of which is complete and the other of which is at least started;
   
8. There's the lace cocoon,* which I've been concentrating on for the last couple of weeks;
   
9. There's the Pfeiffer Falls Hooded Scarf,* which I started in the dead of winter and which is going to be very warm and cosy. But I used stash wool, and I'm just not all that thrilled with powder blue. Probably this will go to an auction or a friend when completed;
   
10. There's the purple and green entrelac knee socks,* which I'm designing and knitting on the fly. They've been put aside because they're kind of boring to knit, and as I'm doing most of my knitting at home these days, I don't really need train knitting projects at the moment;
    
11. And as of last night, there's the Strangling Vines Scarf,* made of sockweight (4ply) Colinette Jitterbug, in the "Popsicle" colourway.

Wow. That's eleven projects, not counting stuff I do for knitting classes and whatever I've forgotten. If any sense, I wouldn't start another one for awhile. But, you know. I have lace yarn.

( One photo of Strangling Vine Lace below the cut tag )

I took some photographs when I was home for lunch, so you could see how this is going.

( Three photos below cut tag )

...Yeah.

( One photo behind cut tag, with geeking (not much!). )

Ravelry Project Page for this garment.

I did get in a little time for knitting today.

( Two photos below cut tag )

Gah, I wish I had more time to knit!

( Two photographs below cut tag )

Well, not terribly much progress I'm afraid. Despite the fact that last week was half-term for some people, I had to work a 60-hour week and prepare for four hours' worth of teaching on Saturday. There wasn't much time to work on this project, but what time I spent (a wee bit on Wednesday night at I Knit London and a couple of hours Sunday night at home) got me firmly into the second iteration of the spiral pattern. The Kauni colour change occurred so subtly that I didn't even notice it until I held the knitting up and saw that hey, it did change colour round about there! I am about six rounds into the 28-round offset, so you can just see the edges of the new spirals peeking through above the completed spiral (which looks fabulous, if I do say so myself!) This is a really exciting project, and I wish I had more time to work on it. Maybe this week.

( One photograph below cut tag )

Here is the final pattern chart for the main body of the vest. Thanks to janewilliams20 for putting my offset idea in graphical form. The photo below is a hand chart of the design (in Excel) with a couple of tweaks for continuity and smoother lines.

( very large picture below )