Seasons of Lace

I can’t believe summer is over and fall is here already.  Although I did not meet all my lacey goals I’m happy with what I did get done - I’ve just been really bad with updating anything lately.  Sooo with that…

My most recently finished item is my Melon Shawl done in Dream In Color Baby.

and my long ago finished item is my trellis lace scarf.

Then there is my man I was this close to finishing, but I ran out of yarn, did a freaky frogging and ended up at the half way mark again flutter scarf. Yes, we had a wee bit of trouble. It’s all straightened out now but she’s still waiting on the sidelines because my heart is just not in it.

I think one of the reasons this got to me so bad is that I also had a yarn shortage happen with the melon shawl. Thankfully, with the aide of Ravelry, I was able to get the few yards needed to finish that - I didn’t even try with the flutter scarf. I figured I would just rip back a bit and make it shorter, but I entered this black hole of still not enough. I must have ripped back at least three times, each time being more that the last, and still would come up short, and I only needed enough for a few rows. So darn frustrating. In a fit I went crazy to make sure I had enough, and I guess I over did it. I blame it on Olympic Knitting stress

My just started lace project is the lace ribbon scarf Not much done yet, but I’m sure enjoying it.

• Ribbon Lace scarf = 7 yards
• Flutter scarf = 240 yards
• Melon Shawl = 735 yards
• Trellis lace =180 yards
• Branching Out = 250 yards

For a total of 1,412 yards knitted. No prize winner by any means but I still had a ton of fun

I was almost finished… only about twenty more rows to go.

I was going to be able to finish this scarf in time to give it to my sister for her birthday….

The yarn had surprised me by just being wonderful!  Easy to work with…soft…scrunchy…

And then….

I realized my puppy was in the house….

Where was she….

Oh no!

I ran to the bedroom and saw that my worst fears were realized…

Of course, I didn’t get a picture of my darling puppy doing the dirty deed.  but this was the result…

Thankfully, it was salvageable.  The scarf - not the needles!  You can see the finished object here.

Oh, and, the puppy was not harmed.  It wasn’t her fault.  You can’t blame her for liking my knitting!

My test knit is on hold as the pattern needs some altering and I decided to cast on a new project to keep my hands busy. I chose the Swallowtail shawl and decided to use the leftovers from Julias previous test knit. Here´s the beginning

And today…. I´ve run out of yarn and the shawl look like this:

Budding lace completed, lily of the valley completed, lacy edge completed, only the last scalloped edging to go (14 rows) and no yarn. Sigh. The good thing is that there´s more of this coming thanks to a generous prize doner here on SOL2008. The bad part is that it´s coming from the States so it´ll propably take up to 8 weeks until I get it. So this won´t be finished in time. sigh again. Well,  at least I tried. Maybe I should start yet another project?

Or “Gauge swatch? We don’t need no stinkin’ gauge swatch!”. A story in two acts.

Act one:

A lace ribbon scarf from Knitty, in Posh Yarn Emily in Primrose. This is actually the third project I’ve started with this yarn; it looks great as lace, but the skein only has 365 yards and the yarn is really, really squishy. And I keep running out of yarn. I got half way through the skein, but the scarf is only about 20″ long. Even with heavy blocking, it’s going to be to short. So–into the frog pond (and maybe a time out) with it.

Act two:

Cleopatra Wrap (from Sensual Knits) in Posh Yarn (it’s a theme) Beatrice, claret color, which is a little darker than the photo shows. I LOVE the way this yarn is knitting up. I love the way it looks in this pattern. I love the drape with this size needles. I love the way it feels when I knit. But I don’t love the fact that the wrap is only 10″ long right now and I’m 25% of the way through the skein. (Which also seems to be a theme.) Even with serious blocking, this isn’t going to be long enough. It is, however, fairly wide–about 21″, unblocked, when the pattern suggests a finished width of about 16″.

The options I’ve come up with are 1. Frog and start again with needles that are at least 2 sizes smaller. 2. Frog and do a freakin’ gauge swatch. 3. Frog and come up with a different pattern. 4. Drink a really big glass of wine.

*sigh* It’s all about the process, right?

I am soooooo annoyed! I made such great progress on my Icarus and it’s looking so good…. Then I come to find out that I will not have enough yarn to complete the project. But that’s not all! Turns out the Handmaiden 2 Ply Silk Cashmere that I’m using has been discontinued! So I can’t even buy more! So now I’m stuck with trying to find other yarns online that work which is very difficult. It’s even possible that the colorway of my yarn (Marine) has been discontinued! Sob!

So, uh, does anyone happen to have some Handmaiden 2 Ply Silk Cashmere in the Marine colorway lying about the place?

Grumpily yours….

I started my F2F Mystery shawl today with 1093 stitches.  They barely fit on my needles, but I did all right on my first row.  On the second row though, I didn’t end up in the right spot on the chart. :(  I now need to go back and look to see if I can see my mistake, otherwise, I’m going to have to start all over again.

I haven’t worked much on my swallowtail, but might be working on it exclusively if I can’t fix the F2F shawl!

I’ve been knitting along and charting along and merrily alonging on Daedelus. Clearly, I’ve gotten overly confident, and the universe is letting me know.

Here is where I was this morning

Oh wait, no… that’s the isn’t my scenery to die for shot.
Here’s a better one of the shawl

Can you spot the error yet?

How about now?

Let’s peek at some details, shall we?

The top of those feathers should be the same.

Note how on the one on the left, there are four (okay it looks like three, but there really are four) sets of yo’s. Note how on the one on the right there are but two such sets? In both feathers? This is not the plan. Now… look back a moment at the full shawl view. See those 46 freaking rows since I finished the last of that set of feathers? Hmmmm??

Shooting myself would be ever so much easier.

I’d just blow this off and live with a stupid thing in the middle of my back — except that doing that means that my shawl is notably shorter than it should be (also, I think I want more space between the two sets of feathers .. more like the spacing from the top to the first set and the second set to where I am now.) Shorter means that I can’t confirm the number of yards the next knitter would really need. And since I’m releasing this baby for others (like say … you??) to knit… I have to do it right.

Sigh.

and yes, this is pretty much a cross post — the vacation bits are on my regular blog.

My trellis lace scarf…gone, gone, gone!  I should have known better than to work on it while trying to get my 5-year-old to stay in bed.  I got distracted, dropped a stitch, then couldn’t figure out where it was and how to pick up again.  Mind you, I hadn’t gone far, but I’ve had so little time to work on it lately that I feel like weeks of work are gone down the tube.  Woe is me!!!

Now I’m aggravated enough with the whole situation that I’m considering just doing a different project.  My life just isn’t conducive to “real” lace knitting right now.  I have a couple scarves in mind or, maybe, I’ll just find a nice lace stitch pattern and make up a scarf on my own.  Either way, I may end up with just one lace project at the end of this KAL…but so be it.  At least I’ll have a finished product, right?

I´ve been spending my day at the well known frog pond

First I cast on the laminaria in my gorgeous cash/silk but I didn´t like the outcome with the needles and didn´t want to go down in size. And there isn´t enough yarn to knit in double.  So i frogged that one. Then I CO the Juno regina with the same yarn and knit for a while…. until I discovered that I didn´t like that either. Now I´m on the 3rd row of wine and roses mitts and guess what´ll happen next…..

I´d be better sleeping not froggin´don´t you think?

Well, I finished my first chart one on Icarus and found a mistake a could not figure out, so I ripped it all out.  I have my kids trained not to talk to me when I am doing lace, if only my husband would quit talking to me!  Oh, well, I have just chalked it up to a practice run, since this is my third lace project, and what I consider a first true lace project.  I have a cats paw scarf in the works, and finished the Montego Bay Scarf.