Success

The whole time I was working on this I just knew it was going to be an epic fail but it seems it turned out quite nice. Daughter actually liked it and wouldn't give it back to me to put in her bin of good intentioned knits that I keep here for her. It feels strange not to have it to work on. It was an all consuming project for so long, I feel lost without it but I'm sure I'll think of something to replace it with. I always do.

A Big Surprise

I've been knitting my fingers to the bone trying to get Daughter's wedding shawl done before her bridal shower. It was scheduled for August 27th but Irene did away with that. I would have never had this done by then so I appreciated the extra time. I know that Daughter is not the shawl type but I couldn't resist. She can pack it away until she's an old granny in a rocker or use it to wrap up a newborn for its trip home from the hospital.



Eunny Jang's Print O'the Wave shawl is gorgeous. It's one of those spectacular patterns that is easier to knit than it looks. My blocking left a lot to be desired though. It was too big to put anywhere flat due to the danger of kitty sabotage so it has a few bends where there shouldn't be bends. I'll block it again when I have more time and space but in the meantime I am hoping to get a few oohs and aahs at the unwrapping.

Pick of the Knits

Apparently there are no knitters in the display department of Macy's. If so they would have never used this to designate where to find this season's crop of overpriced, machine knit sweaters. I'm wondering what Kelly Petkun would have to say about this?

September Spin Along Part 2

Ugh. After steaming, the batts looked like something that you cleaned up a melted ice cream sundae with. I was not happy. I was prepared to redye in the morning.



When the batts were dry and fluffy, I tore a strip off one and pulled it into a nest just to see what would happen before I drug out all the dyeing equipment again. Hmmm...not bad.



The first little nest was pretty so I kept on going.



Now I have a little pile of pretty nests to spin into woolen singles. I can't do much with only an ounce and a half of fiber so I am going to have to repeat the same mistakes and hope that I get the same results.
It'll never happen.

September Spin Along Part 1

This month's Yarnspinner's Tales Group Spin Along is about spinning woolen singles. Woolen means the certain way you let twist into the unspun fiber. It's complicated and it makes my head hurt thinking about it but I am going to give it a try. You have to start with carded fiber so I ran some leftover odds and ends of Jacob and Corriedale through the little drum carder.



I got two cute little batts but they were gray and I am tired of gray.



I decided to dye the batts. It's scary but I have done this before without any problem so I dumped them into a basin of water to soak.



I spun them dry and then unrolled them.



Now things get ugly. I painted the dye on in spots for some reason I can't understand and as soon as I did, I regretted it.



I left plenty of white so the color could do what it usually does and spread all over, but it didn't.
I must have spun too much water out of the batts because that dye didn't go anywhere but all over the table and me.

Misadventures in Spinning (Rated R for Language)

Once upon a time I had a pile of pretty silk hankies that I was knitting unspun into a scarf.



It was ugly. Really ugly. Plus I hated knitting the unspun silk. It would catch on everything. I tried to frog it but the silk wouldn't frog. It just kept breaking.



Then I thought I would take the unspun silk and spin it. My first try was promising. Spun on left. Unspun on right.



So I rigged up a lazy kate type contraption with a chair that let me draft the silk off the paper tube and use my Spindolyn to spin it. So far so good. I worked (wasted) a whole morning on this.



Then I went to unwind the spun silk onto another paper bobbin. It wouldn't come off the shaft of the Spindolyn. It stuck to itself and broke and finally it ended up a giant wad of tangled crap. I was major pissed off.



I still have a beautiful pile of hankies left but I am so angry at them that they are going into time out. Silk is a bitch.

Near the End

My ginormous Print O'the Wave shawl is almost done. No one is more surprised about that than I am. I thought that edging would take forever. It didn't.



I started with 440 stitches and I put on 3 pattern repeats a day which subtracted 24 stitches each time. It looked like a lot more than it really was. I still can't believe I managed to knit all those stitches up so fast but I'm not going to complain about it. I'm ready to move on.