Elm Row (and extras!!)

And now for another finished object whose 15 minutes of blog fame are LONG overdue...

I grew up in and around New Haven, CT, affectionately known as the Elm City from having played host in the 1750's to the first public tree-planting program in the US, two centuries before Dutch Elm Disease effectively wiped out all the elm trees (although a precious few have apparently survived).

So when I ran across Anne Hanson's Elm Row scarf, it was an easy choice for the Deep Forest colorway of Unique Sheep Eos (50% merino wool / 50% tussah silk) that I picked up from Earthfaire, where it appears as an exclusive offering from time to time (one of many creative collaborations between Ellen and Laura and Kelly). The yarn is a marvelous mixture of spring greens with a touch of tawny golden brown, and I decided to pair it with 6/0 sparkling metallic gold-lined crystal beads. Here is my best photo of what the skein looked like before winding (which really brings out the range of cheerful colors), and another showing the wound yarn-cake with the container of beads. Notice how all of the colors from the hand-painted hank are still there, but subtly blended together. As always, click on either image to take a closer look.

To be honest, I do not have much to say about the knitting process on this one, except that the project took me ~9 months to complete (mid-March to mid-December of last year), mainly because I preferred to work on it in short, intermittent bursts rather than continuously. Anne's instructions are impeccable, as always, and I found the pattern easy to learn, albeit rather repetitive over the long haul. I placed beads in the convenient little grooves running down the center of each elm leaf: 3 beads per leaf for 7 pattern repeats at either end, and 1 bead per leaf everywhere else.

The scarf was designed to be knitted in one piece from top to bottom, but I wanted the ends to match when worn, and so set out to knit two identical pieces that would meet in the middle, with the graft neatly concealed at the back of the wearer's neck. I came up with a convenient way to ensure that two pieces coming from either direction would meet up, by ending at two different rows so that the lace pattern would align properly. Two web resources helped me hone my Kitchener technique: this Knitty editorial and this YouTube video.

The finished piece blocked out to an impressive 13 1/2” wide x 72” long!! It used up 35 g from the 50 g skein, with a total of 370 beads. Here are some pictures. The long, skinny one running down the left side shows how it looked from end to end, pinned out on a queen-sized bed. To the right is a photo of the graft (with apologies for the grid of the blocking cloth peeking through from underneath), and below are several closeup views of the lace fabric after the blocking wires were removed, two focused on the heavily beaded portion at the end of the stole, and one higher up with fewer beads. I feel thoroughly enchanted with the finished effect of this piece, because the pattern has such a rich texture and depth to it. The Eos seems to glow from within (it must be the silk content, right?), and the beads add a perfect touch of sparkle, like drops of dew glinting in the morning sun. As always, click on any image to view an enlargement.

As luck would have it, I finished the stole with leftover materials just in time for the release of Anne's follow-up design: Elm Leaves wristlets, where the same organic lace motif appears as a dainty ruffle dangling from a ribbed cuff. I added 3 beads per leaf to match the ends of the stole, and voilà.

Each cuff needed only a short time to knit, never mind the fact that I took a rather sizable break in between the two, but let me say that 4” is an awful lot of ribbing with lace-weight yarn and 2.75 mm needles... These are definitely meant more as decorative accessories than strictly functional garments, but I still find them surprisingly warm to wear. They will complement the stole beautifully. :-)

Pine & Ivy

A new knitting pattern must be something very special indeed, when a KAL (Knit-Along) forms on Ravelry several weeks before its scheduled release, solely on the strength of tantalizing photos from the designer's blog...

That is precisely what happened not terribly long ago with the Pine & Ivy shawl design from Anne Hanson of KnitSpot fame. The KAL Forum on Ravelry was launched March 12th, and by that time people were already buzzing with yarn ideas and color comparisons, even though the actual pattern did not appear until the 22nd!! A lovely photo gallery heralded that much-anticipated event. But the initial fascination had been sparked several weeks earlier by this entry in Anne's blog. I love the way she began by peeking in at the blocked shawl from behind some French doors. By mid-April, the KAL Forum had over 1,000 posts. There was just no mistaking the fact that an instant classic had been born.

I bought the pattern the day it appeared and cast on a few days later. It gives instructions for three sizes of shawl. I started with the smallest one (a kerchief or "shawlette"), but like many of the people on the KAL Forum, I soon realized that I would probably end up knitting the design several times in different sizes, colors, and/or fiber choices. For this first time, though, I turned to my old stand-by KnitPicks Shimmer (70% baby alpaca, 30% silk) in the "Bayou" colorway, a lovely rich mixture of dark brown and forest green with hints of both olive and teal. Normally with such a yarn I would probably reach for a 2.75 or 3.0 mm (US size 2 or 2+) needle, but I decided to take a bit of a risk and go up to 3.25 mm (US size 3), so that the lace fabric would really stretch out. Also, for a little added embellishment, I sprinkled in some 8/0 beads in silver-lined root beer (which has to be my all-time favorite name for a bead colorway), not enough to make the shawl an automatic trip to "bling city," but just to add a touch of sparkle that would still be suitable for day wear or around the office. I placed them on the ivy vines across the bottom border and the pine cone motif running up the center back, and left the intricate patterning of the rest of the shawl to speak for itself, as it were.

The shawl is fashioned from the bottom up, so you start by casting on several 100's of stitches (303 for the smallest size, 403 for the medium, and 503 for the large/tall). Counting and re-counting all those stitches can be a real challenge. In fact, a few people participating in the KAL got seriously frustrated at that point. But I was lucky enough to make it work on the first try, thank goodness. My usual method in such situations is to mark the stitches off in groups of 50 and then count between the markers until I am satisfied that I have the right number. I find that I still have to concentrate harder as the stitch-count grows, but at least the task becomes more manageable that way.

After a scant 3 rows of garter stitch across the bottom edge, you get into the the ivy border. This provides one of the most visually striking elements of the whole shawl, of course, but it offers some special challenges as well, because the pattern seems to be floating unsupported in mid-air. It also involves a lot of switching back and forth between angled decreases in both directions, as this is what Sharon Miller calls "knitted lace" as opposed to "lace knitting" (i.e. there is patterning on every row, without a row of plain knitting or purling in between). So you have to keep track of ssk/k2tog on the right side vs. p2tog/p2togtbl on the wrong side. Of course, Anne Hanson is a marvelous designer. Her charts are all *meticulously* laid out and paired with crystal clear written instructions that can be consulted in moments of doubt. But all the same, the directional stuff can get terribly confusing at times, especially for left-handed knitters like me.

Once I got past the ivy vines and into the body of the shawl, the knitting started to speed up noticeably, partly because the pattern was more straightforward (although that wavy section in the middle definitely had its tricky bits!!), and also because each successive row was shorter than the last due to the steady decreases. The shawl is exquisitely shaped to fit over the shoulders. I found that I had reached the top before I even quite knew what was happening, and the top edging was a breeze. The whole thing took no more than 5 weeks, and it was NOT my only project at the time.

Below is a gallery of the finished shawl both during and after blocking. The blocking process was fairly straightforward. I started by threading parallel wires on either side of the center panel, and once I had them pinned in place, began pinning out first the lower edge and then the upper one, point by point. The wings clearly wanted to curve upward, given the shaping. As I had hoped, the lace fabric made on larger-than-normal needles stretched out splendidly, and the various patterns really opened up. Its finished dimensions are 20" long at the center with a wingspan of ~48". I ended up using the floor of the computer room to block it out, because the master bedroom with its ever-so-convenient queen-size bed was unavailable. So our two youngest cats inevitably got into the act as well. The fluffy miniature tigress is named Wobbles, and the sleek puma look-alike is Quintus Nigellus. He came to us as a stray when fully grown, whereas she was a day-old kitten whom we rescued and bottle-fed. But I digress... As always, click on any of these photos (or the ones above) to get a closer look.

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this knit from start to finish, and was especially pleased with how it turned out in the end. This is definitely a pattern worth knitting again in one of the larger sizes, perhaps even using more of the "Bayou" Shimmer that I still have in my stash.

Ravelympics After-the-Fact, Part I: Vancouver Frost & Snow

[[ Special thanks go out to zzwhitejd, the Raveler who holds the Creative Commons license for this lovely official Ravelympics 2010 banner and was gracious enough to allow others like me to use it free of charge, with appropriate attribution, of course. ]]

I realize that at this point any blog suddenly showing up with an Olympics motif, of all things, is going to seem more than "a day late and a dollar short." For by now the XXI Winter Games in Vancouver are old news, having come and gone weeks ago, along with their delightfully exuberant Ravelry counterpart. But meanwhile there has been a corresponding BIG GAP in my reportage as well, due to the fact that I was so busy participating in the Ravelympics that I had no time left over to document my activities as I went. I must therefore update this chronicle retroactively, and readers will simply have to bear with me.

True confessions: I am a hard-core Olympics junkie and have been all my life. Every time the games roll around, in other words, be it summer or winter, I basically put everything else on hold as long as the torch is lit, in order to devote myself as much as possible to watching the competition and reveling in the spirit of it all. For me, then, the Ravelympics held out the joyous prospect of evenings blissfully spent knitting in front of the TV and blogging about about my progress day-by-day.

I thought I would have plenty of time on my hands, because the final weekend of the games coincided with the start of winter break at the college. But then my chosen projects turned out to be more time-consuming than I had imagined, and realistically I could only keep up with two out of the three, i.e. watching, knitting, and/or blogging. So as the impending deadline loomed closer and closer (midnight PST = 3 AM EST, after the closing ceremonies on Sunday, February 28th), I just kept knitting, on the assumption that I could always blog about it later.

A whole *LOT* later, in point of fact. But now let's get down to business...

I took on three Ravelympics knitting projects and successfully completed them all within the allotted time-frame (woohoo!!), although the third one came right down to the wire, as we shall see in "Ravelympics After-the-Fact, Part II" (coming soon to a web-browser near you). I intend to deal with the first two here. These make a natural pairing, because they are both smaller projects by one of my favorite designers, Anne Hanson of KnitSpot. They had also both been in my queue for a while, so that the Ravelympics simply gave me an excuse.

First came the Hoarfrost cowl, which I tagged for "Team Little Needle Lovers (LNL)." I chose KnitPicks Bare, a natural, un-dyed fingering weight Peruvian Highland wool and christened this project Vancouver Frost, in keeping with the pattern name, the colorway, and the Olympics theme. It was a straightforward and very pleasurable knit, especially because the stitches fit perfectly on a 16" circular needle (3.25 mm = US size 3) for no-fuss handling. Here is a series of photos showing both the work in progress and the finished product, including one picture that my husband took afterward to show how the cowl looks when worn, nestled up cozily around the neck and throat.

The blend of lace and cable-work in the main snowflake pattern makes for a remarkable depth of texture in this pattern, and the delicate edging gives it the perfect finishing touch. I put on the cowl right away, as soon as it was done, and proceeded to wear it more or less continually for the rest of the Olympic games. It is snuggly and warm and yet unobtrusive and feminine at the same time. I have received quite a few compliments on it, both on Ravelry and in person.

Then came the Snow on Cedars Mitts, which I tagged for "Team Fingerless Glove Fanatics". I chose a KnitPicks yarn for this one too: Shadow Kettle-Dyed lace weight wool in a discontinued dark green colorway called "Wilderness" that I had acquired over the summer in connection with the Christmas 2010 project. I went down to 2.5 mm (US size 1+) dpn's in order to ensure a snug fit on my admittedly small hands. I also paired the yarn with some sparkly 8/0 silver-lined transparent teal beads and decided to go all-out for a glamorous end result that I dubbed Vancouver Snow, carrying on with the Ravelympics winter-weather theme from the cowl project. Each mitt required three sessions of approximately two hours: the first two for the trees, and the third to complete the upper portion and the thumb. Here are some pictures, including one of how these elegant mitts look on the hand.

I am thrilled to pieces with how these mitts turned out. They not only stylish and classy-looking but surprisingly warm as well. I followed the approach with the beads that I learned from Sivia Harding's Harbour Lights Shawl: using a crochet hook to add beads to the pattern stitches in a given round after they have been worked, so that the next row of plain knitting will hold them neatly in place. All that extra detailing made for a LOT of painstaking work, especially in the wrist section of each mitt (those TREES!!!), but it was entirely worth it. I think that the beads look just like glistening snowflakes and Christmas lights twinkling in the trees — and the designer agrees. She left me a wonderful compliment on Ravelry. :-)

By the way, check out the following statistics that "code-monkey" Casey compiled for the 2010 Ravelympics world-wide:

• total # of projects tagged with "ravelympics2010": 24,284
• total # of projects tagged with "ravelympics2010" and finished: 12,878
• total # of Ravelers that finished: 6,296 (out of 9,538 participating)
• total # of countries participating: 65
• total # of people posting into a Finish Line: 5,186
• total yardage used: 8,068,000 (yes…this is 8+ million!)
• total yardage spun/dyed: 448,000

Pretty amazing, n'est-ce pas? :-)

Back to the Blog, Part I: Beaded Lace Lovelies

WOW.

I knew the start of classes was going to curtail my blogging activities to a significant degree. That's why I issued a warning in mid-August to the effect that soon thereafter I would have to stop posting quite so much. But I still can't get over the fact that this is really the first chance I've had in *over a month* to update my blog.

Yikes. The time REALLY got away from me, didn't it?

It's no great mystery how or why it happened, though, because the onset of a new school year is always frightfully busy for those of us in the teaching profession. The hiatus itself was perfectly natural. I just never thought it would last so long.

But I'm back now, so let's not dwell on the past. Fortunately, the fact that I haven't been blogging for the last several weeks doesn't mean that I haven't been knitting. Indeed far from it!! I've got quite a bit of progress to report — enough for at least two separate postings. So here we go with the first batch: BEADED LACE.

I currently have two quite gorgeous beaded lace projects going: the Magic Carpet Ride Scarf by Susan Pandorf of Sunflower Designs and the Ostrich Plumes Stole by Anne Hanson of KnitSpot.

I started the Magic Carpet Ride first, because it calls for both main methods of adding beads to knitting — stringing them onto the yarn in advance and using a crochet hook as you go — so that I could learn the ropes and get some practice before setting off on my own. I had already bought two skeins (= 880 yards) of KnitPicks Shimmer in the "Galaxy" colorway (now sadly no longer available), which is an entrancing mix of dark purple, lavender, and burgundy. The beads are from EarthFaire: 8/0 silver-lined extra dark smoky amethyst. They blend *perfectly* with the colors of the yarn, adding a marvelous wine-dark glimmer that catches the light with a subtle but unmistakable glow. There are quite a lot of beads in the bottom bands of the scarf (where they will show to greatest effect), with a single row running up each side edge all the way along as well, to frame the entire rectangle.

The scarf is knitted in two separate halves that will be grafted together in the center using Kitchener stitch or the 3-needle bind-off. I am currently nearing the end of the first half, which will be finished before the first skein runs out, so there is a good chance of leftovers and perhaps even a pair of fingerless mitts to match the scarf before all is said & done. The intricate Arabic or Turkish-inspired lace pattern is what first drew me to this design. It changes every few dozen rows, creating a LOT of welcome variety. Scarves can be terribly monotonous... I have tinkered with the original design a little bit here & there, by adding a couple of pattern repeats where I liked a particular motif and wanted more of it. In point of fact, I got a bit carried away in the main body of the scarf, where a lozenge motif is supposed to give way to chevrons. I kept going too far with the lozenges, and will probably have to rip back a few inches to make room for some chevrons without adding too much length to the finished object. It's a very fast knit at this point, so I won't lose much sleep — or even much time — by taking a little day-trip to the frog pond.

Here are some pictures. It can be tricky to get the lighting just right so that the beads will show up (& flash complicates matters!!), but I am pleased with how this batch of photos turned out. The first two were obviously from the early stages of the project. The second two are current, with the scarf nearly half done. As always, just click on any one of these images to get a closer look...

And now here is my "Parisian Ostrich" (what else could I call it??), using Yarn Market's Impressionist Zazu from Twisted Sisters in the "Paris Rain" colorway (see previous post for more details about the yarn). I added beads to the original bead-less lace pattern according to my own fancy, once again using a combination of the pre-strung and crochet hook techniques. The beads themselves came from EarthFaire in two different types: 6/0 sparkling celery lined crystal AB and 4x7 mm sparkling celery lined crystal long magatamas. The match between yarn and beads on this one is particularly dramatic and wonderful, especially since the yarn changes colors rather dramatically according to the lighting. Electric light (including camera flash bulbs) seems to accentuate the olive green tones, whereas natural sunlight brings out the the teal and navy blue. But the beads — with their pale green lining and shiny crystal bodies, some round with an Aurora Borealis coating and others clear with the elongated magatama shape — stand out beautifully no matter what. The first two pairs of photos were taken in natural light, and the last pair using flash, to illustrate the contrast. Of course you can click on any of them to get a closer look.

Y'know... There are so many delightful beads out there in the world, and pairing them with just the right yarn (or vice versa) reminds me of food & wine: endless possibilities for the connoisseur to savor. When I first started working with beads, my spouse expressed some very real anxiety about what would happen to my purchasing habits, and our family budget, with the addition of this new category to my list of knitting supplies for which I am continually on the lookout. But happily so far those fears have not yet materialized.

In addition to the beads currently in use, I have acquired about a half dozen different colors/sizes to have on hand: two teals (one 6/0 matte and the other 8/0 shiny), two shades of lilac/purple in the 8/0 size (one light and one medium dark), a "merlot mix" of various dark reds that I simply could not resist, and some silver-lined clear crystal magatamas that are the perfect neutral and will go with anything. These beads are all in "my" colors, so I am obviously keeping my eye out for yarns that will coordinate with them, but there's no deadline and NO HURRY, just the promise of many pleasurable hours yet to come.

Temptations are everywhere, but I am really trying to be a good girl and not spend too much money (at least not all at once). Over the summer I went on quite a little buying spree with both yarn and patterns, and what I acquired should easily hold me for QUITE a while, especially with teaching and other professional responsibilities limiting the amount of time that I can spend knitting in any given day/week. So right now the Parisian Ostrich is on hold temporarily, because I ran out of the 6/0 beads and need to order more. I wanted to work on the Magic Carpet Ride for a while anyway (eager to finish the first half of the scarf), so this seemed like a good opportunity to delay further expenditure. I am waiting until October 1st to place another EarthFaire order. :-)