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May 29, 2007
Knitting that is not lace
(The post-holiday crash back into reality has been a little more nerve-wracking this time than usual, with the realization that my summer classes (and oh-my-God-so-much-work) officially begin today and I have a (gulp) Potentially Significant Interview tomorrow. A tiny bit freaked out over here.)
Anyway, here we have booties for a baby-to-be, the offspring of some friends we visited this weekend. (A weekend in which Fudgie the Whale made an appearance. This was my first encounter with the Whale, and I admit that I wasn't super-impressed. Possibly because I'd eaten too many scallops for dinner. Please do not send hate mail.)
The pattern is for Saartje's bootees from Saartje Knits. I used Louet Gems fingering weight yarn in cherry red on 2.5mm needles. Completed in a matter of hours, which was a nice change of pace (though sewing tiny seams and buttons made me a little irritable). The gift recipients were suitably charmed, so I guess it was worth sacrificing a few hours of lace knitting time.
(Rest assured that there has been lace knittting--I've now completed 95 of 140 repeats of the Wedding Ring Shawl edging, and the Christening Shawl is progressing beautifully.)
In garden news: we've had varmints. Cauliflower-mangling varmints. Probably the same ones who destroyed every single one of my tulips this year.
So Jon built me a lovely fence:
Away, beasties!
The fence seems to be doing its job, and the newly-sprouted beans, lettuces, and winter squash have so far escaped harm....
Posted by missalicefaye at 07:35 PM | Comments (8)
May 21, 2007
Beads and horseshoes
I'd like to believe that I'm already noticing the rows getting shorter, but this may be purely wishful thinking. The corners are squaring up nicely, which provides me with a great amount of dorky satisfaction (look! I made a circle into a square!)
Following Jean's suggestion, I picked up the body stitches without first grafting the ends to avoid any potential moebius situations.
As for the non-knitting life update, it was finally pleasant enough to plant vegetables this weekend. We are branching out into eggplant, beans, cauliflower, and winter squash this year in addition to tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, and herbs. To prepare the soil, I worked in some lobster compost, and I lined the holes for the seedling plants with earthworm castings. Sounds like a delightful array of materials to stick your hands in, eh?
Posted by missalicefaye at 10:35 AM | Comments (7)
May 14, 2007
960 stitches
Such a demure little coil of lace.
Now scruched onto the needle and ruffly. Picking up the 960 stitches for the shawl body wasn't exactly pain-free, but I've certainly experienced worse in recent memory.
I confess to being so enamored with my new project that I pretty thoroughly ignored the Wedding Ring shawl this weekend. With the new, I was excited to see what would be coming next. With the WRS, I know what's coming next for a loooong time.
Other weekend activities: I finally prepped the vegetable patch for planting next weekend. I'm now smart enough to wear gloves when using things like pitchforks and giant rakes, so no blistery hands or stubborn dirt under the fingernails this year. One must take such things into consideration when one is knitting a delicate light-colored lace. (I think I read in Sharon Miller's book that knitters of very fine Shetland lace were sometimes excused from arduous gardening tasks to preserve their hands. That argument doesn't really fly in my household.)
The real highlight of the weekend: Jon spent 10 hours on Saturday smoking pork for Carolina barbecue. Yum....
Posted by missalicefaye at 11:18 AM | Comments (9)
May 09, 2007
The other edging
Attending Maryland Sheep and Wool with a fabulous cadre of knitters is, as you might expect, a really really really good way to spend a birthday. No, I didn't take any pictures, but you can get your sheepy fix at Claudia's blog. (It seems I did actually end up under the table at dinner that night, but I was just looking for my jacket, honestly!)
So, yes, as Jane noted, my next project is a christening shawl designed by Gladys Amedro under the name "Gema Ord" (an anagram for G. Amedro). According to the ever-knowledgeable Jean Miles, the shawl was designed in honor of the birth of Princess Beatrice of York in 1988. It incorporates roses (symbol of the House of York) and anchors (in honor of Prince Andrew's naval career).
For added fun and excitement, this pattern isn't charted. And the written instructions use nonstandard abreviations (for example, "c" instead of "yo" and "T" instead of "k2tog".) The long edging is knit first, then the ends are grafted together, stitches are picked up for the body of the shawl, and the whole thing is knit toward the center on progressively shorter needles.
After the Wedding Ring Shawl edging, this one is super easy and quick--I'm up to 70 repeats out of 120, using the same kind of Russian cobweb weight yarn with which I began the ill-fated Sampler Shawl.
I restrained myself and did not attempt to work on the WRS in Maryland--I reached the halfway point of the edging last night, though, so just a few more weeks to go!
Posted by missalicefaye at 09:09 AM | Comments (10)
May 01, 2007
School's out!
Oh, my. What a week. But I can now say that I've officially survived my first semester in grad school--hooray! And my professors seemed terribly excited about my project on uses of social networking software in libraries, so that was a nice way to end the semester. That's the nice thing about school--you don't usually get gold stars like that in the working world. :)
(And, yes, I did have to sign up for Second Life. For research purposes.)
Of course, I managed to make time for knitting amidst the studying. Most of the progress on the Palatine (above) happened during lunch hour at work. With difficulty, I might add. My coworkers don't seem to share my conception of lunchtime as sacred leave-me-the-hell-alone time. Sigh. I really need a door.
In WRS news, I've completed 51 repeats of the edging pattern out of 140. It seems to be going pretty fast (but maybe that's just in comparison to the insanely long border rows). Perhaps I'm just super-excited to move on to the next big thing.
Posted by missalicefaye at 09:09 AM | Comments (13)
