a finished object!

Greetings from the unseasonably chilly wilds of Florida! Look what I just finished today...

Yes! It is a lace shawl. It is HUGE. Many more details are on Ravelry for those who are interested.

I feel SUCH a sense of accomplishment about this - it only took about 3 months, instead of the THREE YEARS it took for my previous Lacey Lamb extravaganza (it was a full circle, though). It comes at just the right time, too - after a week or two of near-crisis at my new job, I'm settling down, ramping back to 4 days per week, and feeling rejuvenated overall. This shawl is somehow a metaphor for the last three months of newness and adjustment. Hooray!

What's everyone else been up to?

Midi Sweater!

Seanphotomidisweater1
Originally uploaded by alaynefreidel

Here ya go, Max Darling! Many many thanks to Elizabeth Zimmermann for inspiration and to Sean for the picture.

GAUGE: 5 to 1"

BODY
You can start straight into garter stitch with the contrasting color (CC), in which case do two ridges of garter stitch and then two rows stockinette CC. OR -

- Using provisional CO, CO 210 stitches in CC, join (at the end of the sweater you can pick up and knit down from this to the desired length)
- K 2 rows total (including CO row) in CC
- Switch to main color (MC) and k 3 rows
- K 2 rows CC, place markers one stitch after join point and at 106 stitches
- Switch to MC and K for 20 stitches, PM and start lace pattern:
LACE PATTERN:
1. K1, YO, K1, sl1, K1, PSSO, K5, K2tog, K1, YO, K1
2. All even rows knit
3. K2, YO, K1, sl1, K1, PSSO, K3, K2tog, K1, YO, K2
5. K3, YO, K1, sl1, K1, PSSO, K1, K2tog, K1, YO, K3
7. K4, YO, K1, sl1, K2tog, PSSO, K1, YO, K4
- Maintain lace pattern throughout body of the sweater
- K to desired length for waist shaping (for me, ~ 9")
- On either side of side markers, decrease (4 stitches decreased)
- K for 1" rows
- Repeat decrease round
- K for 2"
- On either side of side markers, increase one stitch (4 stitches increased)
- K for 1"
- Repeat increase round (garment is ~ 13" long now)
- Continue to desired length ( Mine is 16" long, and I did some short row bust shaping)
- Place body on holders or yarn
SLEEVES
- CO 50 stitches in CC for sleeve (MAKE 2), join
- K 2 ridges of garter stitch in CC
- K 2 rows plain stockinette in CC
- Switch to MC and K 3 rows
- Switch to CC and K 2 rows
- Switch to MC and K 3 rows
- Switch to CC and K 2rows
- Continue in MC, increasing approx every 4 rows till 66 stitches (I increased on the top of the sleeve, instead of underarm, for a bit of interest)
- Continue plain till desired length (mine are ~11")

YOKE
- Join sleeves to body on long needle, leaving 10 stitches for underarm on each sleeve and at appropriate points on body on holders
- K, maintaining lace pattern, for approx half and inch, marking the 4 points where the front and back of sleeves join the body
- Kitchener underarms ( I do it now instead of at the end because it puts less stress on the underarm and it doesn't get all stretched out)
- Decreasing on either side of each point (8 stitches decreased each decrease round) every 3 rows, K until 33 stitches remain at sleeve (half of the number you started with)
- Knit across one sleeve's 33 stitches, joining up to front and back with ssk and p2tog, as appropriate, until saddle is ~ 5 inches.
- K around to the other sleeve and repeat
- Join all stitches on one needle and K 3 rows garter stitch, then bind off!
- Sew in ends.

Happy Holidays!

Happy holidays! I love love love the Melanie Falick book Handknit Holidays. I look through it kind of a lot--I just love the photography, the patterns, the styling. Oddly, though, I don't know if I'd knit a single thing from the book until this year. As you know I've been trying to do a lot of stash busting this year, so this pom pom garland was a great stash buster to knit up during one of the many snow storms last week. It's hard to photograph, but hopefully you can see it. It's basically just several i-cords braided with a few pom poms. It's really sweet, though. Anyway, I hope everyone has a lovely holiday and may 2009 bring us all much health, love, happiness and knitting!

Stripey Stripe

After a fit of frustration over my colossal gauge issues with the Sideways Grande Cloche from Boutique Knits I picked up this super easy Noro stripey scarf. Nothing special, nothing challenging--but, that's sort of what I needed during the crazy hectic December anyway. I think it'll end up being a Christmas gift for my brother.

I've since re-started that cloche and had to go down 4 needle sizes! It's bananas, but I've noticed that on Ravelry lots of people have had the same issue. It's strange because I've actually gotten a lot closer to knitting normally, and to gauge in the last few years, but with not that pattern. I'm hoping to be able to finish it before we leave for Switzerland. I always like to travel with super simple, interruptable projects. Though, the big Woolcott sale is coming up--I might have to treat myself to some wooly treats.

Noro Sweater

Well, I knit at least one big, adult project this year. My mom was at a party in October and commented on her friend's sweater. The friend informed her that it was a handknit sweater and my mom promptly emailed me the pattern with a note that said something like, "Maybe for my birthday or Christmas?" Since I'm always wanting to knit for everyone (but trying to be mindful that not everyone loves a handknit garment or item), I was thrilled to get the request.

The yarn (Noro Silk Garden 217A) looks really lovely. Unlike my disastrous shawl, this Noro is really beautiful--dark, moody with pops of color.

The sweater really doesn't look like much on the hanger, but the yarn is lovely and hopefully my mom will enjoy it. The constant snow storms have made for poor lighting for photos, so these aren't great. I'll take a better photo of her in it--let's hope it doesn't look quite so boxy!

Cowl Crazy

Who would've thought that my cowl mania would've rubbed off on Scott, but it did! Upon request I knit up a cycling cowl for him to wear on his daily commute. It was a simple, improvised pattern.
Cast on 100, did 1" of 2X2 ribbing on either side and knit about 15" or so. Scott wore it yesterday during a sunny, but cold cold day and said that it worked well. Now there are two cowl maniacs in our house!

Not knitting, but tasty nonetheless

This is totally unrelated to knitting, but I thought I'd post since well, it's the holidays after all. I took a buche de noel class at the Cambridge Culinary Institute.

When I was growing up, holidays were a truly international affair. My mom's Spanish, Dad's German, had Swedish au pairs, French friends. . . so we adopted many different holiday traditions including the buche de noel (aka yule log). Of course, I can't recall that anyone in my household actually undertook the elaborate cake (and trust me, it is elaborate), but we almost always had one.

It's a multi-part undertaking:
-genoise cake
-chocolate butter cream filling and icing
-meringue mushrooms
-marzipan moss, leaves, berries
-chocolate plants and fences

Whew! Anyway, this was partly the reason I decided to take the class. This way I'd have someone to walk through all the components. The class was SO much fun, taught by a very charistmatic Frenchman. He kept saying, "Now zeez ees a sexy butter cream!"

It was a 4 hour plus class and we went so fast. I suspect that if I ever made it by myself it would take about 8 hours to complete. A long time and lots of effort for a fleeting cake. . . but I sort of love projects like that. Ephemeral and lovely.

Tea for Two

I finally finished the sweater I'm knitting for my Mum for the holidays. Stacie's going to help me out with the (loads!) of seaming and blocking that's required. As soon as it's complete, I'll definitely post pics.

In the meantime, I'm continuing my quest to bust stash. This little tea cozy (or, is it cosy?) pattern is from the second "Stitch n' Bitch" book. It actually fits our teapot perfectly and was a good use of scraps I had in my vast yarn collection. I think, though, my cozy/cosy might look a tad sporty with these stripes.

I'm in desperate need of another yarn review with you ladies. I've been diligently knitting from stash (for the most part) this year, but still. . .SO. . . MUCH. . . YARN.

Chi-town

Hi all! I went to Chicago for a few days this week. My friend, Don, moved there a year ago and I've been meaning to visit and the time finally came. He had warned me that it was cold, but I thought living in Boston would've prepared me. It didn't! It was in the 20s, but I swear it felt about 20 degrees colder. Bitter bitter cold!

I did a lot of sight seeing (Millennium Park, architecture boat tour, all the 'hoods) and even got to go see a taping of "Oprah." It was so fun and just great to get away for a few days. Oprah was actually kind of amazing--she looked great! She enthused about Obama! Suze Orman was on the show and now I don't want to spend any money at all.

My only knitting related news from the trip is that I did go to Nina knitting boutique in Wicker Park (which, by the way, is an awesome part of town--cool shoppes, restaurants, etc.). It was a lovely boutique and early on a Saturday morning it was buzzing with excited knitters, which was fun.

You can see all my pics here.

Spoils of Rhinebeck

It really was amazing.

In addition to the great conversations with Simone and Brianna on the trip down, I was really lucky to meet and/or hang out with severely awesome peeps, including the folks from Spunky Eclectic, numerous cool Canadians, MickeyO from Hudson Valley Sheep & Wool Co., Sean and Stephen from Sean's Soapbox and Hizknits (respectively) and of course the fabulous family of Mistress njstacie, who were kind enough to let me stay and brought my considerable haul back into the Boston area.

Rhinebeck the Fair turned out to be a quite traditional fall festival (with the addition of insane-o fiberaddicts). Then Ravelry.com threw a most excellent party on Saturday night and the next day, Lesley of the Dolin clan treated us to a tour of a friend's beautiful home restoration AND some delicious squash and apple soup.

SO, while the people were the true heart of the experience, the fiber was pretty fantabulous as well. To whit:


4 oz of gorgeously dyed cormo from Foxhill Farms, in process.


Icelandic and Shetland batts from Hudson Valley.

I was instructed by my spinning guru, njstacie, to pick out 2 oz of stuff I wanted to try and go for the gold with the stuff I knew I liked. So here are some bits - Lamb and Llama on the top and Corriedale on the bottom. Ironjohn showed me how to spin the Corriedale on Stacie's spindle on Saturday night. You can see by how much is left over how great a drop-spindler I am.


Gorgeous lace-weight icelandic that Seanie gave me. SO nice of him since I very much coveted it but was trying to be controlled in my yarn purchases.

George McFly's favorite merino/angora blend from Delly's Delights Farm.

The yarn I couldn't resist. 1 cone of from Bartlett's and 2 skeins of a natural dyed spun mohair/wool blend.

A good time had by all. And I think the gods are still with me, as I went to the Goodwill in Davis Square recently and got all these great books for less that $10!



I'm praying the luck holds through Tuesday!

A Tale of Two Shawls

A co-worker of mine had surgery last week and I wanted to knit something comforting. The Simple Yet Effective shawl was on my Rav queue for a while.

So, I picked up some Noro Silk Garden Light. When I picked it up I tried to push through to see all the colors. I know that Noro always has a few surprises, but boy was I surprised when these skeins had this bright pink and acid green/yellow colors. I kept knitting because I know all the colors are intentional and critical in the Noro yarns. I kept knitting; I love the pattern. After I finished I realized that I didn't like the pink and acid green colors. . . the more I looked at it, the more I hated it. Like, really hated it.

I ended up turning right around and re-knitting this pattern in Hempwol in this great tweedy green. I'd been wanting to use this yarn for a while and this seemed like the perfect chance. I just knew it would turn out to be more satisfying. No surprises with the Hempwol, but I'm so much happier with this shawl.

The pattern is great because it's simple and sort of hypnotic. Good to knit while watching TV. If anyone wants a new wave shawl, let me know!

Rhinebeck - NY Sheep & Wool (or, Wind it up!)

So, last weekend Briana, Alayne and I drove out to the lovely Hudson Valley to take in the NY Sheep & Wool festival in Rhinebeck. We met up with Stacie, too. So many sheep, rabbits, goats! I wasn't really sure what to expect in the event, but it really was like a cross between a 4H show and a craft/yarn/wool fair. We arrived just in time for the Ravelry meet up, but I know I didn't really meet too many people.

There was really so much to take in. We took a few spins through the several of the buildings. It was incredibly overwhelming. I'm actually glad that I don't spin because then I would have had even more to take in. I've been so good this year with not buying any yarn. (full disclosure: OK, so I did break down a couple times this year. . .during a visit to Purl Soho and at the Woolcott sale, but honestly that's a huge improvement over my yarn intake of previous years!). I'll have to photograph my newly acquired stash. . . as soon as I borrow Stacie's ballwinder and wind up all the yarn! I got some gorgeous charcoal grey alpaca for the apple-picking capelet which will be my next big project. I've also decided to start taking on some colorwork mittens. These are totally inspiring.

Stacie correctly predicted that I would fall in love with all the bunnies at the show (how did I not take any photos of them?), but Briana made a little friend, too. He was so in love!

We saw lots of FO showing off, which was actually fun. Definitely the pattern of the day was the February Lady Sweater. That one is, of course, on my gigantic Ravelry queue!

Briana and I had an exciting (well, exciting to us anyway) celebrity sighting: Jim Jarmusch. What was he doing there?!?

Finished!

There's no good reason at all why this project took so long--I'm embarrassed to say it's been over 3 years since I began this project!--but finally FINALLY this baby sweater is complete! Knitting knit, seams sewn, and ends woven in. Whew!

This is a baby sweater from Debbie Bliss's Baby Knits for Beginners. The pattern actually calls for two pockets on the front, but 1) I can't be bothered to knit more for this sweater and 2) pockets? Seriously? What is a baby going to put into these pockets? Nothing useful--that's what I think.

It's been so long since I started this sweater that I cannot even remember who I knit it for in the first place. Luckily, there's been a million babies cropping up, so no problem finding a recipient.

I have to thank Stacie profusely for helping me go through my stash and UFOs way back in January. This was among them and even though it's August, I'm just so pleased to have completed it. Also, Stacie/Dr. Knitting actually sewed many of my seams. Boy oh boy do I hate sewing seams.

TNNANANANA

Whew.

TNNA is a LOT of stuff to take in, and they didn't let us take any pictures on the floor. BUT so many fabulous things we bought. Full of inspiration, I came right home and cleaned out my stash in preparation.

And people were really cool. I got to rub elbows with the Ravelry folks Jess and Casey, Franklin of Panopticon, Teva Durham, Stephanie the Yarn Harlot, Erin of Imperial Stock Ranch, Lily Chin, Anya Safir (daughter of Jade Sapphire and a supa cool Brooklynite) and many many other lovely people - including Mr. Snub Nose at the front desk of our hotel, who kindly explained the lack of drugstores downtown.

Some small snapshots of last weekend:
Proof that there are Starbucks everywhere, even Ohio. Bicycles are very popular in Columbus. YAY Columbus!

Here is Sean at an outdoor cafe. See that map? Those are all booths! Much iced coffee and tea was consumed while trying to figure out what to focus on.

If anyone is in Columbus, I highly highly recommend hitting up the Burgundy Room for dinner. Sean and I did two different "flights" - here is mine. It started with an Apple-Celery salad, then Portabello mushroom ravioli, then an Almond Beet puree that tasted a lot like a Hillel sandwich with the water crackers provided. Plus accompanying wines. So delicious, we had no room for dessert. Which was too bad because apparently Jeni's ice cream is world famous.

It was entirely overwhelming, but also completely wonderful to see so many fiber-lovers all gathered together from so many different places and paradigms all so happy to see each other and the merch. Oh, and did I mention Teva Durham had heard of this blog? Hey now!

Too long gone

Whew. I have been knitting & crocheting away, but somehow it seems to be much easier to post projects on Ravelry. But as I was doing so I noticed that it had been MONTHS since I posted here.

So.

A few things:

1. I think we should reconvene a regular knitting meeting. For I miss seeing you all regularly. Perhaps we could do themes? Like, charted knitting? Or the mysteries of Portuguese knitting? Or, name/smell that fiber?

2. Jennie Atkinson, of Rowan, is on my list for this bed jacket. There are no instructions about how to attach the collar. NONE. Poo. Thank goodness I have a very smart friend in Austin who just happened to be also knitting it and could advise.


3. I love Pentagons. I love knitting this Pentagon lace shawl. I am anxious to show this off. Plus I need color opinions.


4. This is my new kitty George. He is awesome. And double-toed.

4. Is anyone else listening to the Y Knit podcast? The one with Cat Bordhi is TOO funny. Also Lace for Boyz.

And how are you all doing? What lovelies are you up to?

Jumping on the Bandwagon BSJ

Long time, no post! Well, I finally started a BSJ and finished it up rather quickly too. What a lovely pattern. I knit it up in some Cascade Fixation that I picked up at the Somerville Library/Ravelry Stash Swap from a couple weeks ago. I'm trying only to knit from my stash this year--it's actually getting increasingly complicated since I have 1-2 balls of lots of things. But BSJ really is rather perfect for that.

Yelapa

I just returned from a journey down to Yelapa, Mexico. Yelapa is a little fishing village with no automobiles - it's a 45 minute Water Taxi ride from Puerto Vallarta to get down there, and we stayed at the most lovely Casa Milagros, which is a mere 182 steps up from the village. But the views!



The place is all very lovely - there is a waterfall at the edge of the village, and a larger one about an hour walk away. The food was wonderful, the people were lovely, the weather was stunning. My biggest concern while there was avoiding burro crap. Easy enough.

Oh, and I got some knitting done:


I had wanted to take along a lace knitting project, but not wanting to get too involved in charts and really PAYING ATTENTION, I opted to cast on for a Pi Shawl. I followed the lead of brooklyntweed, and went for a simple yo, K2tog row every once in awhile. Keeping it simple. The yarn is from Miss Simone - Grignasco ExtraFine, and it sure is extrafine! I'm knitting this on US4s. I plan on completing it sometime in 2037 or thereabouts.

*They say that getting there is half the battle, but this time around it seemed to be a bit more - the getting out of there was a bit of an issue. Heed these words, my friends: If any of you ever think for one minute about going to Houston, Texas - consider our friendship OVER.

Booties, part 2

Has anyone else noticed the total baby boom going on right now? I swear I have nearly 10 babies to knit for recently. I knit another pair of the Saartje booties to bring to a baby shower next week. While I still love the way these look--I'm beginning to think they're slightly too noodgy. Several seams to sew up, the little button ends, sewing buttons on. . . . then again, these types of activities are the things I hate most about knitting. If I could only knit with zero seams and zero sewing. . . well, then I'd be a really happy knitter. If I could figure out some magical way to instantly weave in ends, that would be tops too. I guess I'm realizing what a very lazy knitter I am!

Cable time

I had hoped to finished this cable hat in time for Valentine's Day since I wanted to give it to Scott (what a lovely model!). Sadly, I only completed it a couple days later, but I'm thrilled to report that he really loves it and it looks quite dashing with his brown, pin-striped winter jacket. This is another 3AM Cable Hat but this time without the ribbed rim (like I had done on mine). This was was knit in some dark blue yarn that I picked up in Florence.

Boy---Stacie's Fiddlehead mitts sure are something, no?

A Little Slice of Spring

I took yesterday's oh-so-snowy opportunity to finish spinning up January's HelloYarn Club Fiber:(See, with the snow I can get some okay pictures!)

This is 4 ounces of Verdant - a lovely Merino/Mohair blend. It was a joy to spin! I split the roving into 8 equal weight thin strips in the hopes of spinning consistently enough to maintain solid colorways when plied. Well, I mostly failed at that, but I'm super pleased with how the whole thing came out. This is about 390 yards! I have no idea how I managed to get such super yardage out of it.
I am in love with it! It's so spring, it's so fresh, it's so plush. Now what to do with it?