Paint the sky with stars

My friend Scott Henderson does some amazing photography. In particular, he has some neat tricks for photographing the night sky and his images of the stars scattered across the canvas of the sky must have settled into my brain, because I woke up one night with a new shawl design forming … a black lace ruana with crystal beads scattered across it like stars in the night sky.

What I’m knitting isn’t anywhere near as majestic and amazing as that, but I am hopeful that when it is done, one will at least be able to recognize where the idea might have come from.

At this stage of the game, all it looks like is this:

If you’ve never knit lace, it’s important to realize that lace in progress looks awful. It just kind of munches together and looks like a ratty pile of string, but when it is washed and blocked, it undergoes an amazing transformation. For the purposes of work in progress photography, I pinned this to the tablecloth, which is enough to give you a bit of an idea, but not much more than that. Can you see the crystal beads in there? There are a few of them, but they’re not very visible in the picture. This little piece is half of the bottom border of the shawl: each repeat takes me about 45 minutes, and I have 3 more to go to finish this side. When they are done, I’ll cast off the edge then turn the work sideways and pick up stitches along the straight edge of the border and work up the back of the shawl. When it reaches the neck, it’ll be split into two halves – like a big rectangle divided in half up the front, so you can put it over your shoulders and have it hang there properly. I will write this pattern up so it can be knit as a stole (basically half the ruana) or as the full shawl since not everyone has the stamina for quite that much lace, especially with beading thrown in the mix.

This is such tiny yarn (Zephyr, merino/silk and 10 metres weighs only a gram) that I can’t knit on this for very long at a stretch without my eyes going a bit buggy, but it’ll get done a little at a time, as all knitting does.

What’s your favourite lace inspiration?

Works in progress

I have (as always) a few projects on the go.

The angora hat is inn time out, as it was bugging me and I may change the way it is implemented. I frogged it part way, and I’m letting it sit while I contemplate frogging it the rest of the way and starting over with something a little different.

I woke up at 5 am again with the beginnings of a shawl design in my head, and while that percolates in my mind I am working on some simple, straightforward knitting.

Lateral Thinking is a side to side sweater, done ‘recipe style’, like most of the things I unvent (to use Elizabeth Zimmerman’s term – I can’t possibly be inventing anything … knitting’s been around too long and surely someone else has done this before). This is the prototype, and so far I’m happy with how it is turning out. The linen stitch really shows off the variegated yarn (which is just a plain old acrylic/wool blend from Patons, nothing special but it will hold up well to washing and wearing) and because of the side to side construction, the stripes go up and down the body of the sweater, rather than round and round, which is a good thing if, like me, your circumference is a bit larger than might be considered optimal.

It doesn’t look like much sitting in an unformed lump on the chair, but you can see the sleeve, at least.

I have another project underway, but it’s top secret. :) It’s in several shades of blue, and that’s all I’m gonna say about it for now.

There’s also a pair of socks, of course, for knitting when I go places and need a small project to take along, and I had started some colourwork mittens, but I see several people have had issues with the pattern I was using. My new Elizabeth Zimmerman Knitter’s Almanac (which the Reluctant Farmer got for me just because he knew I wanted it) has a pattern for some lovely colourwork mittens, so when I feel ready I’ll probably frog what I have and try her pattern instead.

I’m sure there are other things here on the needles … there’s definitely more brewing in my head, anyway. Two shawls are slowly forming, and there’s a third that keeps popping up for consideration then fading back into the distance while I contemplate how, exactly, to get the shaping I see in my mind to work with needles and yarn. It’ll come to me eventually.

In the meantime, I will just keep knitting. :)

New book about supported spindle spinning

With the most creative marketing blurbage I’ve ever seen! (There are testimonials from Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Shakespeare and Einstein.)

And because it comes with videos, it’s too big to be a conventional eBook … so it ships on a USB key! Is that not cool?

Even if you aren’t interested in spindle spinning, check it out, just for the sheer entertainment value: Fleegle Spins Supported

More spinning

Apparently I was in a spinning mood.

I found some black curly long staple wool that someone gave me ... don't remember what it was, but it was lovely. Combed and carded that, blended in some red soy silk (I think it’s soy silk, might be one of the other similar things, but it’s bright red and very shiny) and spun that up into a fairly thick single (well, ‘fairly thick’ for the CPW).

Then I spun up another bobbin of black suri alpaca/cashmere that my sister and brother in law gave me for my birthday and plyed them together.

Voila, yarn.

What does it wanna be? 200 g total, fairly loosely spun and plied.

Spinning

For today’s productive adventure, after cleaning the kitchen counters and making a giant fire-truck shaped cookie for The Reluctant Farmer’s birthday lunch (it ended up more like cake, but nobody really complained), I sat down to spin up some alpaca.
I combed this on my Louet Mini Combs, then spun it from the poofs that resulted (I didn’t diz the fibre out into rovings). The fleece is incredibly soft and fine – this is a prize-winning alpaca fleece that I was asked to spin, it’s really very lovely. The gray is subtly variegated from white to silver to dark gray with a few flecks of brown and the resulting yarn is beautifully textured. I spun this for loft and softness, rather than fine and shiny, though the fleece could do either. I need to ply this and see how the finished yarn looks, but it certainly feels soft on the bobbin!

The books are here!

Three boxes of books arrived today by Canada Post.

The preorders are packed up and ready to go in the mail!

Want one?

Order yours here and I’ll put it in the mail for you!

Easy knit shawlette, perfect for Noro

Flannelberry sent me some lovely Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn. I looked at it for awhile, and it told me it wanted to be a little shawl. Just a nice, simple design that showed off all the colours and made the wearer feel a bit more cheerful than they otherwise might.
My mom heard I was working on this and asked what colour it was. Hmm, that’s not an easy question to answer with this yarn! Noro is different than most yarns. It doesn’t come in *a* colour, it’s got wild, bright, long repeats of colours that you wouldn’t always expect to see together but somehow work out anyway. It’s also more like handspun, a very loosely twisted blend of cashmere, silk, wool, and in the case of the sock yarn, some nylon to add strength. It’s got great texture and looks fabulous in simple stockinette.
So, I sat down and started graphing and knitting and tearing out and reknitting and ended up with a workable design.
Actually the original design needed a minor modification, so I did a second one using some hand dyed wool from my stash:
Yep, that works!
It’s a very easy knit: if you can cast on, knit and purl, do yarn overs and knit two together, you can do this. The pattern, called A Dash of Colour, is available for sale now on Ravelry. If you aren’t on Ravelry (if you are a knitter, you should be!), you can get the pattern directly right here.