A little break to do some charity knitting:
for Rebuilding Greensburg (originally seen/found through katwithak). Somehow I was thinking it was in one of the
More deadlines are looming, however, as county fair entries must be registered this week, and submitted next week <gasp> so I’d better get off the computer and get back to knitting.
Brittany #4 straights!
Mystery Stole 3
Clue 1
KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud, Midnight
Size 4,
I originally thought that this one was too loose, “too lacy” to properly see the design. When I was making that decision, I was about where the lifeline is…. and I guess I didn’t realize that I was so low in the diagram that there wasn’t much that was supposed to be solid at that point. So, I wasted some time working on clue 1 on the 3’s…. but I’m ultimately happy with these results and have continued to knit on to clue 2 with the #4’s. (Only 8 rows in, not enough to warrant another photo….)
You can’t see the beads too well, so here’s another shot:
Ooops. My monitor (as I’m writing this) doesn’t show them yet. How about this?
There! You can see them at last. They are “scattered” thoughout the stole, as well as at regular intervals along the border. I wanted something to compliment the knitting, not overpower it — now I’m not entirely sure that they’re noticeable enough. <Sigh>
Anyway, I’ve been having fun, despite that I’m 3 clues behind and have a bunch of other stuff to knit. Back to clue 2~
Not much knitting going on here. Last week, our friend Michelle’s dad passed away and we attended the visitation and funeral. This week, my friend Diane’s mom passed away, and we attended the visitation last night and I attended the funeral today. Over the weekend, I drove to IL to visit M. The boys stayed home to handle business and dogs, so I was doing all the driving
I did manage to bring more knitting than I could possibly do in 60 hours even if I didn’t sleep or drive or eat - isn’t that how it always goes? I have finished my first Summer Solstice sock and started the second. I’m down to beginning the heel flap, and this sock has some odd construction at the ankle. Unfortunately, I didn’t write explicit enough notes to easily repeat the construction. So, I’ve been looking, pondering, working and ripping for a couple of days. I’m pretty sure I’m really tired of this what I need to do now, so hopefully I’ll get it right this time more progress will happen soon.
The Mystery Stole is slogging along. I finished clue 1 (we’re “on” clue 3 and the 4th clue comes out on Friday) with size 3’s and decided it might be a touch too narrow, so I am knitting it again on 4’s. I’ve kept the clue 1 on the 3’s, just in case the 4’s produce lace that is just too loose or undefined. Photos when I finish the clue, which is about 20 more rows.
Hoping you’re getting a lot more knitting done than I am…..
Mystery Stole 3 started last Friday. I was debating between using KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud in Midnight, or Misti Alpaca Lace in Denim. The only lace I’ve knitted has been scarves, and as long as they were “wide enough” and “long enough” the actual dimensions didn’t really matter. Enter MS3, where we are creating a stole. By definition, it is a rectangle, but width and length can vary, especially depending on the gauge you get. Melanie, the designer, has said her stole is 20″ wide, and there will be a spot where it can be lengthened or shortened to suit your taste (in 11″ increments), so it seems to me the big thing is width. If it is much less that 18″ wide, I can’t see that it would be wearable as a stole for me. So - yes, I swatched.
I hate swatching. It seems so wasteful of time (yes, I know - take time to save time and all that….) and materials. When given a yardage requirement, I never know if that includes enough to swatch or not. I don’t want to buy another ball of yarn just for swatching purposes….
Here I was supposed to get a “fabric” I liked, which allowed you to see the lace without being so lacy you couldn’t see the solid stuff. In addition, we have the option of adding beads to our stole, so I could also test out beads on the swatch to see how well they blended/enhanced the design. Well, you can hardly see them! Admittedly, it’s the lace that’s the star, but if you’re going to putz with the beads, shouldn’t they at least be visible?
I had the loveliest beads for the Misti Alpaca, but when I swatched they were invisible. The stole theme (to be revealed somewhere around the middle of the KAL) suggests the best colors are white or black. So after swatching a size 2 (lost it tonight, sorry - no photo) I decided it was too small. Size 4 looked good, but didn’t quite make a 6″ wide swatch and that was generally the accepted size to be “on gauge” so I also swatched a 5. I thought that looked a little large. So I swatched the black. Definitely more striking. The beads also showed up better, so I decided on the Alpaca Cloud. Yay. But this was just the start of the adventure….
So, I knit a portion of the first clue on my size 4’s. (The quick photo setup to allow blogging tonight doesn’t give me enough hands to stretch this out for you….hope to have a better photo later.) I decided that once it was blocked, this didn’t allow the solid portions to look very solid, and it became so lacy you couldn’t see the design well. So, as the Harlot and others say….. swatches LIE.
Rather than rip it all out, knit it again in a smaller size, only to decide that I really liked the bigger one better (or that was the only way to get it wide enough for my liking), I left it OTN and started another Clue 1 with size 3 Addi Lace Turbos:
OK. So you can’t see much difference. I’ll pin them out and show you again - perhaps with a ruler so you can see the size difference as well as the fabric difference.
The clue is 100 rows long, and I’m at 58 on the 4’s and 69* on the 3’s. Tomorrow is clue 2 - I hope to finish up and manage clue 2 in the next week so I’ll be up to speed.
Big news also in the MS3 crowd - Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot has joined the ranks of the MS3ers. She also posted about it on her blog today, and we’ve seen the participant numbers jump by 1,000 or so just today. Sign ups close tomorrow at midnight, so if you want to play you should join up now!*I met some other Minnesota MS3ers tonight and managed to knit 4 rows, make 3 mistakes, drop a stitch which had some origin or connection a few rows down that has been lost, so now I must tink back a few rows (I hope not down to my lifeline at row 50) until I can get all the proper stitches back on the needles. I’m guessing I’ll be back to row 62 or 64.
I have now finished the second week of Summer of Socks 2007. Here’s what I have so far:
I also “changed” the design (inadvertently) - the pattern, and the pattern photo, show a nice single line as you reduce the gusset which I thought was intriguing. The pattern called to swap the usual decreases - SSK heading into the instep and K2tog heading away from the instep. I thought surely this must be an error, and switched to the usual K2tog then SSK. I don’t know if you can see it in the photo (I still have to learn if it’s possible on this blog format to be able to make clickable, enlargeable photos), but I actually have a line of two stitches at the gusset decrease. I debated about frogging and re-doing the gusset, but frankly no one will see it in my shoe and I’m already behind on the quantity I wanted to knit, so it will stay as is. Perhaps I’ll try this method on another sock or make this sock again.
Off to do some more knitting before bed.
