sweetgeorgia

Rebecca 30 and River Along

The Rebecca site just posted previews of the designs in their new Rebecca 30 magazine. It sounds like they also have a new cashmere yarn too… yum.

And in other news — you knew it had to happen… Jody’s hosting a River Along! We’re knitting Sharon Miller’s River stole from Rowan 38. It takes just 2 balls of KSH and the suggested start date is September 1st. Jody has even been sweet enough to chart out the River lace pattern so that we don’t need to go blind reading “yo k2tog yo k2tog”.

From the fold

I’ve been spinning. On Sunday, I refused to go into the office and instead spent a couple hours outside in the backyard spinning up some silk that I bought in Salt Spring Island. I bought a number of different fibres during the SSI Fibre Fest (angora, alpaca, soy silk, ingeo, bamboo, mohair, bombyx silk, tussah silk, Border Leicester, and more…) and thought, why am I spinning yucky felted stuff when I have some nice fibre lying around? What am I saving it for? And like June said, “Life’s too short to spin stuff you don’t enjoy!” So, here’s what I’m working on:

It’s tussah silk, hand-painted by my festival classmate, Cheryl, from Treenway Silks. After a bit of experimentation, I found that spinning this stuff from the fold works best. During particularly brilliant moments I can just spin from my left index finger — it’s nearly effortless! I had tried spinning from the fold with some wool fibre before and it didn’t flow as nicely. Spinning like this with silk gives a beautifully fine and shiny thread.

I only bought 2 oz of this stuff but I’m trying to spin it up for the Fiddlesticks’ Lotus Blossom Shawl. Lotus Blossom is knit with one skein or 800 yards of “Country Silk” which is slightly heavier than laceweight but lighter than fingering. So my current plan is to dye and spin up an equal amount of merino that I have stashed and ply it together, hopefully ending up with at least 800 yards. Spin girl, spin!

Edited: Oops, Laura and Erin are right about the weight of Country Silk. It’s heavier than fingering and is actually classified as “sportweight”, 25 sts / 4″. My bad.

So weak.

On Saturday, I just happened to be at Urban Yarns and just happened to buy a little more yarn. I just felt like I couldn’t leave the store without it — heaven forbid someone else buy up that yarn that I wanted…

That’s about 800 yards of Handmaiden’s “Angel Hair”, hand painted kid mohair and silk. I’m thinking this is comparable to Lorna’s Laces Heaven, except that Angel Hair is less than half the price. It’s $25 CDN vs. up to $70 USD for Heaven. I’m thinking about using this for the Meadow Flowers Shawl out of Knitters Stash.

And yes, that’s more Kidsilk Haze. Two balls in Smoke for Sharon Miller’s River stole. I’ll cast on for this after I finish Birch — only 26 more repeats to go!

And it’s done!

It’s a ta da moment. The Baby Norgi — done. Fear of steeking — gone. Time to celebrate — now.

This moment was hard-won. I mean, I had to seam and rip out the sleeves THREE TIMES. I think I was jinxed! Yesterday, Liza commented “Do you even make mistakes?” and the answer is YES!

Try #1: I completely finished sewing in the first sleeve to find that I sewed it in upside down. Yes, yes, very funny. Try #2: The sleeves are different sizes because I used circs on one and DPNs on the other. In try #2, I tried seaming the larger sleeve to the smaller armhole. Hand slaps forehead. Try #3: I tried seaming the larger sleeve to the larger armhole, but did so unevenly, so it still didn’t fit. At least I learn from my mistakes.

Next time I do a steeked sweater, I will definitely:

• do a Three-Needle Bind Off to seam the shoulders together. In this sweater, I fake grafted the shoulder seams. Not the most fun I’ve ever had.
• pick up and knit the sleeves down from the body. Even though I finally go the hang of seaming the sleeves and did a pretty nice job (if I say so myself), it’s not fun either.
• be consistent — either knit everything DPNs or circs. One or the other. I didn’t realize that the needles could change my gauge so much!

Thank you Wendy for designing the perfect project to start my fair isle and steeking adventures!

Guilty

I am guilty of ignoring the projects on my “in progress” list. I am guilty of casting on for no less than four new projects in the last ten days. I am guilty of a little knitter’s envy. I started Birch.

This is the start of Sharon Miller’s Birch shawl in KSH Dewberry (umm, yes, it’s pretty much the same colour as the Zephyr I used for the Paisley Lace Shawl). I’m knitting these on US 7 (4.5mm) Addi’s, a size smaller than recommended. I heard about people running out of KSH and since I bought these three balls of KSH in Seattle a few months ago, I can’t have that happen.

Heh heh. I also heard that it would be a good idea to mark every ten-stitch repeat with a stitch marker — yeah, it would have been good to do that. It would have saved me tinking back the first row only to have made yet another mistake on the first row. I fudged it and am moving on. Now that the pattern is relatively established, it’s easy to see where things are supposed to go. Besides, who is going to look at the first row of the right-hand corner of the shawl? Right?

Since discovering that Sharon Miller was the designer of both Birch and the new “River” stole in Rowan 38, I decided to look her up. Have you seen her amazing Heirloom Knitting site/book/patterns? I think I’ll be knitting up more of her lace shawls… just gorgeous. Yes, my eyes knit faster than my hands.