idle hands

Today's soundtrack:
"City Lights Cry" by Armistice
"Missed the Train" by Factor (SK) feat. Gregory Pepper
"Fire!" by Pat LePoidevin
"Golden Years" by The Russian Futurists
"Red Hunting Jacket" by Little Scream

I am woefully behind in my knitting updates (if you're not a knitter, feel free to skip this post. I'll have some new pictures of our walk to Pittenweem and Grangemuir up in a few days). But as I've managed to knit up everything I'd packed for my three stash-less months in Scotland, now is as good a time as any to show off (more or less) my latest projects. Everything is an amoeba state, as my blocking boards and wires won't arrive until this Saturday. It will take every once of willpower to not lay out the blocking boards in the guest room, as I assume our guests will not be overly fond of accidentally treading on pins and wet wool.

The first shawl I finished is Stephen West's Herbivore (Rav Link) in Wollmeise 100% "Fliederbusch". I had to restart this shawl when I was about 75% done because of messy dropped stitch that I could not retwist for the life of me. Into the time-out pile it went until we arrived in Scotland when, suitably chastised, it came out of the frog pond. Compared to the lace projects that followed, this was a fantastically mindless knit. Well, almost mindless. Damned twisted stitches.

Next up was Nikol Lohr's Woodland Shawl (Rav Link), which I modified into a scarf, in Wollmeise 100% "Rosenrot". I cast on (eventually, after some art math issues) 57 stitches and knit until I had only a few yards left. It'll be a delightfully long scarf once it's blocked out. The colour simply cannot be captured by my camera. I've adjusted the photo to get the colour as close as possible, but it's still a ways off. There's just nothing like Claudia's intense reds.

Lastly, I just finished Bonnie Sennott's Kernel (Rav Link) in Wollmeise 100% WD Versuchskaninchen (a sort of rust-red colour) for my mother-in-law. I was 20-some repeats of the main pattern into the scarf when I realized that the grafting of the two sides of the scarf wasn't where I thought it was. Cleverly, the grafting is hidden in a garter stitch section near the very end. Essentially, you knit the entire scarf minus 5 inches or so, which is knit separate and then grafted together. Were I to knit this again, I'd knit the upper edging (the remaining 5 inches or so) first in order to eliminate the guesswork as to how many yards I have left for the pattern. I made 35 repeats of the kernel pattern, rather than the 24 listed in the pattern, and used up almost the entire skein of Wollmeise.

Of course, not all the projects ended well. I've been working on Romi Hill's Waves of Grain (Rav Link) for nearly 2 years. I've restarted it many times. I don't know if it's me, the pattern, or the yarn (Fiddlesticks Laceweight Wool-Silk), but I just cannot get more than a row or two without some problem. It's not that I can't knit lace, because I can, but I think I have bad knitting juju with this pattern. Yesterday was the last straw. The project has been completely frogged, the yarn unraveled, and I'm now searching for a new lace scarf project for my mom (who has been patiently waiting for two years for a scarf that doesn't look like it was made by a drunk elf).

As I sat yesterday with nothing on my needles for the first time in months, Miguel informed me that he'd really like a turtleneck. "Hmm," I replied, unconvinced. In a bright colour. Yellow, or bright orange. "Hmm," even less convinced. But he is determined.. although not determined enough to learn to knit it himself. I found 500g cones of 2 ply from Jamieson and Smith that could do the trick, although I'm not sure if my art math is correct in terms of yardage. What's more, with my stash arriving on Saturday (fingers and toes crossed), I've about six pairs of socks, some more scarves and baby clothes to knit before I can get to any new sweaters.