Knitting Keeps Me Sane

Today I am at my friends house again - the friend who owns this and these.
His computer is actually able to upload pictures! I brought my own camera and took the opportunity to take a picture of Rosebud. As you can see, the border is nearing the fourth corner (Because I cheated and started a few repeats before the first corner to get it just right).
Now I can see the whole shawl evolving, it is amazing and I love every second of seeing this.



Where do YOU sit and knit?

When I am at my friends house, I do think my knitting place is the best of all knitting places in the world:



I love that chair. It is like a big hug. Someday, I hope that I will find a chair like this and be able to take it home with me. Who doesent want a fabulous knitting chair? :)

Have a really nice day

Lene

75 of 121 repeats are done, 17848 stitches and three corners, two long sides. (121? Yes, the revised number. When I was knitting Rainbow Pi I revised the total number of edging repeats 4 times). I still need 11636 stitches, sounds doable.
The comes the moment of grafting the edgings together in lace - and then comes what I like to call "The Moment of Freedom", when I may start something else. I rarely turn back to completed knitting projects and give the pattern another go, thus the title. I MAY, however, do it with this pattern, using another yarn (Silk? Cashmere?) and changing the patterning ever so slightly.

When i finish major projects, I have a hard time starting anything, but just plod along on socks and maybe another toy, but when the post-project doldrums are over, I want to knit a sweater with waist-shaping, slits in the sides, sleeves with garter-stitch edging and a square-ish neck opening framed with garter stitch in This wonderfull yarn.
It is so mean. She has new colours of that yarn coming, and I just really really dont need more yarn :-) Especially mean because last time, she sent her brother with the yarn to hang it on my doorknob, obliterating postage. Argh! Too easy to get by to resist!


Have a really nice day.

Lene

PS: I finished a polar bear in dead-white syntethics. It really looks dead. Next up: Knitting a toy with built-in clothes! Wee!

Yesterday yielded 19 repeats while today has brought 7, bringing the total up to 79% finished. I had not expected the border to be such a substantial part of the knitting as it seems to be. However, I now have enough of the edging to lay it out flat and watch the wonderfull shawl unfolding.
The more I knit of this border the larger and prettier this shawl seems. it is possible for me to stretch the one side where the border is completed out between my two hands, meaning that it might block out to at least 6 feet. Works mightily fine for me, standing at 6"1' and needing a large shawl.


Have a really nice day

Lene

Rosebud is progressing swimmingly, but I wouldnt be me if I hadnt sat and crunched numbers all the while knitting her.
Care to be let in on it?

Well, let us start with the beginning. I CO 119 stitches and knit 117 ridges = 234 rows. This means I knit 27846 stitches for the center square! Now, on a good day I can average 5000 stitches (because daily living is a good bit more complicated for me than others - when I was in school I would do school and sit exhausted in front of the computer for the rest of the day). I could have knit the center square in 6 days, but it took me more like 6 weeks (I blame the Rainbow Pi and.. uhm... a knitting slump).

Next came picking up 118 stitches for each border, of which I have 4. I knit 94 rows on the border, adding 4 stitches every row in average. This leaves me with: 15000 stitches in each border, or 60.000 stitches in the whole border. ( I triplechecked this number. It is astonishing).

After almost choking on this large number (The Rainbow Pi had 76.000 stitches in the wole thing, Rosebud is on 88216 and counting), I now have knit 25 border repeats of 124 = 12 rows for one repeat and 21 stitches in average = 252 stitches for one repeat, and 6300 for 25 repeats. I will need 31.248 in all, leaving me with 24.948 stitches still to be knit.

When I am finished, this shawl will have 119464 stitches in it, beat that!
Enough numbers, I just want to point out that, if counting stitches, i am at 73% :)
Not further? Ashaming.... (I must knit the planned 10 repeats more today, then I have 76%! And one side of the shawl, of course.) Of course I didnt get anything knitted! The rest of the day somehow went down the drain, but luckily the shawl didnt run away, and is still there to be knitted on tomorrow.

Later, when my mother came home, I informed her of all those numbers - from memory - and she just laughed at me, insinuating that I might have a slight obsession with numbers (except for "vital" numbers like Phone numbers and Birthdays). Harumph... Obsessed... Nobody needs to be obsessed to know that numbers are damn usefull.


Have a really nice day

Lene

I have two "rosy knits" going on at the moment (my only WIPS, not counting the Taiwan Sock and some ripping candidates):

"Rosy Fingered Dawn" and "Rosebud Shawl". Both Shetland-type square shawls.

They are both stalled at roughly the same point, ca. 14 rows before the edging it knitted on, and I am really stalled. Dont know how to go on. The shawls are too large, my mind is too busy, it burns down, and I turn into bits and pieces on the inside. So many small steps I thought I had taken in the "good" direction are reversed and dont mean anything anymore. Most people would just tell me to "Get over it and start knitting", but I guess most people have a wholly different wiev on the world.

Knitting is not always good, but is like eating for me. You cant live without eating, but too much isnt good either and could kill you, if it goes out on an extreme tangent.

Have a nice day

Lene "Short Entry"

PS: Lest you think I am not knitting, I did knit a pig yesterday, from Jean Greenhowes Knitted Animals book. Simple, legs, body and head in one piece, two arms, a snout and two large ears. I only have the embroidery for eyes left. I didnt knit it for any particular reason, other than that it comforts me, which seems as as good a reason as any.

Whoa!

Watch this, two Finished objects within two days - though It took me 4 days to knit the Grey Stole :-)

I mentioned a pink/grey yarn yesterday. It was so tempting that I knit it up into a smallish scarf.


(I may take a non-blocking picture later and edit this post) EDIT - now with Better Picture(Edit number two: I donated this scarf to a Tombola June 10, 2006, and it was won by a lovely lady expressing pure joy and wrapping it around her neck immediately even though it was almost 30 degrees celsius)

I wrote up the "pattern" I used: handspunscarf (rtf, 1 KB) . Enjoy!

Furthermore, blocking finally commenced on the Grey Stole (From Hell), which can be seen unblocked here:



Blocked, it came out to 6 feet, which pleases me. I did, however, only lay it smooth and stretch a bit - mostly lengtwise. If I were to wash it again and block it aggressively with pins, it would grow both lenght and widthwise.

Recap on this project: I would *not* recommend this for a beginner, even though it uses big needles and fat yarn (DK - thats fat in lace knitting terms). the chart is hard to read, and I had to enlarge it 250% and draw some reference lines on it to be able to knit it without ripping all the time.
I am still pondering if I will fringe it - maybe, but then it would be a short, delicate fringe, not the deep knotted one in the pattern.


While I was taking pictures in the garden our Iceland Sheep-dog, Freki, came about and was very interested in what I was doing.
Because he is such a beautifull cutie, I present the "Blocked picture":

Dog With Shawl!

Progress is counted in feet here, not in inches!

Cross your fingers that this will be done in 20 hours.

Have a nice day

Lene

Here be pictures and babbling:

Feel free to request further pictures and babbling if I left something out: skrukhoene-at-hotmail-dot-com.

Lets start out with this whipe heap of wool.
Lovely, aint it? Just as lovely as the doorstep of our back door I used to take pictures on :-) (The denim thing is the lower part of a jeans leg I cut off and made into a knitting bag. Me loves it.)



For your wieving pleasure, I knit a non-pattern (purl) round and am here a stitch and a YO before my TWO corner stitches - you need two corner stitches for this trick from the very beginning on.



Knit the YO and knit the first corner stitch veery losely - if you pull it tight this corner will pull in which isnt desirable.

Macro:

Now, turn your work, carefully not to let any stitches slip off your needles, put the just-worked stitch over on the right-hand needle, insert your left-hand needle into the stitch BEHIND the one you just put on the right-hand needle, pull it over the first stitch, and off the right-hand needle, keeping it on the left-hand needle! Knit this stich, it now serves the same purpose as a corner stitch. YO and start your pattern round :-) The picture shows this maneuver (which sounds harder than it is) after the stitches have switched places.



When you have knitted a few stitches it should look like this:



The manipulated corner:



When I have knit that round and come to the manipulated corner from the other side, YO, k1, turn, pass 1 st. from LH needle to RH needle, pass second stitch over first one to the RH needle, knit round.

For the edging I am planning to knit those two corner stitches together, eg. treat them as one stitch to try to create the illusion that there was only ever one stitch.. :)

I hope my wording was clear and understandable :)

Have a nice day

/Lene (who wants to spin now..)

I am not just knitting on Rosebud, but almost... I did finish a "Samus" (see Knitty Archives, if you're REALLY interested ;-) sleeve, although admittedly a short one because I am knitting Samus for a friend of mine living in Taiwan, who is a short slim girl. I will visit her for a month from May 15 (day after Charming Nephew's baptism), and wanted to bring her a present.

Rosebud is coming along, though my "old friend", the fear-of-running-out-of-yarn, is slowly knocking on the door again - 39 rounds of 90 of the border, plus the edging, uh... nope, no way I'll make it with two balls of yarn.
I love how this is working out, though I am a bit uneasy about how my rows(rounds) have lenghtened themselves by 200 stitches! All this knitting with white lace yarn makes my head spin and my creativity flow... Thinking about perfect shawl shapes, about easy constructions, lace patterns, garter st. borders in the round with points made of extra-large YO's (triple, quadruple?), stoles with round edgings and triangular shawls with rounded corners... Oh the possibillities are endless.

Isnt it good wool is forgiving and that there is no end to wool supply? :-)

PS: www.wollsucht.de has new colour of the evilla (Evil?) ArtYarn, and also more of the Kauni... ooh.. EEEvil...

To knit the "Rosebud" (sorry no link, this mac powerbook G4 defeats me) you cast on 117 stitches (I chose an invisible cast-on) and knit 238 rows of a simple rosebud pattern, 22 repeats of rosebuds. Pick up 117 (119) stitches on every side and knit either in rounds and purl every second row, or knit the 4 border pieces seperately and seam them together.
I was afraid seams would pull in (I have made a pair of flat-knit booties in the shetland cobweb yarn I am using and the seam was just terrible), and knitting around 30.000 purl stitches just wasnt going to happen.

I picked up the stitches, and made sure to make 2 corner stitches in one corner. I turned around and knit a (purl) round, and when I arrived at the same point again I knit the first corner stitch veery losely, turned, transferred it to the other needle, pulled the second corner stitch over it and put it on the lefthand needle, and knit it - made my yarnover as this row was a pattern row (round) and proceeded as normal. I marked this corner with a hot pink piece of sock yarn (sockapaloooza yarn actually) to make sure I wouldnt knit right past it. Every time I come to that corner I knit the first corner stitch, turn, put the first stich back on the righthand needle , slip the other stitch over the first stitch, knit it and proceed.

Currently I am at row 31... well... The manipulated corner seems fine and pretty stretchy, and i dont (yet) regret my decision.

Have a nice day

Lene