Finally blocked

As of December 10th, the Candle Flame Shawl was finished and blocked. It still hasn't gone into the mail, but will depart tomorrow, along with the red hat.



Pattern: Candle Flame Shawl
Yarn: KnitPicks' Gossamer in Blue Jeans
Started: Nov. 2, 2007
Finished: Dec 10, 2007
Pattern notes: No modifications
Needles: Clover Size 6 straight bamboo needles.

Candle Flame Progress

 

I am a mere 9 rows of garter stitch from comleting this shawl. Ideally, I would have made this another 10" or so, but unfortunately, I am knitting with the breaky yarn, and that is a Serious Drag. I will finish up tonight or tomorrow, and then get it blocked and into the mail. Joy!

candle flame update

No pictures of the candle flame shawl, but it looks just like it did before, only longer. I've been knitting it for 16 days, and I'm officially past the half way point at 36 inches, and 8 repeats. I managed to exceed my goals for the week. Instead of 2 repeats, I did 2.5. But I fell short for the weekend, only managing 1.5. Of course it all came out the same, but I had high hopes of being ahead.

I had a terrible setback Saturday when I finished the first ball of yarn and started the second. In a very short time, only 16 rows, the yarn had broken 6 times! At that point it was obvious I was foolish to continue--not to mention I didn't have much more spit-slicing left in me--and I switched balls of yarn. This means that if I finish up the current ball of yarn and don't try to employ the breaking ball of yarn, my project may come up some inches short. The final length should be 70", but I'm hoping to at least make it to 65" with what I have. I also hope the rounds knitted with the breaking yarn don't break further. Usually it seemed to be a weakness in one of the two plies.

In other news, my Jingle Spells CD arrived yesterday, but I only saw it this morning. It's pretty cute! It has already been loaded onto the kids' mp3 players, so they can enjoy it lots and lots, but the parents don't have to hear it over and over. That's one blessing of this modern technology. :)

candle flame burning bright

I may well drive myself totally insane. My fear of knitting nothing but shawl for the rest of 2007 has driven me to sandwich in knitting when I shouldn't be knitting, and to articulate some lofty but achievable goals. At this point I'm trying to do 2 repeats a weekend, and 2 repeats a week. I'm right on schedule, at 5 repeats complete: 2 from last weekend, and 1 of 2 for this week.

I seriously am getting a little manic about this. I've noticed it takes me about 5 minutes per row, valuable information for when I'm knitting on a break at work. It helps me know when I have time to complete another row, and when I should just close up shop now. So last night I calculated that with 36 rows per repeat, that's 3 hours per repeat. Today I'm home with a sick grrlee, and while she rested, I was knitting against the clock. I time myself in pairs of rows, since the wrong side usually is faster. I started at 10 minutes per pair, but then got 8 minutes, and once even 6 minutes! After that, I evened out at 8 minutes per pair. At that speed I can save myself, oh, 36 minutes per repeat!

Okay, enough of this. I'm off to see if the grrlee can eat, then do some homework.

Knitting update

First of all, Bella. Bella is not hibernating, but she needed a little time off. There were two issues.

Issue #1. I've never done knee-socks before and I wasn't entirely happy with the cuff. Not quite sure how to fix it, I backed off for a little while.
Look, up near the cuff... there's pooling! When I increased, I got pooling. I'm not a fan of pooling.

Issue #2. The unthinkable happened. I've composed funny short films (in my head) about this scenario. It's not so funny in real life. My neatly balled duets yarn fell out of the knitting bag and I kept walking. By the time I noticed, the ball was no longer a ball. It was not even a nice long line of yarn, it was a mess. I'm knitting from both ends of this ball, and it's very complicated to sort out. I'm afraid I just tossed the mess aside to deal with when I have, oh, more than 2 seconds of spare time. Which will be, uhm, some time in 2010?

Next up, the candle flame shawl. Princess Anne let me have the needles back. I cast on last Friday night, and at this point I have 8" complete. The goal is 70". Let's say I can knit 10 inches on this a week, this will take another 6 weeks to finish. That puts me way too close to Christmas, and no time for anything else! School, work, that's all got to go.

Acquisitions

Yesterday, my knitting buddy at work and I took a lunch time stroll to the closest yarn store. Despite tremendous temptation, all I purchased was a pair of size 6 Clover Bamboo needles. This is in preparation for knitting a Candle Flame Shawl out of Knit Picks Gossamer in blue jeans. (Look! It's on clearance!) I really do like this yarn. It's all springy. My pink shawl is also made from gossamer, and I still love it. I actually wound this yarn into balls last January, fully intending to start on the shawl then. About time! I had originally set aside some Boye straight metal needles for this project, but at some point decided that bamboo would make me much happier.



Princess Anne, who lurves the new needles, is posed in front of an original print by Wally Pacholka at astropics.com