As it Turns Out, I Didn't Get Too Distracted (Xeina Shawl Debrief)

So I did manage to finish the Xeina Shawl this weekend:

Its really hard to get a good picture of a large shawl

Despite all the minor problems, I think it came out pretty decent.  However, it also came out *huge*, which is completely my fault. I did a number of extra repeats in the body since I was using lighter yarn and later decided to just work the body until I ran out of one skein of the blue yarn, 13 repeats in total.  Yeah, in hindsight, I probably should have done 10 or 11 repeats instead, especially since the lace border came out bigger as well (probably due to using lighter yarn...heavy lace weight blocks out lacier, it turns out:

 ). When I realized it was blocking out really big, I measured it, and it's 80.5 inches long, and around 20 inches deep. As a 5 foot aught woman, it means the tips of the shawl go past my knees.

Though I probably shouldn't fret about it being big. I rarely wear shawls as intended; I usually use them as coat stuffers, and having a big shawl with some cashmere content means I have a neck warmer with length to wrap it around my neck and down my coat.  Or over my head and around my neck.

However, I'm still in love with the color scheme I used and how it works in this pattern, so I am a little sad this won't work so well with a dress. Not that I want to be wearing this now, with all the 85-90F degree weather we've been having here.

Ah, screw it, I'll do this properly:

The Pattern
I have little to say. It's a solid pattern that I had no issues with. All the issues I ran into were due to my misjudgement, not the pattern itself. Also, while it took me months, let me note that this was due to not having time to work on it much and the fact that I was using lighter yarn. If I had been using the sport weight yarn as intended, I could see this being a 2-3 month pattern with downtime, not a 6 month one.

The Yarn
I used Spirit Trails Fiberworks Sunna (the royal blue color) and Spirit Trails Fiberworks Nona (the darker blue). Sunna is a fingering weight and Nona is a heavy lace weight, by the way, and so not recommended for this pattern unless you're willing to do what I did, which is do more repeats and get through more repeats of the lace pattern (which, honestly, if you manage to get the right count for the lace part after adding stuff, I commend you.  I didn't, and had to fudge it, then fudge it again when my first fudge was miscalculated). However, these are beautiful yarns, especially the Sunna.  The Nona one unwinds a bit and sometimes sticks to itself or splits, but I find this an issue with most lace weight yarns.  I have a funny feeling that the issues I had, especially with the yo and k2tog rows in the body, wouldn't have happened if I had a heavier yarn than lace weight. Such is screwing around with the yarn choices.

Two warnings though: they do grow like no body's business (shame on me for not swatching, I guess) and it bleeds:

Ran out of vinegar before I could completely set it as well. Will have to try again another time.

 Funny story on how I ended up with this yarn for this pattern, though.  For the past two years at NYS Sheep and Wool, Spirit Trails has had this shawl as one of their display patterns, and it's still one of my favorite examples of it.  When I saw it the first time I did two things: fell in love with the two-colored version of the pattern and decided that this was something I could use the Sunna I bought the first time I went to Rhinebeck for.  However, because I though Spirit Trails only sold fingering weight yarn (they don't, by the way), I thought the Xeina Shawl had to be fingering weight.  It was only after I had bought the Nona yarn, blinded to the pattern and finding a matching color for the Sunna I had, that I realized that Xeina was a sport weight shawl and that I now had fingering and lace weight for it.  So I was determined to make it work.

Conclusion
All in all, it worked out, other than the size. And even that doesn't render it unusable. Also, now I finally have one of my big projects done.  Now back to using more of my backlogged stash. 

Misadventures in Shawls, Part 4: For Better or Worse, It's the End of the Road

Hey, I had a productive time void for once:

I am done.

I have to say, the last chart and half the chart before were pretty fast and simple.  Actually, they were so easy I went on autopilot and missed the fact that the second to last row had a double decrease.  On both charts.  The first I really had to hack the fix, so bad I did some weird 5 stitch increase, then had to pick up a bar from a couple rows below it on the next right side row to attempt to fill up the gap the crazy decrease had made.  I was partially successful:

Unfortunately, at that point the life line was so far down I didn't want to rip it out to do it right.

Then, I missed it again with the last chart, but at least all that took was an extra row of knitting added to decrease down to where I needed to be.  That did cause a gap in the beads in the top band:

Oh well.

Of course, blocking it wasn't very simple either.  I'm not talking about the multitude of pins; that's to be expected.  I mean that I forgot what Madelinetosh yarn loves to do:

Bleed.  Two vinegar baths later, it's still bleeding but no where near as badly:

That's when I ran out of vinegar and therefore gave up.  I gave it one more soap bath and took it out.  Good enough.

That first picture, by the way, doesn't do it justice as to how shiny those beads can be.  They gleam blue and other colors depending on the light:

That picture still doesn't do it justice, but whatever.

Part of me feels I should still do a proper debrief but...meh.  I covered most of what I would put into a debrief into this post series.  The only thing I can think of that I didn't mention was row 67.

Row 67 was the only row where I did it, checked my work, checked my work again, and still couldn't figure out why it was wonky because as far as I can tell, I followed the pattern right.  You see, row 67 did something weird.  It shifted the pattern over by a couple of stitches.  It also seemed to want 8 stitches for the end of the row section, yet there were only 6 before that and 6 after.  It made what I thought were small leaves look a bit more like spirals, or at least leafy blobs with something trailing off the left side.  It jagged the lines of yarn-overs and stockinette sections.  It looks better after blocking, but still.  I don't get what happened there or if I screwed up somewhere, or the pattern was the wonky one.  No one else on Ravelry who has done the pattern has mentioned it.

But oh well.  I guess it worked out well enough in the end.  As more than one person has said to me (and I've said to others, not that it stops me from doing the same thing), no one else notices all the mistakes you do.  So while I'm beating myself up about how it's not my best effort and it's got so many mistakes in it, and it's a wedding shawl and it should be my best effort and so forth, the two people I've sent the picture to have both complemented it.  One of these was the recipient.  So I did something right.

I Have No Excuse

Actually, I do have a few excuses.  They're just not very good, so I'll save the hee hawing about how I haven't done anything with this blog in more than a month and just catch up with the projects I finally managed to have time to sit down and start.

First off, though, do you remember these socks I made?

Yeah, I don't expect you to.  Anyway, they were my first pair that I knit up using a skein of

Fiber Optic Yarns Foot Notes that I randomly bought the first time I went to Rhinebeck. Just so you know, they made one tough pair of socks.  You see, they're the only wool socks I own at the moment.  Any of you in the northeast on Memorial Day weekend know that it was cold and rainy that weekend.  I went camping in it, well, until the wind broke most of our common tents on Sunday and we had to pack up and call it a trip.  However, the worst of the rain and cold was Saturday, and I wore those socks throughout most of that day (because who cares if they're not period when you're getting rained on all day).  They got wet, muddy, and absolutely trashed, to the point that they were so soaked I had to take them off because my feet were going numb from the wet and cold. 

Because they were so messed up when I got back to my parent's house, I decided to throw all caution to the wind and run them through the washer (well, that and my parents don't have a good place to handwash things.  And I already had asked them if I could wash my boots in the kitchen sink).  And taa da:

They look just as good as they did before the camping trip.  Granted, this was after I washed them again in my sink so I could block them properly (I noticed they bled somewhat when I did that, which never has happened before I machine washed them.  Luckily, I washed them alone in the sink, and with dark clothes in the machine).  But I have to say, not the softest or warmest yarn for socks, but pretty tough. Which is good.

So, now that I have more time, I've finally set down and started designing the tank I wanted to do.  Did I ever mention that before?  Anyway, I've wanted to do a purple and silver tank for awhile, though the design in my head has changed every now and then.  About a month or so ago, my knit group went on a field trip to WEBS, and I got a lot more yarn (<sarcasm>because I don't have enough of it at the moment</sarcasm>):

There, I managed to find a cotton yarn that wasn't Prima Cotton for once:

I then changed my whole idea of what I was doing and stopped there because I had other shit to do.  However, this weekend I managed to finally sit down and calculate out the measurements and stitch counts I needed to at least start the tank:

Hopefully it doesn't become a wreck.  If I'm really lucky, I'll be able to size it and have a new pattern!  Honestly, writing a shirt or sweater pattern has spooked me a bit, but that's another post.

Also, I started swatching for a baby sweater:

Because as luck would have it, right before I went to WEBS I found out another cousin of mine is having her second child.  So I bought yarn to do a baby sweater, which of course ended up being a sport weight yarn despite the fact that half the patterns I have are for worsted.  However, it turns out that my gauge isn't too far off for this sweater, and I just have to go a size up from the size I want to do to get that size.  It should also make a nice, lightweight cardigan (since most of my cousins live in warmer climates...boo...).

Finally, I'm still working on those other socks:

One and a half done, another half to go.  A good, easy, project with some yarn from Rhinebeck.  I tend to buy sock yarn at Rhinebeck, don't I?

Anyway, I should get back to actually getting some knitting done.  Or maybe other things done.  But knitting's better.

Yarn Craft in Literature, or In Which I've Been Reading Tolstoy Instead of Coming Up with Good Blog Posts

Because I have nothing right now other than some pattern math and a couple of semi-defunct swatches for a certain baby sweater:

...rather expensive yarn I bought because I walked into a new yarn shop looking for buttons, couldn't find buttons I liked, and then felt bad:

....a story on how I managed to screw up the order of colors on one of my afghan squares because I didn't bother writing it down before going out and attending a knitting meetup, as well as my main idea of ordering these squares, which would mean I need to keep color orders the same:

...and very little actual knitting done, I'm going to instead mention that I've also been on a Tolstoy kick in books recently.  Being that I'm supposed to be saving money and own a Kindle (and have yet to claim the library card that got sent to my parent's house by mistake), I've been hunting around Project Gutenberg for free books to read.  If you don't know what Project Gutenberg is, click that link right now. You don't even need to own a e-reader to read these books; you can read them straight on the computer (this presumes, of course, that you can deal reading a book on a backlit screen. Personally, I can't stand reading long books and certain other things on a backlit screen, hence I was a semi-early adapter for an e-reader).

Anyway, to get back on point, I finished Anna Karenina recently (in two weeks. Yes, I can read fast when I actually decide to sit down and read).  I'm now reading War and Peace (because I'm nuts).

I really, really, recommend reading Anna Karenina.  It has a surprisingly addicting series of plots, despite the fact that they all meander.  Maybe has something to do with the fact that it's like reading a train wreck; you'll be horrified by all the characters' actions, but you just can't look away.  However, I will admit that I've never minded long wandering books as long as the wandering parts are interesting, well-written, and establish character, while I know others who hate any meandering. Tolstoy was the definition for the former on this site, so you have been warned.  War and Peace, on the other hand, I haven't read enough of it to pass opinion yet.  So far, while it has very little semblance of plot line, the characters and their antics have been amusing me.

You may be wondering what this has to do with yarn craft.  Well, one of the many details that pop up in these books is characters doing yarn crafts.  I found this more amusing than I should have.  After all, these books do take place in 19-century Russia, so of course people are crafting.  But it's how it's presented, and sometimes even who Tolstoy bothers to mention is doing such a thing, that makes it interesting.  That, and I know next to nothing on historical yarn craft, so all these references are interesting from that standpoint.  Anyway, I will provide quotes (though not page numbers since this is on a Kindle, sorry. I'll give location numbers for any other Kindle users out there, though note, however, that 1) I own the first version of the Kindle 2 (though if you have the newer Kindle Keyboard, the screen size is the same...and holy shit, you can now get it for less than $100. Can you believe I paid $320 for mine?), and 2) the version of Anna Karenina I have is the free Amazon download, but the version of War and Peace is this Project Gutenberg version.  There is a Project Gutenberg version of Anna Karenina as well).

First, you have your standard women knitting stuff, along with a case of a man not getting it.  However, I'll mention here that I think the male character not getting it is more due to the type of character he was. If you know Anna Karenina, the following quotes come from the part where preparations are being made for Kitty's and Levin's first baby, for which Kitty and her relations work and Levin doesn't want to get it.  So, yep, baby knitting:

"On the terrace were assembled all the ladies of the party. They always liked sitting there, after dinner, and that day they had work to do there too. Beside the sewing and knitting of baby clothes, with which all of them were busy..." (8996).

"He [Levin]...tried to turn away and avoid seeing the mysterious, endless strips of knitting..."(9702).

"She [Kitty] was sitting up in bed, holding some knitting, which she had been busy upon during the last few days." (11434)

"Kitty was walking about knitting rapidly and giving directions" (11453). 

I should note that the last two come from the part where Kitty is going into labor, no less.  Guess the knitting relaxes her, as this is the first time in the book Tolstoy mentions Kitty knitting directly.  Before this, she was always working on a type of lacework.

Beyond baby knitting, you also have a governess of Anna Karenina's doing some pretty standard knitting:

"The English governess...was sitting near the boy knitting a shawl" (6858)

As well as a main character (Dolly) consolidating herself with some knitting early in the novel:

"...she [Dolly] took up here work, a coverlet she had long been making.  She always set to work on it at depressed moments, and now she knitted at it nervously, twitching her fingers and counting the stitches" (1052).

However, they're not the only people knitting in Tolstoy's works.  In War and Peace, you have a man (granted, he was a servant) knitting:

"An old man...sat in a corner knitting a stocking" (1978).

Also, this isn't limited to knitting.  Turns out, Anna Karenina crochets:

"...and taking up the crochet work that was lying on the table, she [Anna] began drawing the hook out of it..."(5855).

Though I have yet to quite get what Anna is doing here with it (for background, this is the same crochet work as the above quote):

 "...pulled the hook at last out of the crochet work, and rapidly, with the help of her forefinger, began working loop after loop of the wool that was dazzling white in the lamplight, while the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously in the embroidered cuff" (5885).

So, now that I'm done whoring out literary references, I'll go back to this baby sweater now.

Problems with Vinegar Baths and a Resultion to Ribbing Woes

Ok, so I decided to still do the 1x1 ribbing on the bust of my Milk Maiden sweater:

To keep it tighter, I kept all the stitches I either knitted or purled on the tip of the right hand needle until I did the next one.  It seems to be working as good as the examples of other peoples' work I looked at.

On the other hand, I was helping my mom block a shawl she crocheted today (yay corporate holidays).  I ended up doing most of the work because the yarn she used, Madelinetosh's Tosh Light, bleeds oh so very much, and I dealt with the same problem with my Tosh Light shawl.  Now, for my shawl, I stopped the bleeding with two vinegar washes.  Hers...well, it was still bleeding after soaking it in three vinegar baths.  I just gave up and told her to tell the giftee that if they wash it, not to wash it with anything else.  It at least wasn't as bad as it had been.

Now, from my research, I know that vinegar is supposed to be the best way to stop bleeding yarn.  So I don't get what I'm doing wrong.  Am I diluting the vinegar too much?  Does it not work for some yarn dyes? Was I not using enough vinegar (the shawl was a whole lot bigger than mine, but I can't say I measured the vinegar out any of the times I used it)? I'm confused. 

At least I wasn't as confused as my stepfather, who was questioning my use of the vinegar, saying that he used vinegar as a caustic agent to clean out the coffee pot (that had recently decided to clog up and overflow coffee every time someone made it.  I claim no fault.  It worked fine for me last Friday).  I stupidly replied: 'Well, don't you know that that's how Easter eggs are set?,' completely forgetting that my stepfather has never dyed Easter eggs (explaining this would unfortunately require a whole paragraph, so I'm not).  My mom and I had to explain that vinegar is used in Easter egg dye to set the dye on the egg (for any other folks out there who've never dyed Easter eggs for one reason or another).

Tomorrow, it's back to my actual paying job, and not knitting the crazy cable blanket.  That I just found a mis-crossed cable on.  Ug.