Friday, July 22, 2016

The Shawl is Done

I finished the giant black shawl!! Well, mostly black.




The 1900 yards have been bound off and I had a few yards leftover. Based on the weight, it's a little over that count, the skeins each had an extra yard or two but the wee leftovers on my desk are very wee. Certainly not enough to have done another round, but long enough that I wasn't worried about playing yarn chicken once I was 2/3rds of the way through the bindoff.




The shawl is Nuvem by Martina Behm. The yarn is Dragonfly Fibers Pixie in the Shaggy Dog and Firecracker colorways.



That's a full size bed that it's lying across This shawl is massive. And doesn't photograph well indoors. I'm not sure I have the right lights for the lightbox set up this would need. 


I have not blocked it yet and I'm not sure how much I will block it, though after all the places it has been a wash won't go amiss. (Also, I'm not sure where I have room to block it. We're sorting things in the dining room right now so my usual floor space is not available.) 

The Philosopher asked if I liked it once I as done and honestly, I don't know. It's not what I had planned/expected. The colored yarn came out far more muted than I anticipated. Also, the fourth skein didn't really get a chance to shine as it's such a thin part and then the ruffle. 

Overall though, it's a cosy piece. Very much a toss around the shoulders and go to run Saturday morning errands in early October or pile on top of my coat in January because it will be super high but not thick. It may also become a live-in-my-office shawl, if I can keep a couple of coworkers from sneaking off with it. (Similar color sense abounds in my department). 

This does put me over 3km for Stash Dash and I'm still hopeful of 5km. And I get to wear this to Stitches Midwest and show the DragonFly Fiber dyers the results! 


Saturday, July 16, 2016

How Much Can You Knit at a Conference?

I'm just finished with a lovely two day regional conference. Friends at UChicago organized and hosted the meeting and it was a wide variety of speakers and attendees. I heard from a wide swath of people from different libraries and roles within their libraries all working on interesting projects. I have notes on several things I want to ask people about at my library and I need to post my own slides, several people said they wanted to follow up with me about them.

This meant, of course, that I needed a new knitting project. Everything else at Chez Hedgehog is still at the "in the throes of being complete."  [The giant black shawl bindoff continues.] So on my way out the door on Thursday, I grabbed a skein that had gone with to Florida and back without getting more than a cursory look and the bag of "needles to knit FlaxLight" which I now apparently carry all over the place.

First order of business was to wind up the yarn while we were having welcome half-hour breakfast.


The yarn is Three Irish Girls' Adorn Sock in the Space Oddity Colorway. I bought it earlier this year and despite having spent the last two months sighing deeply over the black with rainbow yarn that is nearly a giant shawl, this held strong appeal. The neon factor help a lot. 


By the end of day 1 (Thursday), I had just put the sleeves on waste yarn and started the body of the sweater. Several people asked about the construction and TinCanKnits' beautiful sketches that accompany the pattern made it very easy.  I notice that in that picture the green isn't photographing very well. It's a popcorn knit--you keep thinking "just through the next rainbow, oh look, pink, orange, yellow, blue..." and around and around. Glancing down was always a surprise.



Day 2 saw a couple of inches work on the body. So apparently, about 35% of a baby sweater in two days. I wish everything went that fast and also that I regularly had that much knitting time. StashDash would be far more productive. Which would probably mean I would buy more yarn because of how fast I believe I can use it up. 

For now I will go figure out how long it takes to get this bindoff ruffle done... 

Sunday, July 10, 2016

By Weight

The shawl continues. Have I knit on anything else of late? There was a bit of a sprint working on one of the gray socks last week during a long meeting but other than that, shawl, shawl, shawl.

Everyone on various social media has been kind at the repetitive pictures of black yarn with speckles. The yarn is well loved and I've the impression that there's a cheering section of knitters waiting for me to finish it up.  This has been supplemented by a new site: I finally broke down and joined Instagram. I'm @hedgielib over there as well as on Twitter, if you're looking for me. I'm still getting aspects figured out. Hopefully I can set defaults to regularly post to Facebook--it'll be easier.

Joining came from a combination of frustration and prodding. Frustration because several knitters I know post there (e.g. the Yarn Harlot) and Instagram doesn't believe in RSS feeds and the 3rd party ones kept breaking. Prodding because AudioGirl pointed out that it would be all cats and knitting. She's not wrong, that's the plan. Too many pictures of cats, mostly Gypsy because she is better at posing, and whatever yarn is in my lap.

Where were we? Right, shawl.

I finished my rounds, weighed the shawl, and did the very long row to start the ruffle. Doubling every stitch, a standard in ruffling, takes a particularly long time and due to the method, the next row seemed excruciatingly long.

It's gotten better since then. And I've found that each row takes 10 grams, which is handy in helping me figure out how much more I have left.


The 68 grams picture is from yesterday and I just took the 48 grams. So, 20 grams in 24 hours and I did make a lasagna today, so it wasn't all knitting. My arm is definitely feeling it though and I expect progress in the next couple of days won't be as fast. 

But still, I have 2 rows left and the bind off. That's all. Part of me wants to go curl up and see if I can get through just one more row tonight before collapsing but I know that would mean soreness tomorrow and a knitting injury at this point is not worth it. This isn't a race and I'm not on a deadline other than Stash Dash--which is a full month away still. 

Within the week though I'm hoping to on to other things. Non black things. (Well, maybe non-black, more on that later though) 

Also, I'm out of sock projects that I can take with me on the train and to things. Everything is at a toe right now. That could be a problem. I should fix that before bedtime. 



Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Math Motivation

Over the weekend I weighed the skein/knit another row/weighed the skein. If my math is to be trusted, I have three more rows to knit before I start the ruffle.

Suddenly I'm all excited and focused again on plowing through this giant shawl. Even though I have nearly an entire skein of yarn still to knit. Even though the ruffle is going to be miles of stockinette. Even though I'm still not sure how much yarn I should leave for the bind off -- though at least with that I'm relatively sure that ~3x weight of 1 round of ruffle should do it.



Hope knits onward...

Saturday, July 2, 2016

To Florida and Back Again

The Philosopher and I went to Florida for a week. He does most of the driving when we're in Florida--it's his home state--and this time he did all of it, which afforded me some serious extra knitting time. I packed four works in progress and a spare skein of yarn and that was absolutely the correct amount to take.

(Pauses to mention the cat who is determined to sit on the mouse, the keyboard, me, everything today. Gypsy has been velcro-cat since we got home and refuses to let me out of her sight while I'm in the apartment.)


On the plane ride down I worked on the Firework shawl.  Skein 3, while much brighter, was starting to stretch out forever and I knew I wouldn't be able to haul it all of the places that we were going to go.  But that was WIP #1. 

WIP #2 had a deadline.  My committee Vice-Chair had a baby in April and I wanted to usher him into his Chair year appropriately. Also, baby sweaters :) 
(Photo by Mike, used with permission)

I realized after we got back that I'd forgotten to take a picture of the final finished sweater, so this is from my VC. The sweater is Flax Light, knit out of a skein of BMFA lightweight in the Frozen Valley colorway that was specially dyed for The Loopy Ewe earlier this year.  I can't believe it just sat waiting for me to finish a sleeve since April.  But it's done and off to Baby N, who should be just the right size for it when it starts to get cooler this fall.  I immediately wanted to cast on another one this pattern, it's a great use for sock yarn when you're a touch burned out on socks. It says I'd need 400 yards--but it looks like I used closer to 350. Not sure if I could make it all the way through the next size up, would probably need to plan for different yarn for the ribbing. 

Project #3 was a pair of socks that has been languishing since January. I reached some point on sock 2 and just stopped. Probably so I could work on Loopy Academy Spring. The LA deadlines tend to send many other htings by the wayside but it does set me up nicely for stash dash and a bit for Christmas.  



I worked on these on the drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Orlando (we were staying with the Philosoparents first, then off to conference).  And you can see the travel centipedes came with us. 


In fairly short order they were done. These two projects bring me up to 1304 meters for Stash Dash 2016 so far. Right now the 3K seems like it's th most achievable goal for me. Which I'm a little disappointed by. I though I would really get through 5-7K this summer easily. Granted, I have another pair of socks that only needs a toe, one that needs a foot on Sock 2 and I have nearly 2K in the shawl but still... It's July and I'm not at 3K. 

WIP #4, not pictured here, is the Indy500 Socks. They were worked on.  The only thing I didn't end up using was the spare skein. And it's a good thing as there was a knitting needle emergency and my size 5 needles had to go live in someone else's room for the duration of the conference. (How many people do *you* know at a conference can loan you at least 3 sizes of knitting needle, circulars and DPNS, scissors, and a darning needle?)

By the end of the conference I was done with Skein 3 and in the Fort Lauderdale airport I wound Skein 4. 


I joined the skein on the plane and got a row or two in. At this point, each row is taking the better part of an hour it seems. I haven't been timing it because that will just make me sad. But the move to the ruffle, my yarn scale tells me, should be in about 20 grams, if I'm going by Martina's numbers.  


 So now I have to attempt to fight off the cat long enough to get a row or two done. She's SO very put upon.

A Redo

 I started this pair of socks on New Years Eve just before 2020. I finished them in May 2020 , amidst a lot of optimism about what I'd a...