Blocking in progress

I finished my lace shawl a week ago, but I was lacking either time or space or both to block it till now. I’m so glad I throw out a section because even this way it turned out to bee huge. Unblocked it measured 125 cm / 49.21 inches in width and 65 cm / 25.59 inches in length. Currently it’s blocking – but even after pinning it out not severely stretched – and measures 164 x 82 cm / 64.56 x 32.28 inches. I’m not particularly happy neither with the size, neither with the lace motifs, it’s a far cry from the image I had in my head. Still, it’s not bad enough to be ripped and forgotten either.

Have a nice week end!

Cheers,
Mimi

Le Lys dans la vallée

It all started out like this:

Well, actually it started with buying the yarn, but that action of mine isn’t photographed 🙂 When I saw the royal blue color of this lace yarn I knew immediately that I want a lace shawl with lilies. It’s a no name 33 wpi yarn with a color that I couldn’t resist. I had to give it a try.
Cast on last week and the shawl grew quite fast (I could’t put it down…). I wrote the pattern as I knitted; wrote up a section than knit it, wrote up the next and so on. This is how I usually do, and it works out most of the time. I do know what I want from the very beginning, I just prefer to do the math and work on the details as I go. Two days ago I got suspicious, it looked like the shawl is going to be larger than I expected. Measuring, calculating. Yup, it’s not good. Every reasonable person would have stopped knitting, but not me. I kept knitting and hoping for a miracle or I don’t know what. Now the denial is over, it’s evident that I have to rip back and throw out more than 20 rows from the pattern and redo the last 34 rows. Why did I kept knitting when I knew it was wrong??? Believe me, I’m wondering about that too.
At the moment the shawl looks like this:

It’s a half Pi knitted on 4 mm needles with the yarn held double. I decided to hold the yarn double because I want to have a good use of this shawl, plan to wear it with more or less casual outfits. In my opinion a lace shawl knit from cobweb type yarn is too delicate and elegant for everyday use. One of the lace motifs is a heavily modified version of something I found in a stitch dictionary, the rest is a result of my imagination ( except that I converted that widely known lily symbol into a lace pattern, I know it’s not an original idea – but again, I worked on it). I don’t know if I did a good job or not – blocking will tell – but I’m hoping and still not regretting being lazy to swatch. I know I might end up with learning a lesson instead of having a lace shawl, I just feel it’s worth the risk (not a big fan of swatching).

Cheers,
Mimi

FO pics

I promised you decent photos, and here they are. First the Citron (that I used quite a few times since I made it):

And the socks:

Cheers,
Mimi

This is it

I managed to finish my Citron, yay! Just in time for autumn. Here’s a crappy photo proof:

I promise to take pics with a normal camera (not the webcam like this time) soon, after the shawl is blocked.
Unblocked it measures 120 cm / 47.24 inc in width and 50 cm / 19.68 in in length. I don’t plan to block it severely because I like it as it is now.
I used up both skeins, there’s no leftover at all. In fact, I run out of yarn while binding off. So I was sitting there with the Citron on my lap and wondering what to do with the circa 50 sts on my LH needle. I saw two options, either to undo the bind off and tighten the sts in the last row to get a little bit more yarn (that may or may not be enough) or to look after a similar yarn in my stash. I chose the second option because I was too lazy to undo nearly 600 sts knowing that it might not work out well. I have other white yarn of the exact shade, just had to split it 2/3 because it’s that much thicker. Luckily it worked out perfectly, I’m unable to tell the difference, I have to find the knot to see where the “shouldn’t be there” yarn starts.
Since I’m very busy with my exams, this is all the knitting I managed to do this week.

Cheers,
Mimi

Shiny Citron

Having finished the Pi and not able to work on a cabled pattern (because have to study) yet, I was looking for a not too big and not too complicated project on which I could work to shake off the stress while preparing for my exams. I browsed my queue and found Citron by Hilary Smith Callis, a shawl that so many ravelers have knitted and queued and is so beautiful and easy (and FREE!) that the decision to choose it was made in the very same moment I clicked on it.
I had 2 skeins of shiny white cotton in my stash that I thought would be a good yarn for Citron:

I cast on last Monday:

And today I reached the middle of the fifth section and the end of the first skein:

Since I have 2 skeins and don’t like to store small amounts of leftover yarns that are not enough for a useful knitted item and probably won’t be used ever but wouldn’t throw anything away either, my Citron is going to be bigger than the original one. I think I might finish it this week.

Cheers,
Mimi