Back at it.

After the brief hiatus from knitting last week, I got right back on that horse and started finishing things again.

Veil of Isis is finished, and stunning. I was going to go for an extra repeat and make it bigger, but decided to see how the 5 repeats would work out. I blocked her, and she is a bit small, but I think I could block her a bit more, but then the shawl will be very fine, hopefully I can find a nice balance.
This was a great knit, and I reckon I may well knit this again, Andea the designer is very talented.









Also finished is the Whisper scarf. Katherine likes to get in on all the photos opportunities.





I am very close to finishing a weaving project that has been on loom way too long. A table runner for my mother, and a spare to go for sale in the guild shop.

The guild is making progress finally with a website, which we have, but there hasn't been any activity on it for a long time. Hopefully we can get things running smoothly soon, and talk of a spinners blog for the guild has come up, it could be interesting.

Not sure how much actual knitting I can do today, my arms are killing me after playing a little to forcefully (maybe thats excitedly) on a thing that the girls are getting for Christmas, I had to test it out....... It's great fun, and I think I will enjoy it as much as the kids will, maybe even more, I already have tons of items picked out to go with it.


I ran into a fellow raveller in my LYS two weeks ago, things are getting weird here, she is also Kathleen, her one of her two daughters is Elizabeth, and her birthday is two days before mine. There is another Raveller from our town that has a birthday right in between me and Kathleen.


Ron is progressing on the log cabin pretty quickly, the roof is almost complete, and he plans to have the wood stove in this weekend.
I drove out there last week, it's pretty amazing what he has done.






So of course I get motivated each weekend to work on the braided rug, I gotta tell you, this thing could be addictive, it's beautiful in a way I had never appreciated before, and the possibilities are endless. While I can't see me ever actually making any of the cords needed for the braiding as it is sewing, if I were ever come across another great stash of the wool again, I would snatch it up. The rug itself is stunning, a lovely rug to stand on too.
My actual braiding and joining may well be far from perfect, and I fear will need some resewing pretty quickly, but the rug hides a lot of my flaws.

I don't know what happened.

None of the pictures are enlarging on my last post, I am unsure what happened.

I will try again.



See now that one worked.
I see now what I did, dingbat, it must have been a fevered mind I was working on.




Sickness has passed through our house, and I think we are all back up on our feet again today, although it was a very rough few days, and the knitting needles are stone cold.

This blog post by Kate made my heart sink. There are a few of us around here that have that very fear I think, and this is the main reason I decided not to go with the one ply silk for the WRS.

All that said though, my heart breaks for Kate, how painful that must have been to see. I lost a stitch on Princess way back in the beginning, it was almost the undoing of the whole thing, yeah, even with all the yarn, needle angst. I dropped a stitch on the border, and such as mercerized cotton does, it ran like you wouldn't have believed, it was at ten rows down before I caught it. But the damage was done, and it lost all sorts of other little slipped stitches and YO's

So ten times 800+ stitches, in a yarn you hate at this moment in time, on needles that have given you nothing but heartburn, on a shawl you are quickly coming to loath, hmm, rip or tink, big question huh, I don't think I would have been too torn up if the ripping had gone awry.

I did of course rip, not thinking that if one errant stitch can go so bad then the potential for 800 or more was really, really disaster in the making.
However we do know that the story did indeed end well, so the ripping wasn't such a bad judgment call on my part.

Kate's story though has reminded me of something though
My brain needs a few good nudges this past week.

I took the Forest path stole out of it's little bag last week, and was set to start again, and there is was, three broken strands in the yarn two blocks back. Now, this isn't a major issue on the Forest stole, not a biggie at all. But WTF!!!

It's been in a bag, all along, waiting, doing nothing.......

So I ripped, and redid.
Then I got sick, so it went back to it's dark place again. I don't want to knit those blocks any more times than is necessary, so I think I will knit on her again today, just to be sure that all is well.


Anyway, back to the point, where are all these broken threads coming from???
I am utterly stumped. I had two skeins of laceweight do this, like cuts not animal bites, one skein was particularly bad, and now I remember way back, about 4 years, another skein.

The breaks on Forest path were all in a line, three rows, stacked ontop of each other.

I am clearly doing something to cause this, but when I don't touch something for months on end, and it's in a zippy bag, with no holes in it. HOW????

Anyway, final comment for a rambling mind, I received a package the day I was flat on my back completely unable to move, it sat on my bed for a while, Katherine put it there I think, then someone moved it, it got moved a few times, and was finally opened a day later. I knew it was yarn in there, and there was no desire at all to open the box, I think at that moment I should have asked someone to call the coroner, just to see if I was indeed dead.

So I've been busy!

Is that really an excuse not to post finished Princess pictures?

Ok, so we had a crazy week or so with the MIL in hospital, that definitely qualifies as a valid excuse.
The rest of my excuse basically boils down to FO'S.

And while I have been busily knitting on other things too, this is about the FO's as it shows some actual achievement.

Pants for little David.
A pattern from knitty, Blu, that I was dying to use up the last of my denim yarn on, but even these didn't extend to the last ball, so I have a solitary ball of denim now, waiting patiently to get used up in some cute little project.



They clearly need a little finishing.

As does this, the whisper scarf one.



Upon finishing that I quickly started a new one.
The florence scarf also from Fiddlesticks.
I am using Malabrigo baby merino lace, which is stunning, I fell in love at first touch.



Clearly a bad picture, and to be honest I am not loving knitting this thing already, I had planned to send to Sis for Christmas, but I seriously doubt it will be finished.


I did finally block the Faroese shawl, but bad pictures persist, I will try again later.



I finally finished the mitts for Elizabeth, my handspun from Bluefaced Leicester I got at Etsy. The plan is a hat too.




Noro is nearing completion, I have two more rows of squares ready to be sewn on.



This blankie is going out to the log cabin that Ron is building on our Bush property out in Mosport, Clarington, that is also nearing completion so I will for sure post piccies when that is done.

Also, as part of a guild group we have been braiding rugs, here is mine so far, there is a little bit of bump in it, that I keep thinking I should fix now before I get any further, but I keep going and regretting that move with each bit I sew up.



This is also going to the cabin.


Princess is clearly determined to be a rather prickly thorn in my side forever.
It needs blocking again, that's for sure, less length more height is needed.
And clearly asking a person half your height and well over 1/6th your age to try to take picture's is not the wisest of things to do. Due to darkening days I ran out of people of a decent stature to take daylight pictures outside, and resorted to the shrimp doing the photog's for me. Clearly this is one of my dafter moments.

The end result of half pint taking pictures while trying to balance precariously on a tiny chair is me resembling the Hunchback, and Princess not exactly having her finest of hours, although the poor thing has seen worse.







Good old coathangers.





Clearly lacking considerable brain power today too. I almost forgot to add some blocking pictures.













On spinning, I have almost completed the classes I am taking, and loving it so much, we had a great week two weeks ago with a lot of light bulb moments on everybody's part.

So much sampling, trying out new techniques, great fun, odd results.



Our spinning instructor is having us come up with a final project for our last class on friday, I have of course gone with laceweight. Using the new skills I have acquired, I am washing some beautiful corriedale fleece I got earlier in the year. Flick carding, always preserving the lock, so that I can do a worsted prep and worsted spin.

Not going to badly I think.



And finally, some mohair I received from a guild member, that wasn't in the best of shape, the mohair had been washed once by the person selling it, and clearly needed another wash, which I tried, then let it get bone dry, and tried Laritza's dryer method to remove some of the debris.

It came out good enough that I now want to play with it. I didn't want to screw up the entire lot, so just did half.