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.

Princess is finally finished

Can you believe it!!!

So long in the making, and finally off the needles. A big hole in the knitting basket eagerly awaits a new project.



Finished and unwashed





Lightly pinned out on a 6 by 4 mat.




Edging detail




Even on a 4 X 6 mat it has plenty of give.

Clearly my mental math trying to figure out how many blocks I need to block was way off, so I will be buying more today, then maybe get it blocked out properly tonight.

She still needs another good long soak, all the greying hasn't gone yet, it may be a boil that cleans it all up, thank goodness I used cotton.

I still can't quite get my head around her being finished.

And yet, I have so many more things going on I barely stopped.....

Princess, completed, October 27th 2007, will she lie in peace now for a good number of years?

No way, she will be dragged out for everybody to meet.

Past halfway

Princess is coming along slowly. I have managed to get past the half way point, I would be further if I hadn't been sucked into Ravelry. I think I got lost in there all day Sunday.





On Friday I started two new things, The veil of Isis and one of the Fiddlesticks whisper scarves, I have a bad case of startitis I think....
I had a birthday yesterday, largely uneventful, mostly since I was being a bit of a misery.
On Saturday night some arse broke into my car and stole all my CD's, I am mega pissed at this. All the neighbourhood cars were ransacked, but the gits left my doors wide open.

Then to to my misery Lewis did not pull off the greatest championship victory of all of F1 history. I was major bummed about this too, I feel for the guy, I hope it comes good for him next year.

Anyway, I have too many pretty things on the needles to stay annoyed for too long. I bit the bullet and decided to bead the Isis shawl as well. I am doing it in Skacel Merino laceweight on 2.75 mm needles. It's pretty.




This shawl is addictive, I am considerably further on from this photo but can barely tear myself away from it to take a picture.



I have done a bit more than this on the whisper scarf too, its' a quick knit.





I finally blocked the MS3



And pafuglehale

And then ruined all that lovely pinning by throwing it promptly into a pan of bleachy water.



A light bleaching later and the results are pretty stunning, and apart from one issue, there appears to be no damage to the thread. Strange thing was this one thing though, one thread had been cut twice, this was after the bleaching, I have no idea what happened, or how I will fix it, but it doesn't appear to have been a result of the bleaching.
So when Princess is finished she will get a normal handwash, once I see how things stand with her she might get a soapy boil, if that isn't effective then it will be into bleach.
I have discussed this with Sharon Miller, so feel fairly confident about it.

Pafuglehale was always intended to be a trial run for cleaning Princess, but it's too pretty to just treat like junk, so I will try to fix it, but it's going back in the pot, the edging isn't right, I soon discovered this on blocking.

Anyway, spinning classes are going great, and guess what! My spinning instructor is deep into Shetland lace!!! How cool is that!!!!!!!

She has loaned me a book, Knitting by the fireside, and on the hillside by Linda G Fryer.
It's about the Lace knitting Industry in the Shetlands, now I have looked into buying this book, $800 and up on Amazon.ca. Yikes!!!

It looks to be interesting, and will carry on reading it tonight, but I have been so desperately trying to finish my Diana Gabaldon book that I started reading again a few weeks ago.

I have a few books coming to me hopefully today, one is the last book of the Outlander series.
One is a Galina Khmeleva book and I forgot what the other was, so hopefully it gets here and my HK package too, I am busting to get that Melanie pattern.

Gotta go anyway, running late.

K

Can't decide!

Gee there's a surprise.

Knit, spin or weave.

I have spent all night helping the girls to gut their bedroom, and now I want to relax a little, so what do I do, I go to my new toy, Ravelry!

I got my invite yesterday and promptly added some friends and found two more Princess knitters. I haven't added much, or done much, but have had a great deal of fun looking around.

I am slowly approaching the middle of the edging on the Princess, yes, I decided to carry on as I couldn't decide how to safely wash it, mostly because of the bright red (you would think I had never had a red laundry accident) cotton I used for the provisional cast on.

No photo's again today, so much is going on and mid terms are just up ahead so the next week or so is going to be chaotic, mostly because I still have an awful lot or reading to do before I am even to the point the mid terms will cover.

I am approaching brain overload again. I hate this feeling with a passion, nothing gets done, and I feel like crap.

I am taking some spinning classes on friday nights, it's a beginner class, even though I have been spinning for three to four years, I never did take a beginner class, two drop spindle, a linen and a cotton class, but never the basics, so I really need the info being fed into me right now, I just need to find time to do my homework for spinning now.

So if your on Ravelry and want to add me as a friend or whatever, friend is likely the only thing you will do as I haven't added sod all yet,' cept Princess of course, I go by my yahoo name of minihunting, I found Jean, Miss Alice, Jane and Laritza already.

I really did follow the crowd on this one, I wasn't interested until everyone was talking about it, but now I see how valuable a tool this could turn into, and blow wide open the world of knitting!

I think the stats are at 27,000 added now, at 57% of the list. I didn't wait long, and that was 7 or 17 thousand ahead of me, I forget now.

Princess stinks!

Seriously stinky piece of fabric right now, it's not a smell so much as a dusty reek. I have horrific dust allergies, and can sense dust a mile off, but this puppy needs washing, it has been bothering me now for about a month, I am not sure I can carry on with the edging until it is washed.
What a dilemma! Man I had to spell check dilemma, my brain is fried from too much school work!

Lots further forward.

I finished the centre, yay!!! I got so excited that I quickly went onto some of the edging, and got quite far. I meant to post last week about this but everything went kind of crazy as this little girl turned 5 on Thursday.




Anyway, the centre worked out nicely after finishing the last little emblem at the top then the break pattern.




It is so hard to get a great photo conveying the grandness of the shawl that I have taken to using non conventional things as sizing.



At the end of the laurel leaf pattern, Sharon advises that when you break the yarn leave a long tail. I know I did, and I had the sneaking feeling that my tail was shrinking all the way through the centre pick up, only when I got to about 30 rows left did I know that my tail had shrunk, I begin to worry, but then I think I will have enough, but with a few rows left I was going to run out, so attached another piece of cotton just incase.






Once I got to the edging I switched to a circular needle, I may still switch back to the straights as the circular doesn't feel comfortable. These needles have seen a lot of action though, and deserved a break.




So here we have some more edging attached, finally.



Another unconventional shot.



But given that I have large feet you can now see that thing is big.



The edging is actually going pretty quickly, and I managed to get past the laurel leaf onto the centre panel last night, I think I may have done one more last night than is on the picture.



To celebrate the small victories I am having with the Princess now I started another project.
I started it on Saturday night while watching the F1 race from Fuji Japan.
What an numbskull. It was such an exciting race it was all I could do to keep the knitting on the needles.



It's the flower Faroese shawl from Lucy Neatby. This has been on my list of to do's for what seems like forever. I am using 5mm needles and Fiddlesticks country silk.

I thought it was going to be one of those brain killing projects when I first started, it seemed fairly complicated at first, but when you get into it it is fairly straight forward. I think having to figure that out while trying to watch Lewis Hamilton master rain racing just fried my brain.

I almost cast on another project, but couldn't make up my mind, there will be a post about this fight fairly soon I think. The faeroese shawl shouldn't take too long to make and then the battle for the next cast on will commence.

K

Slightly bigger

Princess is really the only thing I have been working on this past week. New school term has started so everything else has gone to pot!
I did pass, with good grades, the two units I took last term, so this time I am feeling a lot more confidant. This time around I take three, this will take me to half way through the course. My plan is to be finished by August 2008. I am really enjoying the courses I am taking, but am certainly feeling overwhelmed by the work at times. So I am going to try to get well ahead early, but that involves an awful lot of reading, and Princess is not good reading knitting. I only have one thing on the needle that is good reading knitting, so that has been winning some attention.

Anyway. To Princess, I have been following Jeans comments on the Princess, she is going at great speed again. She has run into all the same issues I have had with the centre, which is so very comforting in it's own strange little way, I think Jean is now sorted as to how to decrease a few of those border stitches, I certainly wish I had thought of it sooner than I did. She will be able to spread to decreasing out a bit more than I did.

I had enough stitches for 13 repeats of the centre pattern on the border, picking up one every row. At 7 repeats I realized that 13 repeats would make the shawl way too big. So I have to pick up 2 stitches every row now to decrease the shawl down to ten repeats. I finally decided on ten once I got to repeat 9, it is becoming very clear that ten is likely the maximum you would want to do.
From top to tail, when I stretch her out, she is almost arms length, which means that she is approaching my height. I still have a ways to go, then the edging!

Anyway, I got some pictures a few days ago, at the end of repeat 9.






Since then I have added a few more rows, I am now at 55 rows left to do, total! I see my weekend dance card is filled already. I know I will be knitting like a crazy person until that bit is finished, one of those speed up to slow down times. I know, it's pointless I am going to be rushing onward to finish this part, it's a milestone after all, and a mighty big one, but once I hit the edging again I will be slower than a snail again for a good few repeats, at least until I get into the swing of the pattern.

Never mind that anyway, how exciting is it for me to be almost there, well I can hardly contain my excitement! But I have to, I have about 75 pages of heating instruction to read, then I have to go weave some on some pretty little table runners I am working on, the Princess might see me later.

Comments,

Laritza, I am glad you found me too, I love your blog, your knitting is simply amazing, and I am glad that we are able to talk a little more freely here about projects than on the HK list, I love the list, and want to keep it as it is, but miss some of the banter with more open groups. Can you imagine if we all just started nattering away on that list?
Fleegle, Jane, Miss Alice, be sure to ask any questions you have about the Princess, I am glad to help out if I can.I am sure I will have tons of them on the WRS. Fleegle your knitting is stunning too, you think things out a lot more than I do, I still tend to depend on patterns way too much, but am getting away from that pretty quickly. I am gathering experience pretty rapidly now and need to start thinking for myself.

I did finish pafuglehale, I just need to block that now.



I am still working on a secret something.
Katherine will be five in two weeks, so that particular event has a few knitted things on the go too, nothing terribly interesting though.

Anyway, the girls got back to school last week, so here is a piccie of Katherine looking super cute on her first day, Elizabeth had already been back a few days at that point.



Elizabeth also lost a tooth last night, she doesn't want to hand it over to the tooth fairy so she got no money for it.