Fiber Friday: Oh. Oh my...
Some of the goodies that Adrian has sent to my mailbox in the past few months...
Pallid Rambouillet,
Parritch Targhee,
Loch kid mohair/nylon/merino.
I'll be in my bunk...
Have a sheep
Clearly I need to go to Australia, if this is the kind of public artwork floating around.
I wonder what kind of fleece that is strewn about? And why didn't Ironman swipe any for me?
Ribbing done, umpteen gazillion rows of colorwork to go
It took two nights to do 25 rows of the ribbing. I'm hoping that the straight fair isle sections go a bit faster!
On the upside, I'm liking the color combo a lot. And I'm getting perfect stitch gauge (!). My row gauge is off (on the loose side) by about 0.1 rows, so I'm not going to worry too much about that. No, now my worries will center on running out of yarn - given the pattern sizing, I'm knitting the bottom half at a size 41.75 and the top at 37.75 (let's hear it for big butts and small boobs!). I've got 230 yds of each color. It may be a white knuckle trip to the end!
The Knitting Olympics
You may have noticed a new, un-photographed project that has shown up in the sidebar over there to the right with an intriguing title. Because this is exactly what I need - a hole in the head. Or another project, in this case.
But, but, but...it's the Olympics! Today's the day! And Stephanie is on board again! How could I say no? For the previous Knitting Olympics in 2006, I knit my first lace shawl, Adamas (pre-Ravelry, as if such a thing were even comprehensible anymore!). I was not successful, but it was the first lace thing I'd ever done, and I got most of it done during the Olympics, so it was a good experience.
This year, I've decided to tackle a project that has been on my list for a long time - the Ivy League Vest. Here's why this is a challenge for me: I have a serious Fair Isle/colorwork planning block. The knitting of this will not be a problem, and I've done steeks once before, so that's not a huge deal, but I despise don't really care for the colors used in the original. And figuring out which colors look good together is not my strength. So I knew that I wanted to do different colors, but it was a huge inertia block for me to actually do the work to figure out how to change them.
Enter this week: Ironman has been in Australia for work, so I've had the freedom to play around with the bazillion colors of Knit Picks Palette I bought for this exact project, and make teeny swatches with lots of ends hanging off of them. Here's the first, knit on the recommended size 4/3.5 mm needles:
Final gauge: 6 stitches/inch, so those needles won't work. More importantly, the combination of Eggplant, Clematis Heather, Fog, Mist, Bittersweet Heather and Hyacinth won't do. Next:
This swatch was knit on US 2/2.75 needles using Ash, Clematis Heather, Mist, Fog, Lipstick and Cream. Stitch gauge, 7 stitches per inch, color combo, ick.
At this point, it was 11:30 on Sunday night, and it was well past time for bed. Except that I went to bed and lay there for an hour obsessing about colors and what should go where, and so on. Silly Porpoise. Since IM was away, I found myself downstairs at 1:00 in the morning scanning black and white images of different colors of Palette. Because I seem to remember reading somewhere that an important issue in colorwork is contrast. And if you're substituting colors, it will come out better if you get similar contrast values between your substitutions and the originals. These contrast values are easiest to see in B&W.
I also realized that the pattern uses two colors in each of three families: white, tan/brown and green. Green was out, and I'm not so taken with the tan/brown option. Whites, fine. Tan/brown became greys and green became either purple or blue.
The grays down the left side will be ok, but the navy was too dark.
This was better.
This one had the same contrasts as #2, but with a purple heather instead of the blue. So then it was time to swatch. By the time I finally went to bed on Sunday night/Monday morning, I had half of this done:
The observant among you may realize that this is none of the combinations that I meticulously scanned. I decided to try a purple version (with Huckleberry Heather and Iris Heather) and a blue version (with Pool and Blue Note heather). This swatch was also done on US 2/2.75 mm needles, but my final gauge came out at 8 stitches per inch, so I think I'll be going with a US 3/3.25 mm needle.
I like these combinations much better then the ones I first started with. So the B&W option was very helpful in narrowing things down. I've got my needles ready to go - some lovely bamboo circulars* - and I will be casting on as soon as the girls go to bed tonight** with these yarns.
Clockwise from lower left: iris heather, clematis heather, marble heather, mist, fog (now called silver apparently) and asphalt heather in the center. There's got to be a little bit of mystery in this, right?
Citius, Alitius, Fortius!
* I'm hoping to be able to get this project on to the plane for our trip on Monday - that's three hours knitting time right there.
** I realize this is not kosher. However...the Opening Ceremonies will be starting at something like 1:00 am Saturday for me. That's the loss of an entire, unencumbered evening's worth of ribbing. And given that we leave at 8:30 Monday morning for seven days half-term holiday in North Africa, I feel that missing out on this chunk of time will doom me from the beginning. So...I will aim to finish by the same time minus half an hour on the 28th (the Closing Ceremonies start 30 min earlier then the Opening Ceremonies).
My school colors
About half of the projects on my plate/in mind at the moment are secret, and as such can't be discussed. Makes for pretty boring blogging, not to mention that I've been abandoned by my husband for a week and am trying to wrangle two children on my own. However, there has been some knitting going on, mostly late at night with the companionship of Vampire Bill et al.
First thing I've been working on is the first installment of the Knit Love Club 2010 sock club. It arrived a couple of weeks ago, and I've been loving it.
The yarn is Alchemy Juniper, colorway "Rumplestiltskin" (club exclusive), and the pattern is by Socktopus/Knit Nation braintrust Alice. The yarn is lovely (if a bit splitty for doing k4tog/ssssk, but what wouldn't be?) and the exact color of roasted butternut squash. Really. See?
The pattern is fun to knit and looks way more complicated then it is. I've had to do some adjusting to make the leg a bit longer and make sure I don't run out of yarn, but I'm well into the foot now and I think I'll have plenty. Maybe even some leftovers for The Blanket.
Project #2 is the big spinning project. I try to do about an hour a night on this at least, and I've now filled five bobbins.
That bump on the left is 171 gr and the one on the right (much compacted) is a whopping 472 gr (half of what I started with). Ooof. I was considering trying to get the spinning done during the Olympics, but we're going out of town for seven days for half-term holiday, and the wheel is not invited to Tunis with us.
Instead, last night I started swatching for this for the Olympics. I have serious color choice issues in stranded knitting, so I'm going to knit this vest (which I've been lusting over for ever) instead. I did one swatch last night, and have ruled out three colors and one needle size so far, so we'll see what happens. There is much more swatching for another secret project in a yarn I've never used before, but I think I want to marry. And so on and so on. So apologies for the lack of new, shareable content, but it may be a couple of weeks before I get to anything more interesting then the socks, purple yarn making and random Fair Isle swatches.