Showing posts with label gift. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gift. Show all posts

Sunday, August 10, 2008

O is for Object, finished




The pattern: Madli's Shawl, from IK Summer 2004. (This is a really hard-to-find issue, but I think the pattern will be reprinted in Nancy Bush's new book, Knitted Lace of Estonia, which is coming out in October.)

The details: School Products baby camel lace weight, just under 2 skeins (I have 5 grams left in the second skein, plus a third that I didn't touch!). The pattern calls for 1092 yards of laceweight; I used about 725, and added in two repeats of the center panel. I also went down a size for the needles (US 4 instead of US 5), but the finished size was fairly generous--24" wide by a little over 62" long.

The verdict: I love this shawl. I'd originally earmarked the yarn & pattern for myself, but when my mom (my mom, who keeps telling me she'll never wear lace and so there's no point in making her anything) really really liked it. What's a girl to do except give it to her mom? Which is exactly what I did. But I'd make this pattern again (in a while, because even though all those nupps were fine, I think I'd like a break from them!) and I'd definitely use this yarn again. At $9.50/skein, it's a beautiful, soft, warm, and slightly exotic; since I go to NYC a couple of times a year, I'm planning another trip to School Products.

Friday, May 9, 2008

I is for . . .

Ivory silk.
Because H is for Habu--I was in NYC for a conference this past weekend, and managed to get to Habu for a few minutes. (The elevator was out, so I had to walk up the 8 floors. But it was well worth it!) The ivory-colored silk is A-39, which they list as a fingering weight, although I'd call it a very very light fingering, or a very heavy lace. I have almost 1200 yards of it; I think it's destined to become a lace stole for a friend's daughter's wedding. The wedding is over a year off, though, so it's got some time to marinate.


I also bought 2 ounces of A-1, in color 38, which is a lovely tweedy raspberry color. It's a lace-weight, about 530 yards. Nothing planned, but I couldn't resist the color.

The trip down and back offered plenty of knitting time, and I worked on a Flutter Scarf. (I took a Bolt Bus, which is a fairly new service between Boston and NYC. The trip down was great, the one back was okay. But I emailed them with a "here's why I'm not thrilled with the trip back" report, and they were very prompt about getting back to me. So I'd give them another shot.)

I'm using a skein of MamaLlama silken cashmere, in Bella, which is delicious. I got the skein as payment for knitting up a sample scarf for MamaLlama, and I've been waiting to find a good pattern for it.

Flutter is a very easy pattern to memorize (and Miriam was wonderful about helping me decide if the pattern would be suitable. and then with walking me through some technical problems in actually getting the payment to go through!). Rather than knit it as written, which is in two halves, I knit a couple of repeats, then the flutter, and am knitting down from there, with the join at one side rather than in the middle. I weighed the amount of yarn that the first end took, and am now getting close to that point on the other side. The skein I'm using is a little shorter than the skein the pattern calls for, so I'm trying to make the center part as long as possible without worrying about running out of yarn for the second flutter. Right now the scarf is about 45" long, and I'll probably get another 3 or 4 center repeats in before I start the second flutter end.

The scarf is going to be a present for my best friend's mom, who's a darling and going through a rough time right now. She's always been wonderful to me (and lately has taken to sending me knitting-related things, like pattern books and magazines and skeins of sock yarn that she's found when cleaning out a closet!), and I wanted to send her something lush and pretty.

I is also for Irony--yesterday, G and I went to the police station to have elimination prints taken. While we were there, the detective in charge of the case said they had a suspect in custody, although no hard evidence linking him to our break-in, and no real hope of recovering any of the items. When we got home, we found an automated message from the town on our machine, saying that there had been a series of break-ins, lately, both home and auto, and everyone should be very careful. A little late for that, but--nicely ironic, none the less!