tatt3r's Christmas Loot

My family supports my knitting/lacing habit, and gave me such wonderful treasures!

Diametrag found a bobbin lace book at a second hand store. All the prickings are intact and I'm looking forward to the challenge of working these patterns.

D, my son, bought me 2 skeins of Opal sock yarn. As you can see, I've divided one ball and started the first pair. He gave me Opal, Brazil #5003 and Dream Catcher #1230. I love the colors, D.

I gave J a hint to buy Sensational Knitted Socks by C. Schurch. I had it on loan from the library, and decided it would be useful to have for myself. He bought it on Amazon, and followed the link to Victorian Lace Today. He liked what he saw and added it to his cart. I was totally surprised when I opened the package, I wasn't expecting that at all. I had followed the discussion on the Lace List, but wasn't going to buy it just yet.

I also am sneaking in another update on my KISS Pi shawl. I am almost done with the 3rd skein of yarn, and am working on the 3rd or 4th test of a knit on edging. I haven't measured the yardage from 2 repeats yet, I haven't settled on the final version.

Thank you, family! I will be busy for many hours in the New Year!

SamplerM Patterns 16 - 20

It's been some time since I posted my progress on SamplerM. Since my last update, I've almost finished 5 patterns. (I skipped pattern 15, it was a duplicate of an earlier pattern) Starting at the bottom, the patterns are: 16 - Cubics, 17 - Wybert, 18 - Twisted Oak, 19 - Peacock, and 20 - Beehive. I've only finished 14 rows on Pattern 20, but I decided to include it in my update.

I like Peacock and Beehive is easy to knit, I love the texture. Twisted Oak wasn't hard to do, but my crochet thread has no memory, and it isn't very pretty. I think lace weight wool would make Twisted Oak much more attractive.

KISS Pi Chart

Here's the charts of the patterns I used on my Pi Shawl. Keeping to the KISS principle, I used patterns with yarn overs on every other round. Be sure to watch the numbering on the right side of the charts and don't forget the plain rounds.

I used the Cat's Paw pattern in the section with 24 rounds and 144 sts. I started with 3 plain rounds, worked the chart and ended with round 24.

Horsehoe worked in the next section, 288 sts and 48 rounds. I started with 4 plain rounds, worked the chart 4 times for 40 rounds, and ended with 4 more plain rounds. This pattern uses SSK and K2Tog, and I thought it was pretty enough, although not as simple.

Last is a variation of Old Shell, a multiple of 20 stitches. I knitted a few plain rounds after I doubled my stitches to 576, and then added 4 more stitches to get 580, which is evenly divisible by 20. I knitted 4 plain rounds, and wish I had knitted 6 plain rounds. It would appear a bit more symmetrical to my eyes. This section is theoretically 96 rounds, and I will probably get a few more than 80 before I run out of yarn on my 3rd skein.

I'm thinking about which knit-on edging I want to use, but haven't begun swatching. I'd like something that incorporates one of my patterns, perhaps the Cat's Paw would be nice. I'm looking for an edging about 18 sts wide. If you have any suggestions, I'll consider anything!

I was feeling a bit apologetic about my KISS Pi Shawl - it's not as lacy as some of the other shawls I've seen on blogs and around the internet. I happened across EZ's Knitter's Almanac yesterday, and took another look at the Original Pi Shawl on the cover. That shawl is not a lacy masterpiece, it has a large proportion of stockinette, a moderate amount of yo's, rather like my KISS shawl. You know, if it was good enough for EZ, it's good enough for me. I'm looking forward to wearing my new PI shawl sometime next year.

I hope you can read the charts if you are interested. I'm just a knitter trying to Keep It Simple, not a professional designer.

Lacy Pi Shawl

My Pi shawl continues to grow. I have started on my third skein of yarn, I'm holding the 4th skein for a knit-on edging. I started my second skein of yarn just after I doubled for the 576 stitch section. I got 40 rounds from that skein, so I have 'only' 40 rounds to go before I start the edging.

Pi shawls are tricky to photograph when they get this big. In a normal, relaxed state on the circular needles, the shawl looks like a soft, crumpled bag. I grabbed my navy blue shawl and stuffed it inside the Pi shawl for this picture. It looks like a puffy pillow instead of a shawl, but the navy blue lets you see the patterns very nicely.

The pattern for my final section is a variation of Old Shell. I must be the only knitter on the planet who doesn't like Feather and Fan, and I chose Old Shell reluctantly. The variation I'm using is a 6 round repeat, and a multiple of 20. The extra rounds between the increases, combined with the extra stitches will hopefully lessen the waviness of the pattern.

So far it looks good to me, and I don't plan to rip it. I want this yarn to be knitted into a shawl, I don't want it to linger in my stash. I have tried 2 different Pi shawls and frogged them, I know the yarn is dangerously close to being banished to the dark corners of my stash.