In Dreams KAL Project (part 1)

The current project I am working on is a lace shawl entitled In Dreams. This is a mystery shawl Knit A Long (KAL), which means you don't know what the design looks like before you knit it, that's the mystery. There are clues given at timed intervals so the design is revealed as each clue is worked. The design is by Susan Pandorf of Sunflower Designs and was inspired by Galadriel's crown from the movie Lord of the Rings.

I decided to spin my own yarn for this project so the picture below is of the fiber I decided to use. This is a 50/50 blend of Merino/Silk, I love the way it shines.

This shawl is going to have a ton of beads, 5,000 I think is the right number so below are the beads I have chosen for it. I have the beads laying on top of the fiber to give you an idea of how they will go together.

I am using my Schacht double treadle wheel for this and below you can see the lace singles on the bobbin. I will be making a lace weight 2-ply yarn.

In this next picture I have placed a green sewing machine thread to the left of my spun single so you can get an idea of the size of the single.

This is the plied yarn drying on my homemade pvc niddy noddy for blocking, (setting the twist).

For those of you who read this who are not spinners, after spinning the yarn I wind it onto a niddy noddy and then wash it and set it out to dry. Before making a niddy noody from pvc I would wind it onto a wooden one to make a skein. I would then take the skein and wash it and would have to dry it under tension to set the twist. By making the pvc one I can skein it, wash it, and set it all on the niddy noddy in fewer steps.

I am currently half way through knitting the first clue and will post pictures after clue one is complete, in part 2 of this post.

Wow, where does the time go. I suppose during my long hiatus from the blogging sphere I have lost readers I previously might have had. Well, I guess that's ok and I'll just have to deal with it but hay, I blog mainly for myself anyway as a way to journal my crafting activities. I have been crafting, just not blogging. Sometimes the necessities in life take up a little more time than one expects and takes away from the things one really loves to do, as is in my case. At any rate, here is what I'm doing now, I won't go into all the things that have been keeping me from blogging like, finding facebook (spend way too much time there), my handspun yarn business, homeschooling, wait, I said I wouldn't go there, so where was I.... oh yeah what I'm doing now.

Over on the Ravelry site I joined a Lord of the Rings Mystery Shawl KAL (Knit-A-Long) and I am having a lot of fun with that. Here is what I have done so far without giving to much away, I don't want to spoil the mystery for those who might not be as far along.

Clue number one came out on February 12th, By the way it is not to late to sign up for this project and you can find all the details you need here

This particular shawl is only one in a Lord of the Rings series so if your a LOTR fan like me you might want to check this out.

This project is called the Evenstar, the pendant worn by Arwen Evenstar in the movie played by Liv Tyler.

I have spun up a light lace weight yarn from a 50/50 blend of Mulberry silk/Merino for this project, the silk gives off a beautiful shine that I think will be perfect for this shawl.

I have also knit up the swatch but I didn't use the good yarn for the swatch, I used crochet thread instead.
I had a couple of reasons for doing this. This swatch was my 4th attempt to get it right so I didn't want to mess up the good yarn. Also the crochet thread is the same WPI as my handspun so it would work for obtaining the gauge. I will be using size 4 needles instead of the size 3 prescribed. I also wanted to play around with bead placement to see if I even wanted beads. My real camera is not working so I had to use my camera phone and it doesn't get close enough for you see the beads in this picture but they are there, trust me.

The flower on the bottom has 4 beads, one in the center of each flower section, (don't like this at all). The two flowers on the upper right and left each have one single bead right in the center where a hole is but I placed these beads on different stitches to see what the difference would be and here is what I found.

The one on the left- I placed the bead in the 4th increase stitch on the pearl side prior to purling the stitch, now the bead wound up on the purl side so I had to push it through the hole in order for it to be on the front but the bead is directly in the center of the hole.

The one on the right-I placed the bead on the 5th increase stitch on the purl side prior the purling the stitch and the bead wound up on the front side not the purl side, however it is not perfectly centered and has a rightward slant which I don't like.

I have not yet decided if I like any beads at all at this point but I hope that if anyone else out there is doing this KAL that wanted to place beads that this post is somewhat helpful to you.

Cheers

The "Hole" Truth

Well, my Laminaria shawl will be going into the time out corner with the rest of the UFO’s for a while. Last night I was moving my lifeline for the next section of the pattern. I checked very carefully to make sure all the stitches were correct before removing the lifeline. But to my surprise, when I was putting the lifeline back in just over this spot, the huge gaping hole you see in the photo formed right before my eyes. This tells me that I must have knit that stitch right into my lifeline so that when I pulled out the lifeline, I also pulled out the stitch. As Homer Simpson would say, DOPE!

If you have been following this project then you know that I have frogged this shawl several times already and once all the way back to the beginning. With out a live line that is what I would have to do again, all the way back to the beginning and I am not willing to go through all that work again just now, so the Laminaria shawl will be laid to rest for an undisclosed period of time.

Maybe I can do some research on how to fix mistakes, can you fix lace mistakes? A girl can dream can’t she?

Laminaria in The Frog Pond

The center of this picture shows a little mistake in the Laminaria Shawl. There are three single stitches smack dab in the middle of 3-1 combinations. This means all the rest of the stitches to the left of the boo boo are in the wrong places. Frogging is a must, Boo Hoo :( My lifeline is 4 rows back.
What I learned? To move my lifeline more often :)

Change Is Good

The photo above is the re-do of the Laminaria shawl project. It's a bad picture I know but if you can see it, the left and right sides are now symmetrical and I am very happy with the results of the changes I made in the pattern and the needle size change.

In this second photo you can now see how the pattern shows up nicely when stretched out. I love this project and am enjoying it immensely.

DANIELLE'S HEALING

The photo below is showing how brave my daughter is. That's her on the left with the splint on the right foot, she doesn't like her picture taken so she flung her head around when she noticed my friend's (right), husband with the camera in his hand.

I say brave because she was trying to hop down the hallway on the good foot to the restroom by herself without the splints on her two arms that have not fully healed yet. My friend Kathy on the right ran to her aid. Danielle is healing is nicely and has a wonderful sense of humor about the whole thing.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers for her during this trying time.

Laminaria Progress

The photo posted here is of the progress on Laminaria shawl I previously blogged about and it will be frogged because I don’t like the fact that the left and right sides don’t match. If you look closely you can that the stitches on the right side of the spine are horizontal while the stitched on the left side are vertical. The pattern calls for a 3 into 3 stitch which is [k3tog, yo, k the same 3tog] all the way across. But as you can see the effect is different on either side of the spine. So instead of the 3 into 3 stitch as the pattern states on the set-up and star charts, I will try the sssk on the left side of the spine only and that should make the left side a mirror image of the right. I will also be going up one needle size to a 6 instead of the 5 the pattern calls for because I chose a colorful yarn I think the lace pattern will show up better if it’s a little larger. Hopefully it won’t make it too large.