Off the needles: Dotted Rays

"Dotted Rays" by Stephen West

Started: June 28, 2015

Finished: July 11, 2015

Fiber: Madelinetosh Pashmina DK in "Holi" - 2 skeins

Notes: 2 countries, 2 weeks, one shawl. My sweet friend Virginia gifted me this beautiful yarn back in March and when I decided to go with my O-Wool Local for my Pure shawl, I knew this would be my next yarn to use, but couldn't find the right pattern. This yarn is loud and bright and beautiful so eventually I landed on Stephen West - all of these things describe his style and his patterns. I knit the small version of Dotted Rays and it was almost exactly 2 skeins. The pattern took some concentration at first, and I found that it was really helpful to place stitch markers every time I turned a short row, it made keeping track of where I was in each row so much simpler. There's also a great little tutorial over at Odette-DS's ravelry page that helped me get started! 

As the project grew, it became more and more of mindless garter which was just what I wanted on my vacation in Mexico. The I-cord bind-off took a while, but I think it's worth it, the piece looks so finished and I even wore it to a coffee shop yesterday, couldn't resist. :) It'll be hard to wait to wear this until the fall, the colors are just so summer-y. 

I'm really glad that I knit this, it stretched my color palette and my ideas about shawl construction! And to top it off, there's this awesome video. :)

I hope everyone is having an awesome summer! I'm excited about my next two projects, one spinning and one which is going to be a massive undertaking. I can't wait to get started and am swatching this week!

Off the needles: Pure

Pure|Worsted by cabinfour

Started: May 30, 2015

Finished: June 16, 2015

Fiber: O-Wool Local, one skein each of Gingko Nut and Steelhead

Notes: After much debating I decided to go with a yarn I knew I would love for a pattern I had a feeling I would love. Now that I have knit a few large shawls, it's really fun to compare the construction techniques and how it affects the overall shape of the finished piece, and how it grows on your needles! Pure starts with a stockinette section, a textured stitch section, and then straight garter for the border. I picked up these two skeins of Local in the 2nds quality section of O-Wools website a few months ago and really wanted to use both of them up, so I did the stockinette section as normal, did 1.5 sections of the textured stitch, and then a little less than the garter section originally called for (because I ran out!). I love the versions of Pure that I saw that were only one color, so to unify the two colors in this one I decided to add in a stripe of the yellow before finishing the textured section, too, and I think it came out really lovely. Towards the end of that section, I was quite ready for it to be over - after knitting miles of stockinette in my Gable I forgot how slow pretty much every other stitch pattern is! 

The only other modifications I made were to go down a needle size to US 7 so it would be nice and dense (and because I'm a loose knitter generally). As expected, this yarn was a delight and I highly recommend it to anyone who has never tried it! Jocelyn's dedication to fair pricing and good relationships with her farmers is very much what I'm about, and I just love the way that my hands feel so soft after a long session of knitting with it. 

The background for these photos is a bit different, you may notice, because the Mr. and I moved this weekend to a little cottage in Chapel Hill. It has been a crazy week of unpacking and organizing, the little moments of "this used to go here in our old space, how does it go here" that happen as your belongings get accustomed to new surroundings. We are really loving it more every day and can't wait to spend time on our front porch and back deck soaking up some summer sun. 

In a week we leave for Mexico for family vacation and I'm sure the next 7 days will move by as if in standstill. My biggest question right now is, will the security guards let me take a drop spindle on an international flight?? Thoughts and experiences are welcome :)

Have a lovely Friday afternoon, we are headed to go see "Inside Out" in a few minutes!

The great debate for Pure

Well, I'm doing it again. The classic, I'm-almost-done-with-a-project-lets-preemptively-start-working-on-the-next-one dance I seem to do every time a monster project is close to being done.

Tonight I joined all of the pieces of my Gable together and while I'm so excited, I'm also catching all of the infectious energy surrounding Marlee and the wonderful news that Have Company is going to be Grand Rapid's first LYS! It's been so fun to watch a brand I love become a yarn store that I wish I could visit in person. If you can, please go check out their Kickstarter and help if you are able. It's going to be so lovely, I just know it.

Anyways! Marlee is hosting a Pure KAL starting next week, and I'm definitely going to join. Pure is on my short list of summer shawls I just wrote about, after all! The great debate is as follows. I have this lovely Madelintosh Pashmina that was a gift from a friend. It is only sport weight, but held double it could be exactly on gauge for the worsted version of Pure. It is so soft, perfect for snuggling next to skin and the colors are so vibrant, but I'm not sure how two individual skeins would look held double (the colorway is Holi, and the skeins are rather individualistic!).

On the other hand, I also recently purchased two skeins of O-Wool Local, which I knit my Mountain Moss Shawl with this past fall, and it was by far my most worn piece for the past few months. With Local, I could knit Pure in two colors, one for the border and one for the middle section. It is a little bit more rustic, but it definitely fits the aesthetic of the pattern, being simple and lovely and one of my favorite yarns.

I'd love to hear everyone's opinions about this! In the end, I guess I could just knit Pure twice, but I love both of these yarns so much, I don't want to waste a bit!

Love: simple textured shawls

1/2/3/4

Lately I've been dreaming of summer vacation, of getting this sweater off of my needles, and of long stretches of time to knit on a beach. Or on my porch, or anywhere, really. And what I want to be knitting the most in this dream scenario is a shawl (because you can't have too many) and of something simple, but interesting. Beautiful, but mindless. The winner out of this bunch may just very well be Pure, thanks to this picture that Hannah Garr posted weeks ago and I still can't get out of my head. Hers is knit in Madelintosh Optic, which is amazing, and for my birthday this year my lovely friend gifted me two skeins of "Holi" by Madelintosh that I think would knit up so wonderfully like the Optic. 

I've no trouble knitting with wool all year long, but I'm just curious what everyone else is planning on knitting this summer! The tanks the Quince and Co recently released have got me thinking about more garments for my wardrobe, but I have to buckle down and finish Gable first!

Off the needles: Hansel

World, meet Hansel. Hansel, meet world. You two are going to get along swimmingly I think!

"Hansel" by Gudrun Johnston

Started: December 25, 2014

Finished: March 7, 2015

Fiber: Knit Picks Gloss Fingering in Black

Notes: Hansel was a true labor of love, and it taught me so much. I loved the technique for creating yarn overs at the end of the rows of the middle garter section, had a study in yarn overs and "feather and fan" lace, and was taught patience and a deeper love for knitted-on edging with the triangles that go all the way around the border of the shawl. This piece is far from perfect, though, and if I were to go back and make another (which lets be real, I probably will!), I would pay more attention to my stitch counts at the beginning. I didn't pay attention to the number of rows and number of yarn overs for the edging until the entire garter section was complete, and unfortunately my counts were off by a stitch in a few of the sections (meaning I had forgotten to yarn over at the ends of a few rows). This caused me a lot of trouble trying to get the spines of the shawl to match up with each of the four corners of the square, and some creative finagling to get into the correct stitch numbers for the border section. I've also decided that when I'm knitting lace, I prefer reading it from a chart. Isn't that crazy? A year ago I didn't even know how to read charted lace and now it's my favorite thing. Ha! Just goes to show how accessible so many things in knitting are if you're willing to be adventurous and do a bit of research. Although after blocking this lace, I might say blocking is my new favorite thing. It just keeps amazing me how lace just opens up so wonderfully when you take the time to block it. Ah!

So my first hap shawl is off my needles and has been on my shoulders or in my lap for the past week. I even brought it with me to a conference earlier this week, it was the perfect thing to wear to keep warm in the car, although spring seems to finally be arriving here in Durham, so I'm not sure how long I can keep that up! I'm writing this post today in my apartment, where the sun is just streaming in so beautifully through the open windows here, and Nash and Melo are in heaven, completely stretched out in the warmth. It's nearly six o'clock and the world is still light outside, what a miracle. Even as a die-hard winter lover, there is something really special about the first taste of spring's arrival to the world. 

Hope everyone is having a lovely, lovely, spring day. Happy knitting. 

Off the needles: Mountain Moss Shawl

Started: October 2014

Finished: November 2014

Fiber: O-Wool Local in colorway River Oat, 2 skeins exactly

Notes: At Rhinebeck this year, I picked out a good bit of O-Wool classic worsted for some hats, and was so excited about it that before we left the festival I swung by their booth again and on an impulse picked up these two skeins of Local. The yarn has this lovely variegated quality to it that goes from thick to thin and back again, but is mostly a worsted weight. When I was looking for the perfect pattern for this yarn, I was looking through my favorite patterns on my Ravelry page, and almost settled on something simpler, woolier. The original Mountain Moss Shawl pattern is knit in a fingering weight with a bit of drape to it, neither of which was true of Local. But for the past few months I've been reading through Jared Floods'old Brooklyn Tweed blog and inspired by his love of lacework knits in chunkier weights, I decided to go for it. While the original pattern calls for US 5 needles, with the worsted weight I moved the needles up to a US 8 and cast on!

This pattern is an awesome mix of simple garter stitch and the challenge of a lace edging, which is a world that I am now so excited to jump into more. The edging is added as you go, binding off and attaching simultaneously, which eliminated a bind off row and any seaming. Genius! 

Things got a little hairy towards the end, as my calculations for the yardage weren't exactly, let's say, precise? The whole last foot or so of the edging I was terribly afraid I was going to run out of yarn. In the end, I finished with just two yards to spare! If I ever take it off, I'll see if I can add the final gauge and measurements in case anyone is interested in doing a similar adjustment.

I love this pattern and love this yarn. O-Wool is making it's way to the top of my Christmas list this year for sure.