At The End of My Yarn

Finally near the end of the Diotima Shell by Kirsten Hipsky from One-Skein Wonders out of some ancient stash. One of those impulse yarn purchases that seemed like such a good idea at the time (clearance!) but I then found myself staring at it every time I dug through my yarn stash wondering what I was thinking. It’s Stitch Studio by Nicole Bubbly, which has now become almost impossible to find since it was the house brand for AC Moore and that chain is no longer with us. I was pretty shocked when I found out they were going out of business. They were the only major craft chain in my area (other than Hobby Lobby) that I hadn’t worked at during some point, and they were definitely my favorite. Admittedly I hadn’t even though about them in a while (life does move on), except for the rare occasions I would be driving past where the store used to be, but trying to find a link for Bubbly brought back the memories. Apparently some of the empty stores will become Michaels (I was there from 2011 to 2015) but there is already a Michaels in my area close by so I don’t think that will happen for us.

The yarn itself isn’t bad, it’s a slubby cotton yarn, but the colorway was a mistake for me. The colors are at the perfect length to pool oddly, especially in a pattern like the Diotima tank top where you switch from knitting back and forth to going in the round right at the boob area, which gave me awkward purpley splotches right where I didn’t want them. I ended up solving the issue by going down a few needle sizes. The stretchy nature of the pattern, being knit entirely in a knit one purl one rib meant that changing the needle size won’t present a fit issue. I’m on the final stretch, and only have a few inches left to knit but it’s slow going.

Shockingly, my exacting technique of measuring my warp yarn by how many times I wrap it around my bedposts lead to a finished length of fabric that is not quite the right size for any of my intended uses. However, it mostly works as a mat for my bedside table that actually lives in my living room because why not.

The May show at the gallery I volunteer has a theme of patterns, and I think I’m going to weave a submission. My first thought was a sort of bold, wide, zig-zaggy twill that spanned the width of the fabric, but after having had a look through Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom I may do short sections of patterned weaves instead. Maybe. I have to get a move on. There’s no size requirement for finished works so my super-calculated and surgically planned technique for warp winding will be fine, but it’s due by April 9th. I’m thinking a small tapestry but could also frame it. We’ll see when we get there.

A year or so ago I cast on a new Aeolian Shawl, not only because it’s a gorgeous pattern, but also because the last one I knit (about eleven! years ago) was before I learned I was unintentionally twisting all my knit stitches and I thought it was long past time I knit one properly. This time around I’m using some older Queensland Collection Llama Lace Melange in Red Plum from the stash which has been a complete joy to use. It was one of the projects I brought with me while I was in Maine during the summer, and I made it through most of the Yucca chart repeats for the full-sized shawl. I overshot my count a bit, (because once you get into a yucca rhythm it’s very difficult to stop) and ended up with fourteen repeats instead of twelve, but the pattern itself is vey adaptable.

Once you finally move on from yucca repeats you start the transitional chart for the agave chart, and that’s where you can start adding beads. Come to think of it, you could probably add them at any point, but as I like the heft, shine, and drape of beading lace I don’t love the process itself so I just stick with the pattern. At first I pre-strung the beads onto the yarn to save myself from the fiddily-ness and stop-start nature of using a crochet hook but wasn’t a fan of how the beads were looking. Since the yarn I’m using is 100% llama, it’s very slick and the beads would slide around on the yarn and migrate around on the shawl. Wasn’t a big deal when I last used that beading method on my Shipwreck shawl, but those were intended to be random.

And quite impossible to see on this old photo, but I actually ended up donating the shawl once I realized I don’t much wear circular shawls. However, since the beads on the Aeolian are meant to form a pattern, the crochet hook was the way to go. I was about a dozen rows into the transitional chart so instead of frogging what I’d done, I just started using the crochet hook method, but then it began to annoy me that the new rows of beading were nice and neat, but the previous ones were all over the place so I took a deep breath, pulled out my needles and frogged back to the beginning of the chart Yes, I have heard of a lifeline for lace knitting but that would involve forethought and planning ahead and having more than a few braincells to rub together and I just don’t roll that way.

Now plowing my way through the chart, and making decent progress. We had a snow day today so I’ve been able to really sit down with the shawl and get some knitting done. I’ll probably just do a single repeat of the agave chart because the edging charts use up a tremendous amount of yarn, and I’m not confident on getting more a of the same dye lot from a yarn I bought in 2016 but I should still end up with a decent sized shawl. Okay, maybe occasionally I do think ahead.

“This pair of short socks was inspired by a collection of Estonian socks in the Nordiska Museum in Stockholm, Sweden (…) They had a tassel at the toe that was used to hang up the socks to dry, as did the original Estonian socks and two rows of braid separated by simple K2 P2 ribbing. (…) Rather than leaving a tassel at the toe where it was sure to cause some discomfort, the tassels here are at the top, made from remnants of the cast-on yarns.” -Merike’s Socks from Folk Socks by Nancy Bush.

I…did not win that game of yarn chicken. I had no intention for my Merike’s Socks to have variegated red toes. I sat there, debated between having one sock with a solid white foot and the other only half white, then realized if I were to wear them with my usual work shoes it would be painfully obvious (to me) that one of my socks had a bloody accident. Made the tough decision to snip a stitch in the previously finished sock, un-pick the yarn back, then use the few yards I gained to knit the second sock to the same length as the first, then do both toes in red.

I had a moment while I considered ripping out all the way back to the heel and reknitting them in the red to make it look more like I did it on purpose, but I got lazy. The heel is a new-to-me technique Nancy Bush calls the Shaped Common Heel, in which you knit a regular heel flap, then decrease a number of stitches in the middle to shape the heel, and Kitchener (or in my lazy case, do a three needle bind-off) to form the bottom, and pick up around the perimeter for the gusset decreases and foot. Having tried on the finished pair and taken a few awkward as heck photos, Kitchener-ing the heel closed would have certainly made for a smoother fit on the bottom of the foot, but after a bit you don’t really notice the ridge. Unless you’re some sort of The Princess and the Pea type, in which case it would drive you crazy. I have executed exactly one good-looking Kitchener graft in my life so far and have no desire to practice it.

The toe concept was also new to me. Bush’s Star Toe calls for decreasing the toe stiches in four quarters rather than at the side of the foot. You continue the decreases until you get to just a handful of stitches and then draw it tight to close the foot. This pair turned out a little large for my feet, I didn’t adjust the stitch count to match my normal gauge but with time and washings it will molder a bit to fit my foot.

I didn’t add the tassel at the cuff, mainly because I forgot to leave a long-enough tail at the cast on but also because all I could picture was the dangly tassel getting tangled up in the laundry. Or swatted at by a cat. Or chewed on by a puppy. Or somehow caught in an escalator. Or caught on any number of things, really.

Amazing what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it. Or when you tell yourself that a two-row lace repeated ad nauseam is meditative, not boring. Or when you acknowledge that having such a simple knit languishing in your work basket for upwards of two years is a bit shameful. Either finish it or frog it, self! Didn’t want to frog it because I couldn’t think of another use for the yarn. It’s Lang Yarns Super Soxx Solid which I had previously used in a pair of colorwork socks that developed holes alarmingly quickly, and overwhelmingly in the sections where I used that yarn. It may have just been a bad skein, but I wasn’t willing to take chances with another pair.

The pattern is from Victorian Lace Today, and has a particularly utilitarian title, but it does describe it well. Jane Sowerby pulled the edging from Weldon’s Practical Needlework, mostly from the fifth volume in 1890, which according to her book has a wide variety of patterns for knitted lace edgings, which were mostly too wide to be scarves themselves, but worked well as borders. The naming conventions that Jane Sowerby uses in her book are all very ‘does what it says on the tin’, such as Dolphin Lace from Weldon’s 1887, with an insertion of Miss. Lambert’s center pattern for a Shetland scarf, 1845 which is both the actual name of the pattern and a gorgeous piece of lace with a double border (and I might consider casting on next) and also will help boost the word-count in a fiber blog, if I was concerned about something like that.

Got to break out my blocking wires for this one, which took some doing as they had slid behind a heavy piece of furniture (goes to show how often I do a proper job of blocking). I should have taken a photo of the set-up I had to use to get the job done. One end of the scarf was sitting on blocking mats set on top of my dog’s kennel, and I had threaded the wires down the sides of the scarf which were suspended in mid-air, and the other end of the scarf was resting on top of the space heater. The heater casing itself is wood, and doesn’t get very hot, which is the only reason I used it. My blocking efforts generally consist of giving my finished project a wash, wringing out most of the water in a towel, then leaving the knitwear to dry on whatever flat surface is available, but a proper blocking with pins and wires makes a world of difference in knitted lace. It opens up the pattern and really shows off the effort. I don’t generally have the patience for it, but considering how long my poor scarf was languishing in my work basket, I figured I’d do a proper job.