Knitting Iris

FBS. Finished.

I was going to take some better pictures, but didn't want to bother, so here they are.  Finally, pictures of the finished FBS for my Olympic Knitting Challenge. 

This was truly a challenge for me, despite having finished it a few days earlier than the 16 allotted days.  I had tried making this shawl last year and quickly gave up.  This time I probably would have given up even before the 3rd frogging.  Heck, I almost backed out altogether at the last minute, before the opening ceremonies.  Then, I never would have known the beauty that is knitted lace.  I would have gone on admiring it from afar, while it remained a frustrating and mysterious thing to me.

Knitting lace is a whole new process, unlike other knitting.  It's like I've discovered an entirely new creature, a very feminine one.  (So that's why everyone refers to their Charlotte's Web shawls with the feminine pronoun.)  Never would I have thought I'd even enjoy wearing such a lacy accessory but, surprise, it turns out that I do, although I won't be wearing it as I am in the pictures above.  I'm more likely to wear it wrapped around my neck like a scarf with only a bit of the point poking down.

Thank you to Stephanie and her "little" challenge as well as everyone's encouragement and advice.  It was nice having the camaraderie of others who have knitted this before and those who chose the same project for their own challenge.  I couldn't have done it without you!  Now, I'm inspired, and already have my next lace knitting project planned, the Trellis Scarf from the new Spring Interweave Knits.

Bumpy knitting

The FBS is off the needles!  Something about the bumps on the backside of this shawl remind me of the fine gauge, machine knit, machine washable, acrylic, lacy sweaters my grandma (Nana) and great-grandma (Gramma) wore.  You know the kind?  It seems that more often than not they were white or off-white, with a slightly bumpy diamond pattern.  The bumps in the shawl also remind me of egg-carton foam mattresses, which also brings Nana and Gramma to mind.  Hmmm. 

I went looking and found this picture of my great grandmother, Gramma, wearing a similar one with me sitting in her lap in her yard in Seattle, marked September 1971 on the back, right around when I turned 2 years old.  She was born in the 1880's so she would have been close to 90 years old when this picture was taken.  I still have that same Volkswagen that I'm holding in the picture.

I tried to block the shawl the other day but was too pressed for time and got annoyed with it.  I'll have to rewet it and give it another go.  It's time for the bumps to go and the flower baskets to emerge.   

Turn that frown upside down

O.K.  We're back on track, and then some, this time with a slightly more "sticky" needle which seems to be helping.  I'm finding that I exagerate all my movements to make sure that I'm getting both the strands together on each stitch, although it's pretty obvious and easy to fix when I do miss one of them.  There have been a handful of setbacks this time around, too.  The patterning shows SO much more clearly.  Now, it's the fuzziness of the alpaca and the heathered yarn that is obscuring the pattern more than I expected.  There's no turning back now though, so we'll just have to wait and see when it's blocked.  I can see how a smooth, sportweight merino would change the feel/look of this shawl.   It sure is going to be fuzzy and soft, though!

Not much time for cruising blogs, posting, or commenting, or worst of all, returning e-mails these days.  I'll try and catch up soon.  Thanks for all the encouragement.   

Remember to look at the big picture.

It was getting close to 1:00 a.m. last night when I finished the second repeat of the Lower Flower Basket chart.  For some reason I looked down the introductory blurb at the top of the pattern and read "every wrong-side row is purled" 

!!!!!!!!!!!Alarm bells!!!!!!!!!!!

Purled?  I've been knitting every wrong side row.  Everyone says that lace looks like a muddled blob until you block it and then you can see the pattern clearly, so I just assumed that that's what was going on here.  \

If I had looked at the big picture in the pattern, I might have seen it earlier, but to conserve printer ink I only copied the parts with the written pattern and the smaller picture from the  Interweave Knits  website.

I was just beginning to get a glimpse of understanding how the repeats happen in this pattern, was just thinking that I was starting to get the big picture.  Yeah, right.  Wrong! 

In Training

My second attempt at the Flower Basket Shawl didn't fare any better this time.  This is about as far as I got before making a mistake about a year ago when I first attempted this shawl.  I'll have to read up on it before starting again on Friday.

Since the pattern calls for doubling the Misti Alpaca Lace Weight, I tried knitting two different shades  together this time, a dark heathered green and a light heathered green.  Just as I suspected, it seems like that might muddle the lace pattern, making it less visible.  I'd prefer to use just the light green shade, since I'll be knitting this ONLY after dark when the boys are in bed so I can follow the pattern without interruption, but I only have one ball of it, so unless I can get to the yarn store over an hour away from here before Friday, then the dark green it will be.

I almost backed out of this Olympic Knitting thing a few nights ago when life was feeling a bit overwhelming again, and it was beginning to sound like a recipe for carpel tunnel syndome, but this week I'm back in race with new enthusiasm, despite trepidations about the pattern.