Another Shawl You Say!

 

I know I told myself I would knit any more shawls, but they are good evening knitting projects.  If it's simple enough, I can knit while talking or watching a show or even reading a book!   This one is entirely handspun yarn.  The grey is Corriedale and the white is Shetland /Blue Faced Leicester cross.  Both were lovely to spin, although the Shetland cross is taking a good while to process to get the VM out.  I found combing was very effective but a bit more work than I wanted to do.  Instead I've been flick carding the locks and carding them with hand cards to make rolags.  Takes a bit of time but I can do more at a time.  If I get industrious, I may call up a friend and see if I can use her picker to loosen all the locks.   A lot of the VM will fall out during that process, making the carding easier and faster.

I carefully measured the centre line, which is a cable to make sure that the shawl wasn't too large.  I then wet finished it in the washing machine with a bit of Eucalan.  I was careful about only letting it agitate for a minute or less at a time, checking regularly and letting it soak in between.  I was trying to get a balance of yarn blooming and just a bit of fulling to keep the shawl from becoming too big.   I'd use a larger needle size to make sure that the Corriedale stayed soft, so stretching was definitely something to take into consideration.  Well the wet finishing worked really well, and the stitches all evened out.  The yarn bloomed nicely and I'm impressed with how well the Eucalan worked to get the yarn really clean and it stayed soft.   It did however, not full much at all and it's a lovely, airy and large shawl.  I'm disappointed at how little the cable shows against the grey yarn.  While I know that cables show up better on lighter yarns, in my mind the grey was lighter than it actually is.  Still, it's a soft and cuddly shawl.  If I don't use it, it may go on a sale table sometime.

I did play yarn chicken with the bottom white stripe.   I was sure I had enough yarn left in the ball to cast off after I'd knit the required rows.   I got to the half-way mark and thought that  for sure there was enough to finish.   When I was 3/4 done the cast off row I was starting to wonder whether it would be better to switch out the yarn now, or to risk running out with 3 or 4 stitches left.   I kept knitting and yes, I won with 6 inches of yarn to spare!  Phew!

Shawls

This is the green shawl finished, except for blocking.  It's become a favourite of the cats, who seem to enjoy sleeping on it.   I like it too because of the more muted colours.  The pale green, not one of my favourite colours at all, looks rather nice with rest of the greens and the grey.  They work well together. The amazing part of this shawl is that I thought it knit fairly quickly and was quite fun.  Of course after the fact, it may have taken my longer to knit than I recollect.   Its size was limited by the amount of yarn that I had.  I have leftover pale green and grey, but the last section of dark green used the last of all 3 different shades.  I was just a few rows short with the lightest shade of dark green, so worked though the bits and pieces, cut ends, short balls of the other greens, working from the lightest dark green to the darker shade.   It looks just fine, and I only had a few little ends left.  It has a grey garter stitch border so that it would hang straight after casting off and wouldn't curl.

I'm not sure about blocking it though.  It is large and drapey.  I don't think I have a large enough space to block it properly.  I may just wait until the spring and block it outside on the deck.  

Currently I have another shawl on the needles.   I found several balls of this beige/grey colour in the bin of my handspun odds and ends.  I'm not sure if it's handspun because it's been in hand wound balls rather than skeins for who knows how long.   It's a bit flattened in places. Rather than re-skein it, wash it gently and let it dry before I used it, I jumped right in and started another shawl. My first try was a garter stitch shawl, a simple, plain every day garment.  However I got bored of the knitting fairly quickly.   I ripped it out, a whole evenings work, which was a bit irritating, and restarted.  This is almost as simple as the original start, but has a bit more interest in having to count the stockinette stitch rows, and the garter stitch stripes.  

 I had knit too far to rip it out when I realised that I had grabbed the wrong knitting needles and am using a slightly smaller size than I'd normally use for this weight of yarn in a shawl.   I'm blaming that on the fact that my interchangeable needles in my favourite size had one break.  They are stupidly expensive and I haven't wanted to spend the extra money on a new set of that size needles.  The cord is fine of course, although I have to figure out how to wiggle the broken end off it.   Still, the needles are wooden and feel really nice to use.  The one on this shawl is aluminium and has a stiff cord, which just isn't quite so friendly.

Also, I lost one of the needle point protectors, which I use to keep the stitches on the needles while I'm not actively knitting.  It fell off as I was moving it to photograph it and it seems to have just vanished.  I moved it barely 2 metres.  How can it disappear in that space?  There was a cat lurking, sooo.....

I'm pretty sure I don't have quite enough of the main yarn to finish the shawl in the size I was aiming for.   I do have some darker brown which is of a similar grist which looks like it might have enough yardage to do a final repeat or at least a bottom border.  Maybe I'll go for a seed stitch border this time.

I have 2 more shawls in the planning stages, possibly 3 if I weave the one.   I'm spinning up my birthday merino right now.  It's going to be a 2 ply yarn.  I have 454 g of the commercial roving, so it' spinning up fairly quickly.  With that much roving, I should be able to spin enough yarn for a decent sized shawl.  Right now the plan is to dye the yarn in shades of blue or blue grey.   Sometimes plans change though :)

 

 I forgot totally about the fact that I also finished up 4 hats.  These are double toques, which are meant for the very cold weather.   One is small and will go into the gift bin.   One my husband claimed immediately and 2 others I kept for myself.  I wet finished and blocked them both.  The grey one took a weird turn when I got it wet and swished it slightly to even up the knitting.  It stretched out.  I tossed the two, and a shawl I knit over the summer into the washer for a few minutes.  The hand spun blue and white hat was perfect after a few minutes.  The grey shawl was perfect but the grey hat, knit with the leftovers from the grey shawl, was fulled up and required much stretching while pinning.  Totally odd.

However, here is why I dislike blocking knits in the cold weather.

Really kitties, my wet, blocked hats are not there to be convenient resting spots, despite them being set up close to the fire.