And, believe it or not, I've been doing some actual knitting too!

In a previous posting, I mentioned that I'd have to find myself a new project for summer, as almost all of my current projects have significant mohair content and are impossible to work on when the weather is humid. Well, the lure of the Hand Maiden 'Sea Silk' combined with Evelyn Clark's 'Swallowtail Shawl' from the 'Interweave Knits' Fall 2006 issue has proved impossible to resist. How I wish I could say that this combination was all my idea, but there are already several completed Sea Silk 'Swallowtail Shawls' out there, and even the choice of the 'Ocean' colourway isn't original. Well, it just happens to be what I have here, and I'm going to go with it as I love the colourway.

So here it is after 9 repeats of the 'Budding Lace 2' chart...


While this may look like the point I was up to when I left the last get together at 'Rubi & Lana', it's actually 'Swallowtail Shawl' Mark II, as I decided the next day that I'd like to go up a needle size to US 6 (4.00 mm) needles, so I frogged what I'd knit up to that point.

And here it is after 13 repeats...


And after 19 repeats...


... which is the point I'm stalled at now. Before I proceed, I have to make a decision, and as you can probably see I've threaded a lifeline through the current row as I'm not sure I trust myself to make the right decision.

The original 'Swallowtail Shawl' is actually more of a scarf than a shawl...


... but what I want is a shawl you can really wrap yourself up in -- I'm knitting it in 'Sea Silk' after all, and I think that's something I'm really going to want to be wrapped in. ;)

I've done the calculations, and to enlarge the shawl and still keep all the patterns correct, you need to work 5 extra repeats of the 'Budding Lace 2' chart (19 repeats in total) and one extra repeat of rows 3 to 12 of the 'Lily of the Valley Border 1' chart after completing the 'Lily of the Valley Border 2' chart (3 'Lily of the Valley Border' repeats in total).

However, now that I've completed the 19 repeats of the 'Budding Lace 2' chart, I'm not entirely convinced that even with the extra rows of the 'Lily of the Valley Border' and the 'Peaked Edging', plus a really good blocking of course, that the shawl is going to attain the dimensions I'm dreaming of. I'm actually tempted to work a further 5 repeats of the 'Budding Lace 2' chart (24 repeats in total) along with an extra repeat of the 'Lily of the Valley Border 2' chart just before working the 'Peaked Edging' chart (4 'Lily of the Valley Border' repeats in total).

So... What do people think? Would I be crazy to do this? Am I under-estimating how much the shawl will increase in size once I work the extra edging rows and block it? Do I even have enough floor space to block the shawl properly once I finish knitting it if I make it this big? ;) The overall smallness of the original shawl really does have me worried though.

Before I move on to talking about the other project I've been working on, I should mention that this is the project I've decided to use to try out my new KnitPicks 'Options' needles. So far, I've been very impressed. I've only had the needles start to unscrew once, and that was because I really hadn't tightened them enough in the first place, and it hasn't happened again since I've made sure to really tightened them properly. The finish on the needle tips I have tried so far (US 5 and US 6) has been every bit as good, if not better, than the finish on my Addi Turbo circular needles, and the needles have had a really nice feel to them as I knit my 'Swallowtail Shawl' with them.

I chose this project to try them out as I'm using a yarn with little or no give to it, and it's a lace project. So far the sharper points of the KnitPicks needles are making this project a much more enjoyable knit than the 'Lace Modular Shawl' I knit a year ago using Artyarns 'Regal Silk' on Addi Turbo needles was. It's even a lot easier to unknit the centred double decreases when I make a mistake, thanks to the points of these needles. Sliding the stitches from the cable to the working area of the needle is also a lot easier than it was for similar sizes of Tulip bamboo circular needles -- which was the reason I was prompted recently to switch to using straight needles for my 'Pacific Ocean Stole', as moving the stitches from the cable to the needle was a major undertaking at the start of each row. As for the cables themselves -- I've tried a few of them out now as I've changed the cables to a longer one a couple of times now. Over all, they've been really nice -- they uncoil without even having to run them through hot water -- and the only problem I've had so far was that one of the cables had some residue on it which needed to be removed to enable the stitches to slide without snagging.

So far, I'd have to say that I'm really happy with this purchase. :) It's been so much better than my experience with the 'Denise Interchangeable Knitting Needles' has been to date.

Which leads me quite neatly to my 'Pacific Ocean Stole'...


... which as you can see has been progressing, albeit quite slowly -- I work on it when the weather permits. I've now completed the 10th pattern repeat, which I think will turn out to be somewhere around the halfway point.

The bits that didn't quite fit into the other four entries

Look what Amanda brought us all back from Japan! It's a little plushy Totoro family, and there was one for each of us -- mine is the one on the right, and it came from the actual Studio Ghibli Museum shop too. I can hardly believe how adorable they all are. :)

In spite of the way things are probably looking from all the entries I've written today -- Nothing for over two and a half weeks, and then five entries all at once? Go figure! ;) -- I've actually been making some progress with my knitting, even if it's not quite as much as I would've liked.

My 'Pacific Ocean Stole' has grown quite a lot, and the second skein is disappearing at quite a reasonable rate...


That's more than six pattern repeats finished. We'll just ignore the fact that there are probably another fourteen repeats to go to make it the length I'd like it to be... ;)

A few months back, I posted about the lovely semi-solid dark blue hand-dyed Mollydale Mohair yarn Michael bought me at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. The scarf I've been knitting from it has been in my side bar for quite a while, but I realized the other day that I'd never actually written about it.


Maybe I've been overlooking it due to the problems I had getting it started. ;) For what should have been a simple moss stitch scarf, this project is my current record holder for the most times an individual project has been restarted before the knitted fabric finally looked right. If you didn't know better, you really could be forgiven for thinking I must have only started knitting last week, as only a real novice could have made so many errors of judgement. Maybe I was just having a really off day.

It really shouldn't have been this way, though, as there were similar moss stitch scarves available for sale on the Mollydale stall, and the two lovely ladies there assured me that they had all been knit on 10 mm needles, and that I would be able to reproduce the slightly tighter tension of the scarf I particularly liked (which had been knit by a particularly tight knitter apparently) by knitting mine on 9 mm needles. Well, the needle sizes quoted seemed a bit large to me, but I was prepared to believe that the Mollydale ladies knew their yarn better than I did -- mohair yarns can be quite deceptive, after all. Well, the 9 mm needles produced a fabric which was ludicrously lacy, and going down to 8 mm needles didn't help much either. My initial guess, before the ladies had corrected me, had been that the moss stitch scarves on the Mollydale stall had been knit with 6 mm needles, and the consensus of opinion around me the day I started knitting with the yarn was that the ladies on the Mollydale stall must have been tired by the time I spoke to them (it was very late in the day, and the second last day of the show after all), and they were probably quoting me the needle size for their bulky yarn. So I went with my original gut feeling and cast on using 6 mm needles, which amazingly enough produced a fabric quite similar to the ones I had seen in the scarves on the stall. As I still wanted a scarf more like the one I'd seen which had been knit a bit tighter, I went down to 5.5 mm needles, and finally to the 5.0 mm needles I'm now using. This wasn't the end though, as I still had to tweak the number of stitches to get the width of scarf I wanted, eventually settling on 37 stitches to get a width of 24 cm.

But this wasn't the end either, as when I finally had the tension right and the width right, another problem revealed itself. It soon became apparent that my scarf was going to look like I had taken Tigger...


... and given her an indigo bath. No kidding, it was most strongly resembling an indigo tiger's pelt. Eek!

So it was back to the start once again, this time alternating between the two skeins to break up the colour pools. Success at last, but sadly this is never going to be the take along project I had hoped it would be -- knitting it in public is pretty much out of the question as the yarn stains my fingers too badly for that to be a serious proposition. I'm now filling this gap with my 'Lost In Translation' scarf.

Some new magazines have also found their way to me.


The 'Yarn' magazine is the first issue of my brand new subscription, which arrived on schedule exactly as promised. Well done, once again, Barbara! The magazine is stunning. :) The latest issues of the US 'Creative Knitting' and UK 'Simply Knitting' magazines were an absolute nightmare to find, as none of my local newsagents were deemed worthy enough to carry them by the evil magazine distributors it seems. Even the large newsagents in major shopping centres hadn't received any copies, so I had to travel much further afield to find them. The jury is still out as to whether or not the effort was worth it, but I may be a bit more generously disposed towards them once I get over my annoyance at the trouble I had getting them.

I've also gone ahead and done something potentially reckless. Yes... In a moment of weakness, I signed up for Secret Pal 9. ;) This is the first time I've been brave enough to sign up for one of these, and hopefully I will be up to the challenge of coming up with the perfect gifts to send to my Secret Pal. When there are a few more buttons posted on the Secret Pal 9 blog, I'll add one to my sidebar.

I was also lucky enough to meet Meg at the last get-together at Rubi & Lana. Meg took advantage of the cooler weather that day to wear her green 'Lace Panel Sweater', which I can tell you looks even better in real life than it already does on her blog. :)

Phew! That's going to have to be all for now, and I think I may finally be all caught up on my blog entries. :)

Oceans and Seas

Last Saturday's get-together at Rubi & Lana was one of the largest yet -- with Sally, Celia, Simone, Taryn, Kate, Lara and myself. It was a lot of fun catching up with all the projects everyone is working on, and I even proved to myself that I can work on a lace pattern in public without having to rip it all back afterwards.

After finally seeing a sample of the Hand Maiden 'Sea Silk' yarn in the 'Ocean' colourway in person, resistance was futile and Purl Yarns had my order not long afterwards. A day or so later, some stunning yarn arrived on my doorstep...


... beautifully presented with a green ribbon tied around it. Words cannot express how soft this yarn is to the touch, and how much I love this colourway. I have a feeling that it won't be too long before the 'Sea Silk' finds its way on to my needles... ;)

A few years ago, I bought the Fibertrends Baltic Sea Stole pattern...


... and was subsequently inspired by the version of this stole Kate Gilbert knit for her wedding using Rowan 'Kidsilk Haze' to put aside several skeins of 'Kidsilk Haze' in the 'Lord' shade, which is a deep, vibrant shade of blue.

The 'Kidsilk Haze' may still be maturing in my stash, but its close relative Madil 'Kid Seta', in a variegated colourway of rich watery blues and golds, called out loudly to me recently.

So loudly, that it has beaten the 'Kidsilk Haze' on to the needles...


And is growing at quite a fast rate...


It's actually grown a little more since I took the second photograph, as I've knit another 16 rows (half of a pattern repeat), and have now reached the end of the first skein. I just love the colours in this yarn, which are much more Pacific Ocean with the sun reflecting off the water than Baltic Sea to my mind -- appropriately enough, as I live in Sydney after all :) -- so I'm thinking of this stole as my 'Pacific Ocean Stole'. For those of you playing at home, this pattern is a more subtle demonstration of my mirror image knitting -- if you're interested, you'll need to look closely at the photo of the original stole and those of my works in progress.

I've been having some fun with selecting the best needles to use for this project too. I started knitting the stole on these...


... as I didn't own any 3.5mm straight needles, and the Tulip brand needles have sharper points and a cord which straightens out much better for me than the Clover circular needles I also have. Unfortunately though, sliding all the yarn overs from the cord to the needle was a slow process, and keeping all the stitches on the bamboo part of the needle, while possible, meant that I couldn't see how the pattern was developing or spot potential errors easily.

One of the lovely ladies at Rubi & Lana generously let me have a couple of 30cm long Japanese 3.6mm bamboo double pointed needles to trial when I was there on Saturday, but as I'd already knit half of the first pattern repeat by then I didn't want to risk a noticeable change in tension by switching over to them at that point, so testing out these needles will have to wait until I start my 'Kidsilk Haze' version of the stole after I finish this one.

So I bit the bullet and hopped on a bus into the city on Sunday afternoon, as I knew Tapestry Craft had the needles I wanted in stock...


... which I bought along with a few other non-standard sized straight needles in an attempt to avert similar problems in the future.

A couple of hanks of JJ's Montage Collection 10 ply yarn, hand painted by Jan Gilray in the (now discontinued?) 'Forest' colourway...


... may also have hitched a ride with me on the bus back home. I'm thinking this yarn has possibilities for making an interesting version of the 'Starburst Shawl' from Iris Schreier's 'Modular Knits' book.

My version of the 'Lost in Translation' scarf has also progressed...


... and I'm now almost finished the second skein, and have reached the halfway point, I think.

I had one of those small world moments this week, when I received a comment on my last posting from someone who actually saw Edith Eig knitting the 'Lost in Translation' scarf, and assures me that the pattern in the book is indeed correct as written. I'm still not entirely convinced that the scarf which appears in the film is the same as the one pictured in the book, but I'm really impressed that someone on the other side of the Pacific Ocean took the time to write to me about this. Thank you! :)

As for my scarf... I played around with the pattern a fair bit (Remember the 'I frog' button in my sidebar? ;) ) before I decided to go with a version with the pattern from the book plus the extra two rows at the end of the repeat I mentioned in my last posting as the variation which appears to work best with the much finer yarn I chose. While it may not be identical to the scarf in the book or in the film, I'm liking the way it's turning out, and the way it evokes the look of the scarf in the film to me -- which is why, I guess, I still think of it as my 'Lost in Translation' scarf. :)

I've also finished knitting my 'Celtic Waves Scarf' since my last posting, but it will need to be blocked before I take a photo of it in its finished state.

I've been intending to subscribe to...


... for quite a while, and I finally got around to actually taking out a subscription last week. And the really good news is that, despite my initial fears that I may have left it too late, it looks like my subscription was taken out just in time to receive Issue #4 as my first issue. Woohoo! :)

In a somewhat reckless move, I've also subscribed, sight unseen, to Yarn Forward, the upcoming quarterly intermediate to advanced level knitting magazine from the UK. What can I say, except that the advance subscription rate was too good to resist.