I love this bit

I suspect that I will be investing in those blocking wires as they would have made blocking the Kiri rather more easy I think. Still it's done and the dimensions are close enough to Aiki's for them to match (I hope). I just need to finagle the points a bit as they're a bit loopy from the way I blocked them. Hopefully some TLC with a cool iron and a clean damp cloth will sort them out.



The blocked lace has the loveliest drape - I can't wait to knit something in this for me!

Phew!

The Kiri is finished (yay!). It's been an incredibly quick knit - I only cast on a week last Tuesday - but I have been remarkably monogamous knitting-wise* (not that I'm not being monogamous in other respects also!).



The points are already quite pointy (even before blocking) as I knit the last row (as well as the cast-off) using 5mm needles.



Sadly I finished too late in the day to get it blocked tonight (the boyfriend would not take too kindly to the idea of sleeping on the couch whilst my knitting is blocking on the bed).

Aliki, very sweetly, offered me the remainder of the ball as a thank you for knitting the thing and I'm very excited as on weighing there is just over half left which means I have enough Aussie silk to knit another Kiri-sized shawl for myself (yay!). I may even have a go at dyeing it a different colour (after a bit of practice.

Listen while you knit

A quick plug for Librivox who are a group of volunteers producing free, downloadable audiobooks of works in the public domain (which is more or less equivalent to copyright over here). Works are read either as solo or collaborative projects and they have an ever growing catalogue of 19th and early 20th century classics (as well as books from earlier centuries). I've recorded a couple of chapters myself, both for novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, one for North and South which I've just uploaded this weekend and one for Wives and Daughters, which is now available to download at http://librivox.org/wives-and-daughters-by-elizabeth-gaskell. I love Elizabeth Gaskell's writing - North and South combines a great love story with keen observations on the class divide in the industrial north in the 19th century, Wives and Daughters is equally romantic and has touches of comic genius, especially the scenes between Hyacinth Gibson (Molly's stepmother) and her former employers at 'the Towers'. If that's not enough incentive then at least two of the chapters are read by Brenda Dayne so you can assuage some of those Cast-On cravings whilst she's away in Italy.


*I may have knit a swatch or two, but I swear it didn't mean anything!

** I know the link is to the BBC adaptation rather than the novel but there's a cute picture of Richard Armitage (who is, after all, the only reason to watch Robin Hood).

Yarn winding

Not being able to face the thought of winding all our newly acquired stash from the Knitting and Stitching show herself* Katie invited the Bluestockings up to her place on Wednesday evening for a yarn winding/pizza and cake eating session.

When I got there Emma was already winding yarn and Ruth was knitting her umpteenth strip of garter stitch chain-mail for a production of King John at the Old Fire Station next week. I had a bit of a disaster winding the Helen's Lace Black Watch. I'd nearly finished the first attempt when Katie pointed out that I was winding it anti-clockwise which meant it wouldn't centre pull. I then was part way through re-winding it clockwise from the outside of the ball when the thing just jumped off the ball-winder (I may have been too enthusiastic). This meant I then had to re-re-wind the first part of the yarn from the inside of the ball before re-winding the second part from the outside of the original ball. After all this saga the 100g of hand-dyed merino DK seemed to wind up in about 30 seconds.

Felix brought along her in-progress Tatami (which is going to be more of a chunky kimono) knit from charity shop recycled wool, some cheesy stitch markers and some gorgeous rhubarb crumble made with stem ginger and coriander seeds (the recipe is here).





I've decided to knit the Peacock Feathers shawl from Fiddlesticks knitting. The pattern is quite bold so I don't think it will get lost in the variegated yarn too much and luckily I was able to borrow the pattern from Katie so I can get started as soon as I've finished the Kiri.

I also borrowed the pattern for the Tatami cardigan which I queued on Ravelry almost as soon as I'd tried on Katie's version in 21st Century yarn the other week (it's pretty). As a reward for reaching the final repeat in Kiri I worked a couple of swatches for it last night, one in Jaeger (sigh!) Matchmaker Merino 4-ply (nice but a bit too drapey) and one in Rowan Wool Cotton. I don't think I'll use either (although I haven't dropped the stitches in the Wool Cotton one yet) but it was fun to try out the pattern and a nice change from knitting lace. It turns out that knitting swatches is really appealing if you think of them as a chance for a tiny bit of knitting that's completely different from the marathon project you're slogging away at.





Kiri progress update: just finished the last repeat this evening. Hopefully I can work the edging tomorrow and have it blocking on Sunday!



* Apparently she has better things to do with her time, like setting up our amazing new website

Double potions

More yarn dyed through the magic of Super Cook. This turned out rather more autumnal than I had planned - I may have been influenced by all the amazing leaves around work.



I think that some leaf pattern long hand-warmers would be lovely in this - at least my arms would look warm.

I've learnt anyway that I need a lot less dye than I had thought to get deep colours and I need hardly any dye to get lighter shades.



For my next attempt I went for a light pink and green. I mixed up much less dye and added it very carefully to the yarn to avoid the colours mixing and to avoid saturating the yarn.



This is almost exactly what I was going for - it's like stalks of rhubarb.

Still on the hand-dyed theme I'm onto the second wavy leaves sock but I'm mostly working on a Kiri shawl in silk laceweight for one of the bridesmaids at Aliki's sister's wedding. The yarn is Grace by the Australian Live 2 Knit and it's so beautiful (if a bit of an arse to knit with).



This is the first time I've knit lace with something that gives that proper pre-blocking "dishrag" effect in that it looks like nothing at all at the moment. Still, it's going to make the blocking seem even more miraculous. If you want to see what it looks like blocked you can check it out on Aliki's blog. Didn't I mention that I'm only knitting the third one of three?



Talking of lovely things, I found this link to Ulla (the Finnish Knitty) on Kirsty's blog - the patterns are gorgeous - so much so that it might be worth learning Finnish!

Kiri update

Four Kiris have now been completed in the Kiri KAL. You can see a detail of Abby's chunky weight Kiri (finished around the same time as mine) here and the week before last Katie and Aliki both brought their finished and blocked shawls to the knitting group.



Katie's kiri is knit in a dk weight from 21st Century Yarns and Aliki's is knit in Kidsilk Haze.