Clapotis - Finished!

Lastest Shawl - Clapotis

I’ve been scouring knitty.com since 2004 and when the Clapotis pattern was released back then, I was there to view it. At the time, I made a copy and put it in my storage binder for online patterns. I had no idea years later I would come to knit it in Noro TIdiori. As I mentioned earlier, I impulsively bought four balls of this yarn on sale at a LYS but found that this was too small an amount to make anything I’d actually want to wear. So a few weeks ago I scoured the web trying desperately to find Tidiori in the colorway and dyelot (it having been discontinued). I finally came across some at The Woolie Ewe - the last bastion for Noro Tidiori.

The first skein went great. The second skein was cursed. Not only was it riddled with knots--I stopped counting at four--but it also had spots of being thread bare. Who wants that?! To say I was pissed is to put it lightly. I was enraged that a skein could be this horrible and become disheartened with the project’s ability to progress. Shawls that are 100 stitches across aren’t exactly forgiving when on stitch 40 you find that there’s not enough yarn to finish the row because you’ve just discovered it’s two strands tied together.

The remaining balls weren't as fraught with knots or bare spots so I carried along with knitting. I started almost a month ago and have wrapped up the knitting this week. All the stitches are dropped (so much fun!) so in essence it looks like a Clapotis. I still need to weave in the tails. Although I do like the end result, I would never use this yarn again were it still in circulation.

Progress on Swallowtail Shawl

Over the weekend, I've worked through the third and fourth chart of the pattern. All that's left is the 10 rows of the fifth chart...not that 10 rows isn't enough. It takes me over to 20 minutes to work a row (what with counting and knitting the stitches). I'm hoping that if I work on it during the evening, I'll have the shawl completed by the weekend. I don't have blocking wires and will have to consider investing in them for this project. I'm not sure I want to block eyelets with pins.

Swallowtail Shawl Progress

I finished knitting the second chart of the Swallowtail Shawl - that's 84 rows completed!

After being at this for a month, I'm still far from being done...and it's getting more and more tedious. On this second chart I have had to rip back at least three separate occasions. When you're ripping back over 200 stitches that's a lot of time and effort being for naught. Still, I'm going to stick with it. I still think it's an interesting pattern and am eager for the final result. Pictures at this stage don't really do it justice so that will have to wait until the knitting and blocking are complete. I've found that if I don't count each row and at the halfway and end mark of the row, I invariably end up having screwed up. This last time, I ended up with two extra stitches and it caused me to rip out two rows of work - an hour of my time wasted.

On a side note, I bought a new phone and am somewhat enamored by it.

New Less Frustrating Shawl Pattern

It's true that I have a diminishing attention span and I have mounting proof of it. At this moment in time, I have at least a half dozen UFO (unfinished objects) laying about my home:

• Berroco Brea Bag
• Stitch 'n Bitch Henry Rollins Doll
• Rowan Ribbon Twist Honey Sweater
• One Skein Petal Bib
• Berroco Astrid Shawl
• AlterKnits Felt Circular Coin Purse

With all of these items still needing much more time and devotion to complete them, I cast on a new project and began the Swallowtail Shawl. This lovely pattern can be found in Interweave Knits Fall 2006 issue. What is wrong with me that I can't keep my mind on any one thing. I think I enjoy the process of knitting but hate to have to do seams. Each item, but the bib, calls for either seaming or sewing of some fashion. The issue with the bib is that I am not familiar and cannot yet understand how you knit an icord onto live stitches. I imagine this will be sitting until the summer when it comes to me in a dream.

I think as part of my spring cleaning (in perhaps May), I should really hunker down and finish these items so that I might enjoy them or at least give them away so that others might.

But back to the shawl. It's turning out quite lovely. I'm knitting with Blue Heron Silk Rayon Twist on size 8 needles. It's not a quick knit but I still find the pattern visually appealing and the pattern repeating every six rows helps to keep ones attention span. I've been knitting the same pattern repeat for over 70 rows and still have a few left. This will be the first project I've ever done that calls for knupps. They sound like a royal pain in the arse. The thought of purling five stitches is something that can't be dwelled on so I'll just have to tackle them as they come up in the pattern. I hope it doens't cause too much pain on my wrists. I found knitting the hat from two posts ago very painful on my wrists.

Anyhoo, when I get far enough along, I'll drop picture.

Astrid Shawl Mishap

It's truly amazing how quickly time slips by, particularly when caught up with knitting and work issues. I can't believe I started this project back in November. As you can see at the berroco website (http://www.berroco.com/ng1/ng1_astrid_pv.html), the pattern is a wide array of circles in various sizes that are grafted together to form a triangle shaped shawl. To date, I've finished all 25 small circles and 14 medium circles. There is still the matter of 13 large circles, which had me puzzled for weeks. I recently resolved what was confusing me about the large circles for this pattern and attempted to knit the first large circle. Only, I royally screwed up some where when knitting this thing. It's quite amazing how it unraveled and not in a pretty--pattern following--way. It's going to take me another try at knitting a circle to figure out how and where I went wrong.

I swear one day, I'll finish this thing and I'll wear it with the utmost pride.