Dismal progress on last month’s goals:
50% is disappointing to begin with. But 50% of 2? Sad. Very sad.
The humidity and heat have been affecting my desire to knit – I’d be fine with one or the other, but not both. So July will be similarly light on goals:
But hopefully, I’ll have a higher success rate. :-P
It figures that I wouldn’t notice an error until I posted it on my blog…
There’s a little counting error in my Tina shawl notes. Unfortunately, by the time I made the last post, I’d already cast on the incorrect number of stitches and worked across the first plain row. Oops!
Oh well. No other mishaps since then, and I’ve already completed the center triangular section.
I tried a new provisional cast on for this project – the first invisible cast on illustrated in Part 4 of Eunny Jang’s “Majoring in Lace” series. After trying this cast on for one of my swatches, I decided that this method is my new favorite provisional cast on. Very fast and easy!
I’ve been pretty single-minded about this project so far. The stitch pattern for chart 1 required very little attention, so it was a good thing to work on while watching World Cup games. And, since I couldn’t get to the more interesting charts until I finished this section, that gave me even further incentive to keep working on this.
Next step: picking up stitches around the triangle!
Almost all of the charts for the Tina shawl are patterned for both odd and even rows. And as much of this piece is worked in the round, the chart key does not mention the wrong-side equivalent of the decreases, as they’re not necessary for this pattern.
Unless you’re modifying it to be triangular, and therefore knit back and forth. Wrong-side equivalents then become a necessity.
Finding out what the equivalents are isn’t too big of a deal. The decreases article in Interweave Knits Summer 2003 mentions most of the ones I needed. For the rest of the equivalents, I used Ariel Barton’s “Decreases from the Flip Side” as a reference.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of things. I’m a big fan of knitting back backwards with stockinette and stockinette lace, mainly because turning a piece disrupts the flow of knitting and becomes pretty awkward for me after awhile. But with the patterning on every row, I had a decision to make: did I want to just suck it up and turn the piece every row, or did I want to figure out how to work every decrease backwards?
(Why, no, I’m not quite as meticulous with blocking my swatches as I am with my lace nearly-FOs…)
I ended up doing the latter. Swatching chart 2 while knitting back (and decreasing) backwards was quite the learning experience. I had a couple of missteps in the early rows, but I think by the end of the swatch I was managing quite nicely.
I can knit left-handed English in addition to knitting backwards, which has given me a decent understanding of stitch construction. Knitting backwards has also increased my ability to visualize the wrong side of the piece, even with I’m knitting with the right side facing me. Those two things made it fairly to figure out how to execute, say, an ssp tbl backwards.
I’m probably sacrificing some speed by doing it this way instead of just turning the piece with every row. But that’s okay, because it’s not always about speed. Sometimes it’s about learning and practicing new skills, and this project will let me do quite a bit of the latter.
Speaking of new things, here’s another one that’s come about because of this project:
I bought a sketchbook and turned it into a knitting notebook. I’ve been meaning to start one for awhile, one where I can keep my swatches in the same place as my notes. So far, everything I’ve done for Tina is in here.
The plastic bags on the left-hand page (yes, there are two, one’s just hiding beneath the chart 1 swatch) are attached with glue dots. I cut off part of each bag near the right-hand side to give me easier access to the swatches inside.
The right-hand side contains notes and a chart for the first section. As written, the first section of the shawl is a square. I’m modifying it so that it’s a top-down triangle, so some math was necessary. Yay. Sometimes number-crunching is fun!
It’s been too hot to work on anything heavier than a sock, so I’m excited to have a new lace shawl in the wings.
Some knitting progress has been made, but none particularly of note. Yet, anyway.
I’ve been missing out on San Diego gatherings again. This is sad in and of itself, but even more so because I had to miss the last knitting event at Kris‘s place before her move. Sorry, Kris! I’ll miss knitting with you, and I hope the move goes well.
Last weekend, I missed the knitting meetups because I went back to my hometown. It wasn’t really a trip made for fun, but I did get a tiny bit of time to myself. Predictably enough, I used that time for retail therapy, hit the two yarn shops in town, and ended up with the following:
The yarn is Louet Gems Pearl. Fingering weight yarn is the only kind of yarn I don’t mind a) impulse buying and b) stashing in moderation, because I can always find a use for 100g. I’ve also been making a concerted effort to try new yarns, which is why I ended up buying this and not, say, more Koigu. (I did have to try very hard to resist the Koigu, though.)
You’ll also see a sheep tape measure. Would’ve loved a black one, but oh well. I’ve wanted one of these for awhile, and I decided that Sunday was finally the time to buy one.
And now, for some musings on the two yarn shops I visited:
Yarn!
2311 Santa Clara Ave, Alameda, CA 94501
(Lamest name ever, no?)
I’d been here once before, about a year ago, and lamented on how it wasn’t organized in a seemingly logical fashion. But this time, I noticed a few things were placed differently than they had been on my previous visit, and now it all makes sense.
They have a good selection of yarns. They’re mostly at retail price, though, and things end up being even more expensive there, as sales tax is 1% higher in Alameda than it is in San Diego.
Given that pretty much the only kind of yarn I’ll impulse-buy is sock yarn, I did spend a bit more time lingering in front of that section. Other than several colors of the Louet Gems Pearl, they had several colorways of Koigu that I haven’t seen here in San Diego, which I may very well go back for on a later trip. Assuming that I’ve made a dent in my sock stash by then, that is. They also had some Opal (which I’m not fond of), Cascade Fixation, and I think Sockotta, too, but I didn’t really look because I didn’t like the colors.
Tuscany Yarn
1916 Encinal Ave, Alameda, CA 94501
Some of their yarn is nice, but they really didn’t have much of a selection at all. Nothing but Sockotta in the way of sock yarn, for one thing. And ow, the markup!
They had very few books, and not a whole lot of interesting patterns, at least in the shawls binder. A fair amount of Clover needles, but not a whole lot else in that department. Well, they did have some Brittany Birch and Bryspun DPNs, but I’ve broken entirely too many of the Brittanys in the smaller sizes and the Bryspuns didn’t really appeal to me.
I ended up buying something at this store anyway – the tape measure, which was, not surprisingly, a little bit overpriced. Oh well, I don’t regret the purchase at all!
I admit that I mostly bought it because the employee working that day made such a positive impression on me. I normally like to be left alone while shopping, but the employee, whose name I didn’t catch, provided some surprisingly pleasant conversation. Especially after I mentioned that I’m particularly fond of socks and lace.
I’ll have to check out more Bay Area yarns shops next time I’m up there. Any suggestions?
Last month’s goals:
This month’s goals:
I think I keep jinxing myself by making “Finish Eris” a goal, hence why I’m not being very specific this month.
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