Leftie and Socks

Here are more projects I failed to write about contemporaneously.  My mom's birthday is on Christmas day.  It sucks having a birthday on a holiday.  Woe to person who gives a joint birthday/Christmas present or wraps a birthday present in Christmas paper.  So I knit two presents for my mom this year.

The first was Leftie by Martha Behm.

Isn't my mom cute?

This is a cool one because you actually start with just three stitches and add more each row.  It gives the shawl a slanted look.

Every tenth row, you make a leaf on the left edge.

I used fingering weight KnitPicks Chroma, which has a slow color shift.  I'm not sure this color way exists anymore, but you can see it goes from a dark pink all the way to bright orange.

The other thing I knit for my mom was a pair of socks.  The first pair I made was a little too small.  This pair I knit from the toe up (no pattern), so I knew they were going to fit perfectly.

The yarn was something on the fancier side, a merino/nylon blend I believe.  I can't for the life of me remember the brand.

Her feet seem happy, though.

Rainbow Shawl

A while back, the Yarn Harlot blogged about a shelf-striping yarn made especially for triangle shawls.  And I HAD. to. have. it!

The crazy-brilliant people at Caterpillar Green Yarns have dyed a yarn specifically for triangular shawls.  When you make a top down shawl, you start in the middle and work your way out to the longest edge.

Diagram from here.

That means that rows get longer and longer as you go.  You need more and more yarn to complete each row.  A stripe at the start of the shawl would take much less yarn than a stripe at the end of the shawl.  The stripes in typical self-striping yarn has equal length color repeats.  The stripes would get narrower and narrower.

Caterpillar Green has done the math to make each of the stripes the same width.

The purple stripe is the same width as the blue one at the bottom even though the blue stripe takes a lot more yarn to knit.

The colorway is Concrete and Tulips.  Pretty, right?  And so soft....

The pattern isn't really a pattern at all.

I just added increases at either edge and on both sides of the center stitch.  Nothing fancy.

Now if I can just figure out how to put it on.

The Orchid Thief Shawl

What happens when you let a girl who is bad at taking pictures use a nice camera?  She still takes bad pictures.

But she feels fancy.

 

This is Orchid Thief by Ysolda Teague in a mystery hand-dyed yarn from Austin, Texas (I lost the ball band immediately after I got it).  Super well-written pattern like everything by Ysolda.

It was supposed to be a Christmas present for one of the mother-in-laws (yes, I am about to have two mother-in-laws), but I clearly didn't finish it in time.  Then she was out of town so I procrastinated until last night, when we were picking her up at the airport to finish it up and weave in the ends.

It is not nearly as long as I thought it would be.  But I still love the leaf motif (heh, that rhymes).  The edges ruffle.

They would probably ruffle more, but I ran out of yarn half way through my bind off (yikes!).  Because it was mystery yarn, had no idea what yardage I was working with.  I had to unpick my bound off stitches and do a yarnless bindoff instead.  It isn't a very stretchy edge, but I still think it makes for a pretty little scarf all the same....

...if you ignore the bad photography....

Shawls

I haven't shown a lot of finished items on here lately, but I swear they have been happening.  I've been thinking a lot about shawls the last couple weeks because I like to knit them for other people's special events.

For my Bestie's wedding a couple years ago, I made her a Euphrosyne shawl by Kirsten Kapur for her rehearsal dinner. She had told me she was going to carry lilies for her wedding. I thought if she was going to wear a white dress that a green shawl, the color of the stems, would be pretty.

I started with a skein of lace weight from A Verb For Keeping Warm. It's silk and merino, so light and squishy but a little bit shiny and very warm.  They hand-dye their yarn with natural ingredients, so the color really was "stem colored."

After about eighty million hours of knitting (and watching Bones on Netflix), I ended up with this.




I allowed it to block.  And I ended up with this:

These pictures were taken ages ago.  Sorry they are so dark!  Also, my blocking is lop-sided, isn't it?

 Yum!  Fun, easy to follow pattern, but lots of repeats of the same pattern over and over again.  Not sure if I will ever make another one of these.  But Bestie looked so happy trying it on!

So, now I am thinking about what kind of shawl I should make myself.  And should I make it in white or in a pretty color?  What weight of yarn?  What type of fiber?  Oh, the choices!

Why I Haven't Been Doing My Homework

So, you're like, JoAnna hasn't been here for a while, so she must just be studying a lot lately, right?

You would be incorrect.  Instead I have been watching all of Downton Abbey and knitting this:

Wippoorwill Shawl by Carina Spencer

I would just like to say that, if for no other reason, I am pleased I went to law school just so that when Downton Abbey talks for an entire season about how terrible a fee entail is, I can turn smugly to the person sitting next to me on the bus and say, "let me drop a hot piece of info on you I learned in my property class" and give them the explanation of inheritability of estates they have been craving for the last week (because, you see, they were like me and hadn't discovered Downton Abbey on Netflix until last week and then spent ALL of their free time since catching up).

But I digress.

You really can't see how nice this shawl looks from so far away.  But I am including these pictures anyway because who doesn't want a solid picture of their booty up on the internet? 

Am I right?

For the knitters out there, the shawl really is symmetrical, it is just inexplicably.  off center in this pic.  This is a size medium.  There are way too many "make ones" in the pattern to make it a total joy to knit, but overall, pretty fun.  The yarn is all from local yarn shops from two different sides of the country.  The black is Star Castle Fiber Mill Alpaca Sock Yarn from So Much Yarn in Seattle, Washington.  Apparently the alpacas that donated their fleece to this skein were named Jengo and Gabrietta.  I am very grateful to them for making this shawl possible.  The orange is Starcroft Nash Island Fog Yarn in Lobster Bake colorway brought to me from Maine by someone who knows what kind of souvenirs I like best.

Ok, back to "How I Met Your Mother."