Not Much To Show For It

No new knitting to see here. I've done a few more repeats on the Swallowtail. I was already concerned about whether I would get a worthwhile shawl in terms of size out of one skein of Malabrigo Lace, so thanks for the confirmation, Lee. I've ordered another one, but I took a deep breath and ordered a different colour, a turquoise. (Which reminds me, does anyone know what the most frequently mis-spelt word on eBay is? I think it must be 'embroidered' or 'turquoise' but that probably reflects my browsing. 'Bargin' is one that always surprises me; you would think that people who were into bargains would notice that, but apparently not.)

Anyway, I do have concerns about the Azul Profundo being very light-absorbing and although I don't always like the way stripes look on shawls - if the colour doesn't follow the pattern - I'm hoping I can make it work. I will change the colour when the next stitch pattern starts, or I might have alternating colours in the budding lace pattern - or would that look naff? (For visitors, 'naff' is a difficult word to translate, but 'tacky' comes quite close in this context. Although Wikipedia doesn't say so, the derivation used to be said to be from 'Not Awfully Fine', but I don't expect that's much help.)

And I'm inching along with Chrissy, which seems to get wider every time I look at it. I've finished the back and am almost finished the front; I expect the sleeves will be enormous too. It's been eating yarn in vast quantities.

I've been colliding with technology lately, usually to my detriment. I was updating my iPod Shuffle yesterday when suddenly, without so much as a by-your-leave or an are-you-sure, it cleared itself. Not an insurmountable problem as I was making some changes anyway, but a bit of a shock. And then today I discovered that all my Sage blog feeds have disappeared and AdBlock isn't working. Aaaaargh. The last two are presumably related to each other. I've just got a new pc which I haven't set up yet so I'll just start over with that one and not try to tidy up here, but it does pull the rug from under your feet, doesn't it? I'll have to get to grips with Vista on the new pc so that should keep me busy.

You may remember that Jean and Spinning Fishwife and I visited K1 Yarns's shop in Edinburgh a while ago and failed to come away empty-handed. At the end of this month, K1 is having a visit from Jen of Fyberspates - Saturday 31st May in Glasgow and Sunday 1st June in Edinburgh. I've got it in my diary already. Both my Forest Canopy Shawls are knitted with her yarn - which one should I wear?

All of the photos above are from this book, which I picked this up the other day in a remainder place for £4.99 It's still listed at the full price on Amazon, but with a different cover and SBN. Do you think they might have dumped it because of the cover? Zoe Mellor is one of the best children's knitwear designers, I think, and I can't understand how someone could look at all those unbearably cute little togs and select that photo. In context in the book, the mittens look little and dainty, but on the cover the picture has been enlarged and there are no clues as to scale, so there is no way that you can tell they aren't adult mittens - they're actually larger than life size. I threw away my youth on a graphic designer and I worked for a while for a publisher and met some book designers, and I know they're not thoughtless people, so there must have been a reason. I think. Maybe they were working ahead of a long production schedule and nothing else had been photographed.

If you're thinking of buying it, I think this might be an updated version; it has more patterns but that stripy hoodie is on the cover.

One the subject of books, Alice Starmore's Tudor Roses went for nearly £80 on eBay this week, which I think is as might be expected; and Poetry in Stitches fetched nearly $170 recently. Rather more surprisingly, Rowan's current Tapestry booklet went for £17, in spite of being widely available for £5.95. Two people seem to have got into a bidding war.

Since I started this post. I've discovered that Firefox has released version 3.0, which is presumably the cause of some of my above-mentioned problems. Phew. I shall just wait and let them sort it out.

It still doesn't explain why my Shuffle sneezed though. For the interested, I now have a second muxtape. I tried to make this one a different theme, but it was soon overtaken by the usual suspects. Ry, Loudon and John, where would I be without you?

Shawls, Presents and Music

Here is the Pink Forest Canopy Shawl when I had finished the last pattern repeat and had just started the final pattern - fully equipped with a lifeline and umpteen markers. Although I had only used one marker, for the centre stitch, when I was doing the shawl, you can see I wasn't going to take any chances. After a couple of sweeps of the border pattern, I removed the markers, but I put in another lifeline after the third sweep (there are four) in the pattern) just in case I ran out of yarn during the cast off. I didn't, and I ended up with quite a respectable leftover - not enough for another pattern, and possibly not enough for another sweep of the border either, although I probably wouldn't have done so well without the wise advice of Spinning Fishwife.

The shawl is blocking as I type. I keep going through to the bedroom and tightening the screws a little bit more. Before blocking it was 36 inches wide and 19 inches deep; I did 15 pattern repeats and had approximately 275 stitches when I started the cast off.

The second skein of Lagoon for the first Forest Canopy arrived, and is the right weight, so I'm beavering away with that now (do beavers knit? I don't think so, but if they did, they would knit very warm, rather rough, sweaters.) It isn't superwash and I think I can detect a difference in the feel but I don't think it's going to look different, or at least not unless someone accidentally boils it. It's funny using 6.5mm needles and heavier yarn, after the 4mm lace needles. I can't find anyone in the UK who stocks Addi lace needles above the 4mm size, so I've bought some from US eBay in 5mm and 6mm. I suspect that true lace knitters never use anything above a 2mm, but I'm a bit of a sucker for a cheap effect.

The lace scarves I knitted as a birthday present have been received with cries of joy and excitement. The Scaruffle will be making a trip to Glyndebourne later in the year, I am assured. Lucky Scaruffle.
I got a wonderful surprise parcel from Kansas City last week. I sent Sweet Knittilicious Spot some fridge magnets and Scottish confectionery last year and she has responded with lots of things to keep me busy. There's some Americana in the form of Betty Crocker cookie mixes and a bottle of Louisana Hot Sauce. There was a jar of peanut butter too but that has found its way to the kitchen already. And there's two balls of Knitpicks in pink and wine, and this. So far I've avoided dyeing for the same reason as I've avoided spinning, because I know it would eat into my knitting time, but this is going to be a marvellous excuse to forget that. I've been busy googling and hope to have a go soon: I don't think Natalie and Jen have anything to worry about, but it should be fun.

She sent me these too. Do you see the beautiful little row counter? It contrasts markedly with my bit of knotted yarn. And heart-shaped stitch markers are my favourite. She has a shop on Etsy with other clever markers, including the ones for Cat Bordhi's sock method. She takes much better photographs of them too, sigh.

I experimented a month or so ago with a piece of software that was meant to play you the music I was listening to while I post. I couldn't get it to work properly but now someone's come up with this. It isn't necessarily what I'm listening to but it's my mix. You don't have to listen to it all (or indeed any of it), but the first track has been stuck in my head for weeks now, since it cropped up on my iPod Shuffle during a train journey. It brings back a part of my life so sharply and it's one of those tunes that makes you think you can sing. I've been listening to Loudon Wainwright so much and for so long that it's quite a surprise to realize that I don't actually know him. This song has a very vivid line about a baby looking out of a pram, makes a real picture in my mind. It's funny how you listen to songs and singers when you're young because of what they're saying about themselves, but when you listen to them again decades later they bring back what was happening to you and you hardly hear the song any more. You can make your own mix here, at muxtape.