Sunday, March 18, 2007

Ready to Block



Sometimes the days just get away from me - it's been an entire week since I've posted, but to tell the truth I haven't gotten a lot of knitting in. The world intrudes.

My shawl, despite a few setbacks, is finally done. There it sits in all its unblocked glory. As you know, I ran out of yarn about five rows from the end. When the new shipment of Kersti came I decided there was enough to add those five rows plus an entire pattern repeat. I know, I know... despite dedicating an entire post to never learning, ever the optimist am I. There was enough for the extra pattern repeat, but not for the five rows of garter + bind-off. Tink. Tink. tinktinktinktinktink.



I finally ended up with two rows of garter and bound off using the Russian bind-off you see above. It's accomplished like this: *p2tog, slip the st back onto the left needle, repeat from * to end.



In other knitterly happenings, I was over at Knitting in La Jolla picking up some Cascade superwash for a little somethin-somethin for Snoop, and got distracted by a couple of books - Lace Style, which I promptly added to my "Style" library, and No Sheep for You Actually, Suzanne showed me No Sheep because it has a sweater pattern that is basically the World's Biggest Shedir -



yes, even bigger than my own gigantic one - that has three pages of charts and looks like it might take my natural lifetime to knit!.

Anyway, I've been paging through them all week for inspiration, and yesterday I cast on six stitches: the start of the Tuscany shawl (scroll down for a photo) from No Sheep.

Mary's playhouse continues to progress, but the weird fog we've had (See? La Jolla has weather problems too. And I was going to link to a picture of the fog, but the first hit on google images that really showed it also linked to a naked guy holding some kind of crustacean at Black's Beach, which frankly sounds like a bad idea and wasn't very attractive to view, either. So no photo for you.) has not been conducive to painting. And - horrors - rain is predicted on Wednesday. Maybe later in the week I'll get a shot of the playhouse if the sun cooperates.

And - looky here! Snoop's ears have stood up, making him look like a cross between a fruit bat and a holstein.

11 comments:

tammy said...

The shawl is gorgeous, and the dogs are hilarious!

Suse said...

That shawl is beautiful.

Dogs aren't half bad, either.

Anonymous said...

My gosh, your little furry ones are *so* cute, what a hilarious pic!
And what a beautiful shawl you did, the pattern is fantastic! Congrats on a really great accomplishment!

Linda said...

I love Snoops ears!! Thank you for the Russian Bind off tip as i have great problems with tight cast offs!

randi K design said...

Your dogs are too cute!
The sweater turned out great!

Aunty Missy said...

Your dogs are adorable! :-)

g-girl said...

somehow I missed this post! I, too, purchased lace style and am trying to wait on getting no sheep for you. you're a bad influence you know (withouth even trying!). your shawl looks great..tuscany is going to be amazing too. ha. snoop does look a bit like a fruit bat!

Windansea said...

Ha!! Snoop & Patty say thanks for the props - they are hilarious to be around...I could probably just follow them with a camera all day! Lydia

Windansea said...

Hey queen - that bind-off is super stretchy; I'll have to try it on socks now when I get back to knitting. Lydia

Windansea said...

Hey g-girl, I really like no sheep, even though I will probably never make that sweater in it. The shawl is fun to knit though - entertaining and yet not too horrible to follow the chart. Lydia

g-girl said...

that was one of the patterns I really liked in the book. I also liked eileen. There's a kal if you're interested: http://www.nosheepkal.blogspot.com/