Ishbel - Done

I thought mistakenly that this was going to be an easy knit compared to the Nefertiti shawl that is currently awaiting new yarn. Did I mention that I contacted the Hand Maiden people and they are dyeing a skein of yarn just for me so I can finish it? I misread the pattern and simply didn't have enough yarn to finish it. So while awaiting the new yarn I started Ishbel.

I had it almost finished when I decided that it would look nicer on larger needles. So it got frogged. I restarted it last Friday night during the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Yesterday it was done and blocked.



It's currently drying on the spare bed.





It is a nice pattern.

A Change Of Pace

I love my Swiffer, it gets a lot of use in this house with all the hardwood floors we have. I am tired of spending money on the disposable cloths plus the fact that they are not reusable. Being a little tired of lace knitting I was flipping through the Mason Dixon book last eve while watching the Canadian Men's hockey team decimate Sweden. I decided a little mindless knitting was in order.

So here it is; my Swiffer cover...
It will work wet or dry. I think I'll make a couple more and save some money.

Darn It, That Hurt

Yup, I did it...I frogged the almost completed Ishbel Shawl and I almost bawled all over the yarn as I was winding it. I went up two needle sizes and I hope that makes a difference. This is not a great pattern I must say, I only knit 8 rows and had to tink back 4 of them. A sign of what's to come.

Frogging Day

So I was pretty excited about this pattern and don't get me wrong, I still am. It's just that I'm not convinced this is the right yarn. I've had this Sea Wool in my stash for a couple of years and it looks really pretty in a skein.



I don't think it looks quite so pretty when it's wound and knit. Kind of blah actually, in my view.
The pattern itself is lovely but I think my needles are too small to do it justice. The yarn calls for 3mm and the pattern for 4mm so I used 3.25 mm.

There is one other thing that's bugging me about this pattern. You can knit this in two sizes and the smaller one calls for 330 yards. I have 350 yards and I'm just about finished and still have half the yarn left. It doesn't really tell you how much yarn you need for the larger size in other than laceweight which this definitely is not. So, I am seriously considering frogging it and either putting the yarn back in my stash or attempting the larger shawl and see if I have enough yarn. Of course if I do that and run out of yarn your going to hear a lot of cursing from this part of the world.



On a more positive note I finished knitting a little cardigan for my housekeeper, without whom I would be in a whole lot of trouble. She is my savior and deserves this. It's drying now and I'll spend the weekend putting it together as I watch the Olympics.



My Nefertiti Wrap is still on hold until I get more yarn from the company in Nova Scotia. I had email communication with them and they asked me to send them a strand of yarn. They said they would dye one skein for me and send it. Wasn't that nice of them?

Hope you all have a lovely weekend...

Nefertiti Wrap On Hold

It's on hold for two reasons. The first is that my operated eye is not working very well yet but hopefully that will improve soon.

The second and most important reason is that I don't have enough yarn. I was gifted two skeins of Hand Maiden Sea Silk from my DIL for Christmas. I bought the pattern after assuring myself that 800 yards of yarn was sufficient. It's not, at least not if you change the needle size one up although I'm not totally convinced about that either. There are 18 charts to the pattern and I've just finished chart 7 with one skein. Around row 14 you start decreasing stitches so there I was last night counting rows and stitches to see if the second skein would do it. So it looks like 800 yards will do two thirds of the shawl only using size 4.5mm needles. Had I used the 3.5mm as given in the pattern do I really think it would have been enough yarn? Nope, I'd still be short. So until I can figure out the next move this is going into my unfinished basket for a while...