More old U.D. ...

This is another old and slightly distorted building, but not as severe as the first one I posted about. It's from the Renaissance, about 1550 or so.
Now it's a bookstore, and it looks fairly well maintained. It's very beautiful, but if you look really closely you can see some of the horizontal beams are kindof crooked. Here's a detail shot.
If I lived in that building, I would wear pseudo-renaissance gear and handknits every day, just to play it up a bit. On a slightly related note, I saw a beautiful garment on the season finale of Stargate SG-1 season 9 (episode Camelot). SG-1 goes to a medieval town (one of the eight million or so in the show's creators' perception of a galaxy inhabited by displaced humans) in search of a weapon. Mitchell befriends a girl who pulls a sword out of a stone - I think her name was Valencia. She was wearing a bluish grey sweatery-coatish thing that seemed to have a cellular or latticed texture. It had puffy lace-up arms (similar shaping to the Stefanie Japel contribution in this season's Knitscene), fit over the bust like the lace trimmed bolero I finished last year (see my 2006 FO gallery), and the back was narrow at the waist, and long and
shaped like a skirt to 3/4 calf length. I loved it! I also dig the numerous shawls and wraps (not to mention the cinched-in waist dresses in fabulous earth tones) that Valla wears in the Ori galaxy. Anyways...
Shedir's done! Two weeks on and off the needles... a bit slow for a hat but well worth it.
Pattern: Shedir from Knitty
Yarn: Alice Starmore Hebridean 3 ply, color Erica
Mods: I only did 3 repeats of the saxon braid pattern and twisted all knit stitches like Eunny.
Yarn comments: LOVE IT. Will definitely buy again, but the price is a bit steep for large projects, so I'll wait to see how the hat holds up to decide if it's worth it for a sweater. I don't mind spending the money if the garment will last. Definitely not if the garment will pill up with regular wear and reside in the closet most of the time.
General comments: It's a bit short, it almost covers my ears. I'm hoping it will grow with a good blocking (chances are good that it will) and I'm also hoping the pointy bit will flatten out.
Any guesses yet? Come on guys! I successfully ripped back one pattern repeat, and my new yarn came in the mail, and it's a close enough dye lot match (not noticeable in natural light) so I'm going on full steam ahead.
Now I leave you with ducks:
I plan on making a cabled sweater from Vogue Knitting (inspired by this picture) in a chunky tweed (Carloway Mills Shetland Tweed) in the color mallard, and a mallard is a duck, so you get duck pictures until the KFYS period is through.

Cheers,

Ivanova

I knew Shedir would be tough...

with the biggish yarn (DK weight) on tiny (US 3, 3mm) needles, but I had no idea it would break my cable needle! Snapped, clean in 2 pieces! Here's a photo of the offender.
The yarn is Alice Starmore Hebridean 3 ply color Erica. I purchased it from her website. I must say (and I am in no way affiliated with the yarn company) that this is the nicest wool that I have EVER used. Soft feel, gorgeous color, good twist and tightly plied. I find that yarns ALWAYS split on my needles, especially on wood or bamboo. Not this stuff! It's knits well, shows texture nicely and is tweedy to boot. What could be better?

I am sad about the snapped cable needle, though. It was a nice wooden one, from a Knitpicks set. I'll have to wait till I go back to North America to replace it, I guess. I already lost another one of the three on a plane, and I was bummed about that too. I spent the afternoon looking for a suitable replacement at the LYS, and they didn't have any teeny tiny dpns (for fingers of gloves) at the store, so I got one of those awful big bent metal contraptions. I guess I'll have to ebay Addi Turbo products to get a set of small DPNs.

Ivanova

FO: Shedir

I skipped out on SnB tonight to watch some tv. That left me with some time to finish off an old project.

Pattern

Shedir by Jenna Wilson. Great pattern, I'd love to make another one!
Approximate dimensions:

• unblocked: 8.5 in (21.6 cm) diameter, 7 in (17.8cm) depth brim to crown
  
• after very gentle blocking: 10 in (25.4 cm) diameter, 8 in (20.3cm) depth brim to crown. The hat gained 18% in width and 14% in depth.
  

Yarn

Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk DK (used 52.7 g) on US 3 (3.25 mm) Inox/Prym needles. I used the 2 circulars method when there were too few stitches for a 16 inch circular.

The fabric I got as the final product is a little dense, which is fine for a hat, but still drapes well. The cable pattern shows up reasonably well after blocking and running a pumice stone very gently (I left most of the fuzz alone) over the fabric. Alpaca Silk doesn't tolerate frogging very well, and will pill with frequent handling, such as when you're knitting with it.

Mods

Like Eunny, I only did 3 repeats of the Saxon braid. My intuition about the yarn was that it would bloom after washing, and it did.

In hindsight, should have gone down a needle size for the ribbing at the bottom: as you can see from the photo below, the bottom looked sloppy. On the other hand, there was no fracking way I was going to rip out the tubular cast on, so I ran some elastic thread through the ribs near the cast-on edge. I think it turned out OK.

I now have 42.1 g of Alpaca Silk to use up, probably as embellishment on a small project, preferably not near any stress points.

I used this project as an experiment to see how a garment knit in this yarn would turn out (Elizabeth Zimmermann recommended knitting hats as gauge swatches, which is genius). Based on this experiment, I'd knit patterns from the Alpaca Silk books with sturdier yarns with at least some wool content.

Fall knitting

Happy blog-versary everyone (a bit late, I know)! I've been busy preparing demo material for this. We also went on vacation at the end of September and saw some amazing sights.



While driving around BC and Washington state, I took the opportunity to start gift knitting for the Moms. The photo has other WIPs that may look familiar. Click on the photo for annotations (I've been playing around with the Gimp for Windows).



The Trellis scarf is being knit in KnitPicks Gloss Woodland Sage (for the Mom who prefers heavier-than-laceweight gifts): I've used an entire skein of Gloss so far. The pattern calls for Alpaca Cloud, but I think it looks great in fingering weight yarn. I haven't tried washing Gloss yet, I'll post comments on how well the scarf blocks when it's done.

Icarus is being knit in KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud Tide Pool. The first part of the shawl with all that stockinette makes for a great roadtrip project.

The hat is my backpacking project since 50g + 1 needle isn't much to take in my pack. I've been motivated to work on it more since it got cold last week.

Backup knitting

What we have here is my backup project in Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk DK from a LYS sale bin. I started this Memorial Day weekend when Salt Lake got buried under a cold stormy weather front. Trying not to impale myself on these bamboo needles kept me entertained while waiting for the deluge to end. Blue is also the Project Spectrum colour for June.


So far, I'm underwhelmed by the yarn in spite of the soft shininess and pretty colour: it's fragile (loosely plied, fairly splitty, tends to pill) and slippery as hell. For the sake of my sanity as well as my wallet, I would hesitate to use it or the aran weight (assuming it has the same problems) to knit a sweater. We'll see how the hat progresses.