Indulgences

I know this hardly ever happens, but some of my knitting lately has been on projects that are actually for me. Firstly, I am way behind on reporting on the progress of my Bauble shawl, which is now done and I love it. Here it is before blocking:

And here it is after blocking, lying on the conference table in the big meeting room at work:

I've left it at work so that when it gets cold (as it invariably does during the summer, thanks to overenthusiastic air conditioning), I can wrap it around me to try and warm myself up. But I'm thinking I should also have a pair of fingerless mitts for that purpose, too, since it's hard to use a computer with freezing hands. Maybe I can start a pair down the road. Translated by Roxanne Richardson is not only stunningly gorgeous but matches the style of the shawl I'd be wearing it with. On the other hand, both Rock, Paper Scissors and Fightin' Words, both by Annie Watts, are so darn cool I don't know if I can resist them. (Although in a fight, 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' would probably win over 'Fightin' Words' since one of my LK Knit Night buddies already has a pair and I can always admire them on her.) But regardless, my focus is on other stuff right now so I don't need to make a decision right away.

I also decided what to do with some of the reward yarn I got from Lettuce Knit for doing store samples of my cowl pattern. I had chosen two skeins of Peppino from The Yarns of Rhichard Devrieze, one in "Rightly So", an intense purple, and one in "Near Vanuatu", which is a variegation of a bunch of intensely vibrant azures, blues and purples that I think might just be MY FAVOURITE COLOURWAY EVER IN THE HISTORY OF EVER.

After much consideration, I settled on Fabergé, a shawl/kerchief pattern by Laura Aylor which is absolutely gorgeous. I knew two skeins of the Peppino wasn't going to be enough to finish the shawl and I needed something with way better contrast to do the overlay part anyway, so I threw in some white Circulo Anne that I'd bought a while back. The result has been stunning and I cannot tell you how much I adore it and am looking forward to wearing it. Isn't it bee-yew-tiful?

I have, however, ripped back the top lace part a lot of times because I'm just not happy with it. The problem being, of course, that I don't have enough of the Peppino to do the entire lace section without running out. So, as you can see from that picture, I tried filling in with white, which certainly solves the not-enough yarn problem...but I think it makes the whole thing look too busy. (I tried wrapping it around myself and checking it out in the mirror to see if it became any less busy being worn than just lying there, but unfortunately, no.) So I have a few options at this point:

• Do the purple and variegated first, right after the fabergé section, and fill the rest of the shawl in with the white at the top. However, this isn't an option I find acceptable since I want the variegated colour right next to my face.
  
• Do as much of the lace as I can with the purple and variegated, and end up with a triangular shawl with a big wedge-shaped chunk cut out around the neck
  
• Buy another skein of the variegated.
  

So for starters, I'm going to rip back (again) right to the beginning of the lace bit and do it in purple and then (when the purple runs out) the variegated, and then we'll see what I think. If the thing wraps nicely even with the wedge-shaped cut-out around the neck, I'll cast off and call it done. If not, I'll buy another skein of the variegated and continue from that point without having to rip out the lace and restart it (again).

Despite the snags, I'm still quite in love with this.

It's also my first beading project. Beaded knitting, I've discovered, is a pain in the heinie and chews up my right thumbnail all to bits (at least when I use the crochet hook method), but the end product is absolutely worth it in my eyes, so I certainly won't quail at doing beading again!

The white yarn, incidentally, was originally bought when I thought it would be the yarn for the sample of my Addis Abeba shawl pattern, which is now available as a custom kit from Knit Picks! (This means you get 15% off the yarn if you buy it and the pattern together.) Check out a shot from the snazzy new photoshoot they did:

Next up: the present parade continues! (Now with new non-headless owl!)

Spilling the beans

I love it when I get to finally talk about a design I've been blogging vaguely about. And for a while now I've been talking about a "secret sample", and before that, a prototype swatch. Well, today, my shawl pattern Addis Abeba was published by Knit Picks, and I get to show pictures!

Firstly, we have the swatch...

And a closeup...

It was inspired when I realised that it would be really nice to knit presents for my midwives, and I started tossing around ideas in my head of what I could do. One of the women on my primary team has an Ethiopian background, so I started Googling around that culture for design ideas. I found some very cool stuff. What particularly inspired me was very colourful embroidery done on white or neutral-coloured cotton fabric. Lots of diamond-ish motifs, very elongated and with concave edges, and I thought that I could probably translate the essential design into lace. After some futzing around, I decided on garter stitch lace, did up a chart, and gave it a whirl.

At about two feet square, it's the biggest "swatch" I've ever done. But I had to do an entire repeat of the chart pattern to know if it would really work and to see how big the whole thing would block out to, so I would know how many squares should be in the whole shawl. Turned out, that number is three...

The cool thing about this pattern, I think, is that the squares are knitted on the bias. So it's a neat construction.

It is, admittedly, a lot of work, with a lot of yarnovers and decreases, and one helluva big chart...

...which is why it didn't end up being a midwife gift after all, since I didn't think I'd be able to get it and two other gifts done in time. But I was very happy for the inspiration, and I hope there are people out there who would like to knit it! I'm particularly interested in seeing what it looks like in colours, or even a variegated yarn.