Catch up time!!

Hello!! I am still alive, I’m sorry for neglecting my blog for most of May.  I’ve been having issues with my laptop suffering from lack of memory, mainly due to my iTunes library from what I can figure out.  So whenever I turn it on it spends most of the time flashing up little annoying messages saying “you are low on memory”.  I’m not quite geeky enough to know what I can do to solve this problem.  Anyway, enough of that, what have I been doing in May then?

My Aeolian shawl is coming along really well and I love knitting it.  I’m supposed to be knitting it on a 32″ (80cm) circular needle but I didn’t have one so I cast on on a 24″ (60cm) one and to be quite honest at over 600 stitches I don’t really think I need to longer needle at all.  But it does mean that I can’t stretch the lace out properly to look at it and therefore, can’t take a really wonderful picture of it as it’s all a bit bunched up! So I’ve taken pictures of the stitch markers I made last Saturday night at about 10pm because the ones I was using were annoying me so much. 

They are made out of tiger tail, beads and crimps so they have no bits to catch on the lace or yarn AND because there are no split rings involved they don’t move to the wrong place in my knitting.  My other stitch markers are wonderful (from here) but for knitting with really fine yarn they weren’t working properly as the yarn kept sneaking through the joins in the rings and the marker would end up 2 or 3 stitches or rows away from where it was supposed to be.  I’ve been using the tiger tail ones all week now and they haven’t annoyed me once, so I consider it time well spent making them.

I am knitting the edge set up charts at the moment which I thought would be really stressy but to be honest once I’d got past the picking up stitches on the cast on it’s not been a stressy pattern at all.  The purl rows are really long and a little boring but it can’t all be fun, fun, fun  can it? There has to be a little bit of hard work for it to be worth while! I don’t love making nupps either but mostly I really like this pattern and I can’t wait to see it blocked.  And because it’s lace it’s light and doesn’t take up a lot of room, it’ s not heavy on my lap so it’s quite a good summer knitting project. 

Now what else have I been doing? I made rolls of felt with mum which I’m hoping to cut up and make into a felt bead necklace but we’ll have to see how that goes.  I’ve been doing a new project at college on rhythm and pattern, I took pictures around Salisbury of tiles, paving, railings and other patterns and then have turned the patterns into a tonal ladder going from highlight to deepest shadow.  I’m now going to draw a tonal picture of an object and then produce a tonal ‘map’ of the drawing.  Then I will apply the patterns from the tonal ladder to the map of the object and it should produce a picture using patterns from around Salisbury.  I’m working on the tonal map at the moment and I may add elements of stamping to produce the final piece. 

But I do have to admit that I’m pretty obsessed with knitting the Aeolian shawl lately and haven’t done much else. ;o)

If you love fashion and want to be a designer, read Threads by Sophia Bennett when it is published in September.  It’s a young adult read from the Chicken House publishers and I loved it.  I’ve been reading whilst walking to work lately as it means I get much more reading time in a day and it doesn’t detract from knitting time!!!

Making felted beads

That is what I have attempted to do this afternoon. Mum acquired a kit to make a felted brooch after a demonstration by The Natural Wool Company at one of her quilt groups and today we finally got around to giving it a go. I have to say I’m still not sure about it.

We laid a towel out on the table and a piece of bubble wrap each and then proceeded to layer up pieces of merino fleece. This was then made soggy with soapy water and then rubbed until it starts to get matted (felt). I had decided to ignore the instructions and wanted to make rolled felt beads so I have rolled my layers of soggy fleece up. They’ve been rinsed out and are now drying. I am hoping that when it’s dry I can cut it in to slices like liquorice allsorts and I will be able to make a necklace or something from it. But at the moment I’m still not convinced that it will happen…..

I’ve made progress on my Aeolian Shawl and am about to knit the first row with nupps in. Fingers crossed!!

Aeolian progress

I’ve finally got a new camera and am able to show you my progress on the Aeolian Shawl by Elizabeth Freeman from Knitty.  This is the yarn after I wound it into a ball from the skein.  And it pretty much still looks the same size even though I’ve done 12 repeats of the yucca chart.  And this is a close up of the lace so far….

I’ve just started the transition chart which changes the pattern from the yucca chart above to the Agave chart.  It was a bit difficult at first knitting with such thin yarn but I’ve got the hang of it now.  The only niggle is that the addi lace circular that I’m using is so shiny and smooth it means the yarn easily slides off if I’m not careful.