The Knitting Fiend

Obviously, I’ve been in a knitting and knit blogging slump. But winter is approaching and I finished my “Floridays Shawl”, which I cast on in June. Obviously, this is a pathetically slow rate of progress. But, fear not, I think I may have found something I find fun: Post casts.

For some reason, in the past, I have never been tempted to turn the little dial on my camera to the little “movie” recorder. On Saturday I did. I discovered I could take movies. I filmed on very, very bad one and deleted it.

Then, I broke filming into clips and recorded a fairly bad set of clips. Rather than try for perfection, I decided I’d teach myself how to actually finish a video and show it at my blog. So, I imported the pretty bad clips to my mac and edited in “IMovie”. Then I uploaded to YouTube. Now, the worlds can see my pretty bad podcast.

I could bore you by listing everything wrong with the quality– but I made so many mistakes, the list would be pretty boring.

So instead, I bring you a relatively poor quality podcast showing me blocking my “Floridays Shawl!”

Now that I’ve figured this out, I’ll probably show streaming periodically, and also provide links to things associated with the steps in the podcast (when the links are available.) That way, knitters can benefit from the things that are best shown on video and also from the things that are best show as stills.

Later this week, I’ll try to collect the links for the various stitches. The shawl is easy, and the general idea can be used to create your own shawl in your own yarn. The one thing you really need is a yardage estimator so you have enough yarn. So, I’ll get that together… some time!

Hope you like the video!

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Details for shawl:

1. Yarn: JaggerSpun Zephyr : 5,040 yds./lb. - 1 lb. cones. 50% fine grade Merino wool, 50% Chinese Tussah silk.
   Jagger recommends dry clean only; hand wash.
2. Twisted Long stitches: I haven’t written a tutorial!
3. Eyelets: How to Knit an Eyelet Row
4. Bind off: Picot Edge Bindoff

Jim and I went to Florida!

I know. I didn’t warn you I was going on vacation. I guess that’s bad blog etiquette.

Unfortunately, I’m a bit paranoid about posting that both Jim and I are away on a blog. My in laws stay here to take care of the cats… but still….

Anyway, we drove down. I know I could tell you all about the drive down and the beauty of Siesta Key (and who knows, maybe I will). I could tell you how my Dad is doing. But I’d rather tell you about my knitting: I started another shawl!

Why another shawl? Well, as you know, Mom wanted my white Barbara Shawl, so I gave it to her for Christmas. That meant I didn’t have a neutral white “wear with anything” shawl anymore.

Lucky for me, I did have a 3 year old cone of 2/18 weight JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk which I’d bought back when I knit by machine. In hand knitting terminology this is either lace weight or cobweb weight.

Anyway, since the Barbara shawl was very long, I decided to make this shawl very long. Since I was knitting in the car, I also decided to use a the “double triangle” shape and knit mostly garter stitch– just like my “Jenny Shawl” shown to the right. It’s pretty mindless to work, especially at the beginning.

What could be better for car knitting? I know there are people who can knit complicated lace while hitting bumps on the road, but not me!

Anyway, this is going to look a lot like the Jenny Shawl.

Are there differences? Well, yes. The increases for this one use yarn-overs instead of kfb’s (knit front and back). That makes decorative holes down the center and edge. Also, I’m going to make a deeper “lacy” trim at the bottom, and make this longer in general. I’m also not going to make the edges curl around at the end. This will be a classic double triangle.

How did the knitting go? On the two day trip down, I worked garter stitch. (That’s about 20 hours.) Then, every now and then during vacation, I knit a bit more garter stitch — that would be a total of maybe 6 hours in a week.

Mind you, this yarn is over 1000 yards per inch, so after 26 hours I was still not finished!

So on, the drive back on Sunday, I knit more garter stitch– until about 3 pm when I switched to the “lace” trim. Monday: Worked on trim for 10 hours in the car.

Don’t be deceived by the time this took: this lace trim is easy. The only reason the trim is taking so long compared to the garter stitch portion of the shawl is that you end up with zillions of stitches on the needle when you reach the hem. (I started with 1 stitch. I don’t even know how many are on there now. 500? 1000? The trim is a two stitch repeat, and you can fudge if you are off by one. So, there is no way I’m counting.)

Anyway, as you can see, I’m still not done! But I’ll finish pretty soon. And now, I’ll have Mo at my side to encourage me.

As you can see, he is happy to see me home. He’s been following me around non-stop. If I go upstairs, he comes upstairs. If I carry laundry to the basement, there he is in the basement. When I went out to take photos of plants and knitting, he scritched at the door followed me out there! (Right now, he’s wedge up next to the computer making it difficult for me to type!)

I think he was pretty lonely and is glad Jim and I are back. (Too bad I can’t get him to write my haikus while I’m gone, huh? )

KitKat kindly agreed to model the very easy to knit Maggie Shawl Design so knitters can see its length and width. As you can see, it’s a sort of shawlette with shapely looking tips. It happens to measure roughly 16 1/2″ long and 43 inches wide. I knit mine using 1 skein of Taiga Tender (goat down and wool.)

This post has a calculator to create a customized pattern for this shawl shape. If you enter the width you want and the gauge you achieve, this program will provide specific directions and estimate yardage requirements that for you.¹

Easy construction: This is a modified double triangle shawl; the knitter starts by casting on 1 stitch. After that, she increases twice each row: once at the beginning and once near the center. After knitting “a while”, the knitter begins to increase 2 stitches at the beginning; this causes the shawl to have long “tails” which curl and appear to require sophisticated shaping.

If you make a small shawl, the extra width helps the shawl stay on. If you make a large shawl, you may be able to tie this around your waist in the manner of faroese shawls.

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