Hedgehog Knits

Adventures in knitting from the eastern edge of Canada.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

I'm a bit too old for this...

But apparently the Easter bunny showed up last night. I think Nick really wanted an excuse to eat chocolate.

I made some big progress at school last week, which involved late nights on campus. I decided that I deserved a bit of a break, so I took the whole three-day weekend off, other than a bit of end-of-term marking that just couldn't wait. It's done wonders for my state of mind. Aside from spring cleaning the apartment from top to bottom (I swear the dust bunnies were starting to plot against us!), I've been delving into all kinds of new things.


First off, on Friday night, I went to my first knit night at a coffee shop just down the street. Who knew that they've been meeting there all this time?! I got to meet several people who's blogs I read regularly, including Leanne and Sarah. (Leanne has a great photo of the event up on her blog). It was nice to meet some friendly local knitters, and I'm sure I'll be back soon. There are two organized get-togethers a month, I think.

I was so relaxed that by Saturday morning, I was itching to start another lace project. I had a couple of balls of SRK Collection Ovation, a pastel blend of mohair and silk. After a bit of time skimming Victorian Lace Today, I was drawn to this pattern, the "scarf with French trellis border from Weldon's 1890 and brabmble leaf center":


Except I wanted something a little simple. I decided to just start at the leaf panel, and leave off the two borders. Here we are after four chart repeats:


I'm liking it so far. It's just the right amount of intricacy for my level of skill and concentraton at this point. It's got patterning on every row, but the garter stitch borders are simple. Speaking of which, the outside garter stitch borders are actually a lot wider (8 sts) than the ones shown in the published photo shown above (I'm guessing 3 sts), aren't they? Funny, Grumperina was just pointing out a similar inconsistancy in the pattern that she's knitting from the same book. I sense a trend. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to have enough yarn to get very far with this. I've set it aside for a bit while I hunt for a couple more balls online. This colour, of course, has been discontinued.

Today, I got back to spinning a bit. I plied up some wool singles that had been sitting on my spindle for a while. It turned out rather disastrously. Nothing to do with a mess like that than use it for dye experiments. So I got out the Wilton cake colours and had a little fun. I might even be able to salvage a toque's worth of yarn out of the whole mess. I'll post photos of that soon - right now it's drying in my bathtub.

But more interestingly, I broke out the silk that I recently purchased on eBay. I had been wanting to try silk hankies, since I've heard they're an easy way for beginners to get into silk.


There's four different coloured hankies in there, and a bag of white silk top, which I might play around with blending if I ever manage to get some carders. After a bit of frustration at first with picking apart the layers, and having the incredibly fine fibres stick to everything including my hands, I finally managed to produce some yarn. It's the finest I've managed to spin yet (and probably as fine as I can manage without a lighter spindle). The silk it so strong that it resists breaking off even when it's really thin. Now, any ideas on what to do witha tiny ~7 g of fingering weight silk?! I guess I'm going to have to buy these hankies in multiples if I ever want to knit anything with them!


I also ran my French market bag through the washer and the dryer yesterday, but it's still not felted enough, so I'm off to throw it in for another go. Back to the office, and the real world, tomorrow. It's been a fun little vacation of dabbling, but I'll probably go back to knitting stockinette on my vest now!

Labels: ,

5 Comments:

Blogger Glenna C said...

MMMM, nice EAster haul! :)
And have fun with the lace knitting, I hope it works out.

7:46 p.m.  
Blogger Marianne said...

Mmmm chocolate.
That silk is beautiful!

8:00 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It was great meeting you on Friday! I hope you continue coming out to Knit Nights.

As for what to do with 7g of silk yarn - how about finger puppets?

8:00 a.m.  
Blogger Sarah said...

Glad you had some quality knitting time over the weekend. The silk is really lovely.

8:21 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ooh, your Easter haul looks very similar to mine. Yummy Lindor eggs.

I'm ogling all your lace adventures. That shawl you earmarked in that book looks so impressive. And I'm equally impressed about the silk spinning! Maybe you can combine the silk with your lace passion, when you can spin more of it...

1:56 p.m.  

Post a Comment

<< Home