Lacey Vee Is Done!

My Lacey Vee Cardigan is done – and by the weekend it might even be warm enough to wear it! Here’s the info:

Yarn: Filatura di Crosa Brilla

Pattern: Lacey Vee Cardigan (#405) from Cabin Fever

Modifications: hmmm, where to start? ;-)

1. In the original pattern you start with filled in purl squares where the lace is and only do the lace squares in a vee shape. Since I really wanted to get it done before Maryland I decided to simplify my life by just making all of the purl squares lacey. I think it looks fine that way. :-)

2. The vee was a little too deep for my taste so I did the standard “start the neck decreases when you bind off for the sleeves.”

3. I didn’t make the back of the neck a scoop neck. That part of me is always cold, especially in over air conditioned places.

Overall I really liked the pattern. I thought it was well written and easy to follow. And proving that you can teach an old knitter new tricks :-) I learned something new. The pattern has you pick up the sleeve stitches and knit down. Instead of doing a k2tog and an ssk on either side of a central stitch, you do one double decrease. I love the way it looks – very neat. For the double decrease they have you do slip 2, knit 1, pass 2 over. I prefer slip 2 knitwise together (like the beginning of ssk) slip 1 more knitwise, stick your left needle back through all three and knit them together. This gives you the middle stitch showing and the right and left stitches slanting neatly behind.

So of course since I finished a project I had to start a new one...or two. :-) I started a new sock but there isn’t enough to be worth a photo yet. And I’ve been so depressed about the news from Virginia Tech that I decided to knit a blanket for Afghans for Afghan’s Mother’s Day Campaign for Afghan Mothers. At least it makes me feel like I’m doing one small thing to make the world a better place, at least for one baby.

They request all wool blankets in colors that won't show the dirt. I went stash diving and came up with a bag of teal (color #31) Plymouth Galway (which you may recognize from my Pirate Hat) and an assortment on hand dyed yarns that go with it. They are all very nice yarns but I just don’t love the colors. Some of them I ordered online and they didn’t turn out to be what I thought and one is just a “what was I thinking?” purchase. Hopefully they will all look pretty together in the end. I’m doing a mitered square pattern, of course. :-)

And now for some gratuitous pictures of my cats:

Here’s Louie helping me model my new sweater. Doesn’t he look just thrilled? (Not!)

And here’s camera-shy Minerva who doesn’t usually get to be in my blog since I take most of my pictures outside and she’s strictly an indoor cat.

And here are Ravenclaw and Minerva playing on their cat condo which my daughter calls Hogwarts. Can you guess what my kids were into when we got these cats?

My Socks Rock

I finally finished my first pair of Socks That Rock. I only started them in December, so it’s not that bad. Here’s the info:

Yarn: Socks That Rock lightweight, colorway Fire On The Mountain

Pattern: basic toe up sock pattern

Stitch Pattern: Double Fleck Stitch, from the 365 Knitting Stitches a Year Perpetual Calendar

It was tricky finding a stitch pattern I liked. The yarn has very short color repeats, bright colors, and high contrast. You really have to swatch in the round on the number of stitches you plan to use to get an accurate representation of how it will look in the end. I swatched A LOT of different pattern stitches – and then once I found one I liked I ripped the whole swatch out because I knew I would need the yarn. It was worth it. I’m really pleased with how this stitch looks. The purl stitches in the Double Fleck Stitch add a nice bit of contrast that helps to break up the striping. I’m sure I’ll use this stitch again.

Isn’t it amazing how many stitch patterns there are? I’ve been knitting for 35 years now and I’m constantly finding new ones. I really like the 365 Knitting Stitches Calendar. It has lots of good stitches and they’re very well photographed. I do wish they were charted, but I guess you can’t have everything.

It’s been a productive week. I actually finished my Lacey Vee Cardigan too. I tried to take a picture of it, but it’s wet from blocking and the color doesn’t look right. I promise I’ll take one as soon as it’s dry.

Now I’m going to go cast on my Regia Bamboo socks… :-)

O Canada!

Finally, a good excuse for not blogging for over a week. :-) We spent spring break in Montreal, which is a lovely city (I’d move there in a heartbeat) but perhaps not at its finest in early April. Our weather was fairly awful but that didn’t keep us from having a great time.

This is the view from our hotel. From left to right the buildings are Christ Church Cathedral, the Tour de Catedral office tower (built on land that originally belonged to the church), and La Baie (the Hudson Bay Company.) Pretty cool.

Here are my kids (don’t tell them, I promised I’d never put them on my blog) standing at the observation area at the top of Mont Royal. Though my guidebook describes it as a “simple hike up from downtown”, they LIE! When we got to the “250 steps in all, and the last 100 go straight up” I thought I was Going To Die. Luckily the view from the top was worth it and the sun even came out from behind the clouds for a few minutes for us. Plus there was a little shop with a wide selection of ice cream treats. :-)

One way they’ve dealt with the weather in Montreal is by building the Underground City. It’s a network of pedestrian tunnels and shopping malls, all completely underground. Let me tell you, it’s a 13 year old girl’s idea of paradise. There’s even a huge mall that was built under Christ Church Cathedral. I still can’t understand how they pulled that one off. And the strangest thing we saw in the Underground City? In honor of Easter, in one upscale mall they had a petting zoo.

With a llama.

I did manage to sneak in a visit to one of the yarn stores. I’ve never seen a store like it.

There are rows of boxes full of cones of very fine yarns of all types and colors. If you like you can choose up to 12 and they’ll wind them onto bobbins for you. I was more than a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices. They also have a variety that they’ve already blended. One of those really appealed to me, and I decided that I wasn’t likely to do better (at least not in anything resembling a reasonable amount of time, and while my daughter did humor me in visiting a yarn store – not to mention walking 2 miles with only vague directions to find it – I didn’t want to push it. They had 2.5 pounds of the color I liked and assured me that would be enough for a sweater. You will not believe the price. It was $25 Canadian, which works out to just about $22 US. Unbelievable.

Yeah, it’s a little bright. What can I say – I love pink. :-)

And my other favorite purchase? Yarn Harlot’s new book. I hadn’t been able to find a copy at home, and I was inordinately pleased to buy it in her home country. And nothing could be more perfect than spending an evening reading a travel book about knitting while on vacation.