Shetland Spinning & Lace Knitting

In May I traveled up the coast to Whidbey Island, near Seattle, Washington to attend a three day workshop on Shetland Spinning from fleece to lace. It was taught by Elizabeth Johnston who came halfway across the world from Shetland and Martha Owen who came across the US from North Carolina where she is a resident artist and instructor at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown.


We washed and processed Shetland fleece, tried to spin it as finely as possible and began designing our own Shetland style lace shawls. Elizabeth and Martha were fantastic teachers and a thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the weekend. Now I want to visit Shetland. For years I have wanted to attend the John C. Campbell Folk School.

This is a photo of a shawl Elizabeth designed and knit out of Shetland fleece she spun and dyed with indigo:

Alpaca Shetland Triangle

I've been knitting--I just haven't been posting. Here is a sample:

Begun in January with some Classic Elite Inca Alpaca I got at the Fairview Knitters' post-Christmas swap (thanks, Heather). I'm using my new Harmony interchangeable needles (thanks, Mom) in size 5.5 mm (US9).

As usual, it doesn't look too great before blocking.

Blocking opens up the lace beautifully.

This shows the corner detail during blocking. I added two repeats to the border pattern to use up as much of the yarn as possible and to increase the size of the shawl.

In my haste to get this wrapped for my friend's 60th birthday party on February 3rd I failed to take a finished shot. I'll have to track her down.

Another winner from Evelyn Clark. Project details when I have time to post again.

A Kerry Blue Saturated With Memories

The Kerry Blue Shawl is one of my oldest WIPs. I began it as part of a KAL on the About.com knitting forum. That forum is where I joined the online knitting community when I first got back into serious knitting in late 2004. I send my thanks to the many wonderful and helpful knitters I met via that forum, especially the one who posts as MousePotato who was so generous with her advice. She agreed to lead the KAL, introduced me to Emily Ocher's circular cast-on and was extremely informative in too many ways for me to describe here.

This shawl traveled with me through one of the most painful experiences of my life--my father's illness from metastasized melanoma and subsequent death. I carried it with me during the summer of 2005 while my father was in the last stages of his illness and I was flying home to Texas every few weeks. Because the lace patterns line up and are easy to memorize it was the perfect travel knitting.

I also knitted on it at while staying in Texas, sitting with my father in the den while we watched television together and talked and later, by my father's bedside, after he could no longer walk and a hospital bed replaced his easy chair. I especially recall one night toward the end of his life when I stayed up all night until my brother relieved me at almost dawn. Working on the shawl kept me awake and helped to relieve the heartbreak I was experiencing. My father died a few days later, by which time I had returned to California.

I know this story is sorrowful but this shawl does not represent sorrow to me. It is a tangible reminder of a time when our family gathered together to care for and say goodbye to a man we deeply loved and admired and to support our mother who lost her best friend and husband of 54 years. I knitted on an ocean wave lace edging because my favorite family holidays as a child and as an adult were spent at the beach.

Here are the blocking shots. The process was hard on my back but it was a joy to see the lace reveal itself as I stretched out the blocking wires. Neither shot captures the color. I'll try for accurate color when I do the project post.


(The dark horizontal ridge visible in the bottom photo is the hem of one of the towels I placed under the shawl.)

I Don't Play with Dolls But. . .

When I attended the Nordic Knitting Conference in Seattle last October I attended a workshop taught by Marilyn Van Keppel on the Icelandic Shawl. She had us knit a doll sized shawl that is a miniature copy of a classic Icelandic Shawl. I loved every second of the conference. Even standing in line for dinner was fun because of all the beautiful knitwear I could see. Marilyn was a very informative teacher and she allowed us to inspect and pet a number of Icelandic and Faroese shawls she's knitted, including several from Bundanaurriklaedid and Three-cornered and Long Shawls, which she translated into English. Both books with the translations are available from Schoolhouse Press.

Details:
Yarn: Misti Alpaca Laceweight in "pretty in pink" (no. 3140) and a mystery laceweight wool bought at a weaver's garage sale in plum, 10 g. total for both yarns.
Needles: 5.0 mm. (US 8) for the provisional c/o, 3.5 mm. (US 4) for the shawl and the border, and 1.75 mm (US 2) to pickup the provisional c/o in order to knit the border.
Pattern: MvK's own pattern entitled "Icelandic Triangular Lace Shawl," distributed in the class.
Size: 20" across the top and 9" deep at the point after blocking. The border is 2.5" deep.
Notes: The pattern specified three colors for the border but I only used one. I find it hard to believe that one can make something so beautiful out of 10 g. of yarn. I'm looking forward to remaking this in a bigger size. Maybe by then I will have acquired some blocking wires.

Return of the Mystery Stole

Mystery Stole 3 is in full swing with thousands of participants. I signed up for MS2, worked on it through the first two clues, and abandoned the project. I loved the yarn I used (you can see my swatch here) and thought Melanie's charts were very clear and easy to use, but the pattern just wasn't "me." Each row was unique and there were no repeats to allow me to get into the rhythm of the design.

I'm much happier with the MS3 which has repeats and beads. I'm using black Misti International Laceweight Baby Alpaca leftover from this and mat medium blue beads from Ritual Adornments, my local bead store.

Swallowtail Shawl Closeups

I finally reformatted the photos of the Swallowtail Shawl. Scroll down to the September 20, 2006 post for details. This is the edge:

This is the corner:

And this is a closeup of the center:

My blogging skills leave much to be desired, hence the boring layout. And I made the photos on my scanner so they fail to do justice to the beautiful yarn I used. The edge picture comes the closest to the true colors which varied but didn't pool.

Swallowtail Shawl

I finished the Swallowtail Shawl from Interweave Knits Fall 2006. I very much enjoyed knitting this shawl even though the nupps were hard on my hands. If I make this again I plan to use a very small wooden or bamboo needle to purl the nupps together. My working needle tended to push the stitches rather than enter them even after I loosened them.

I had never knit with this yarn before but I certainly will again. It isn't labeled merino but it is incredibly soft and was very easy to work with. I did not make the shawl larger because the store only had one ball of yarn in this color but next time I will make it larger. Even though it is a few inches wider and longer than the size specified in the pattern, it is too small for me. The red spot in the picture is not part of the shawl; it is the red tile roof of our garage. My camera phone utterly failed to capture the glorious colors.

Details:

Pattern: Swallowtail Shawl from Interweave Knits Fall 2006, now available as a pdf from Evelyn Clark Designs.

Yarn: Kaalund Yarns "Classic Two" 100% wool 50 g. approx 356 m. "water lily," a handpainted yarn from Australia. The colors are purples, greens, and blues with a touch of pink. The linked page doesn't display the color properly; it is much prettier than the swatch shown. I used one 50 g. ball and had 6.1 g left over.

Purchased at: Wildfiber
Needles: Inox grey 16" size 5 (3.75 mm)
Finished Size: 52" across top, 26" top to bottom tip
Began: 8/1/06
Completed: 8/24/06
Notes: I changed all the double decreases on the left side to right slanting decreases so they would mirror the left slanting decreases on the right side.

I couldn't get my other photos to load. Later I'll publish some close up shots.