FO: Enchanted Wood

Just to prove that I actually have knitted a lace shawl, may I present Enchanted Wood (also know as Hell Freezes Over).

I did this as part of a Unique Sheep KAL in February. I did post blocking shots back then, but never got around to the official FO post.

The yarn is from the Unique Sheep, in what they call a "gradience" colorway, which is a series of specially dyed skeins that progress from on color to another as you move from skein to skein. I like the idea, but it works better in some colorways than others, and the progression is occasionally a little more abrupt than I would like. I suppose that's the nature of hand dyeing. (It didn't stop me from ordering another gradience colorway for their next KAL...which I dropped out of during the eternal and horrific cast on. But that's another story.)

This was also my first (and only) attempt at knitting with beads, and I loved it!

I haven't had an opportunity to wear this yet, but it does grace Bertha (the dress form) in my craft room, so I get to enjoy it every day anyway.

It remains to be seen whether I will (successfully) tackle another lace shawl, but at least I can prove I knitted one once!

As Promised...

...here are blocking pics of The Enchanted Wood shawl!


We got home last night. After unpacking, doing laundry, reorganizing the storage room so we could get in to put away the ski equipment, and getting all the gear and clothing put away, I took a few minutes to soak and block this. [I sometimes read about people spending hours blocking lace, which leads me to believe I am less than particular about my blocking, because it never takes me more than a few minutes. But I digress.]

The pictures are, as usual, not great. The guest room, where I do my blocking, has poor lighting, and it's a grey day. That will soon change (the lighting, not the day, but more about that in another post), but for the time being, this is the best I could do.

Modeled pics coming soon!

Still Enchanting

These aren't the best pictures, but I wanted to show you I am still working away on the Enchanted Wood Shawl:

This picture was taken after I finished clue 3; now I'm about halfway through clue 4 and coming up on the finish. I think there is only one more clue left. The yarn is gorgeous (once again, my camera fails to do it justice) and the beads are a delight. I only wish I had started with the opposite color. I really wanted a shawl that was more green than blue, but since this is a mystery shawl, I had no way of knowing that the pattern was heavily weighted in favor of the starting colors, with a much smaller portion of the later colors actually used. Ah well. Live and learn. The blue is lovely, too.

In the closeup, you can see the pretty beads. They're really iridescent, with blue, purple, and green, just like the yarns. Once I get it blocked, I'll get some better pictures...I hope!

Enchanted Wood Spoiler

Just to prove that I am, in fact, knitting a lace shawl--successfully!--here are some crummy progress pictures. I took them indoors, at night, with my point and shoot, and this is the best I could manage. You'll have to take my word for it that the yarn and beads are so much prettier than this in person.

I'm about halfway through the second clue and working on my second skein of gradience dyed yarn. These pictures don't show the gradual color change that is starting to happen. This is a much better picture of the yarn:

I started with the blue yarn on the far right and I'm working toward the green on the left. The structure of this shawl is odd (to me). The cast on consists of the two short legs of the triangle (which will become the bottom of the shawl), and steady decreasing at both the middle and the edges draws the edges steadily together to create a triangle as the work progresses upward toward the long, straight edge at the top.

Here you can mostly see the beads. It's not nearly as difficult as I imagined to knit with beads, but it is time-consuming. It's also really, really fun! They're like sparkly little stitch markers you don't take out.

I definitely foresee more beads in my future...and maybe even some more lace, too.

Counting to Ten

I started winding the yarn for Enchanted Wood last night, but I couldn't resist jumping ahead to the cast on. Which took three hours. 375 stitches, double-stranded lace cast on, working with two ends of the ball and using beads. None of these things caused me any trouble. So why did it take three hours? Apparently I need to return to kindergarten for a little brush up of my counting skills. The cast on was mostly just "cast on ten, place bead, repeat." Alas, mine was more like, "Cast on ten, place bead, cast on...wait, how many was that? Is this bead before or after that stitch? Uh, oh. I must have messed up back here. Rip, rip, rip. Cast on ten, place bead, cast on ten, place bead, cast on ten...why don't I have the right number of stitches? Let's see...ten...nine...or is that ten? Where is this bead supposed to be? Is that one stitch or two? Damn it! Where are my glasses?" And so on and so forth. But I did get the cast on finished and--wisely, I think--stopped there. I'm hoping I've gotten the stupids out of my system now and the rest of this will just jump off my needles. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Let the Madness Begin!

The yarn for the Enchanted Wood mystery shawl KAL just arrived in my mailbox--only four days from England!--and it is just lovely. I'm so excited to get started on this. I'm also more than a little worried that all I'm going to make with this beautiful yarn is a huge mess. I've been reading the threads about this on Rav, and I don't even understand the questions, much less the answers. I've decided to just take it in little baby steps. My goal for this evening is to get the yarn wound. If prior experience holds true, this will be more than enough to deal with.

Anyone else working on this? I could use a little company.

New Year's...Goal

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. Never have. If you're going to make a change, just make it, whatever the time of year. Who needs all the extra pressure of announcing at the beginning of a brand new year, "I am going to do this or be a failure"?

Still...there is certainly something to be said for reflecting on the past year and setting some goals for the new year, or at least contemplating what one would like to achieve in the privacy of one's own mind--or blog, as the case may be. [Case in point: I had privately decided to try to go this whole year only buying sock yarn, because I have enough sweater yarn to keep me busy through the next ice age. My resolve lasted until I saw that Beaverslide had some $12.95 merino/mohair on clearance for $6.00 a skein, and I typed in my paypal password so fast there was smoke coming off my keyboard. Now, had I publicly announced my intention, I would have been rather embarrassed at crashing and burning so dramatically on January 4th. As it is, though, I will be happily adding a few more grains of sand to the yarny beach that is my stash room, if you'll excuse the labored metaphor.]

My checkered history with lace knitting has been well documented on this blog. (If you somehow missed my pathetic inability to knit lace without the aid of note cards, stitch markers, row counters, charts, and copious amounts of alcohol, search "lace".) I've never felt any particular desire to conquer this failing, as it were, because although I love lace, I thoroughly enjoy knitting sweaters and don't feel I'm missing out if I don't also knit gorgeous shawls.

Or at least, I didn't until a few days ago. As I was meandering through the destash offerings on Ravelry, I came across a set of six skeins of lace yarn that had been "gradience dyed" so that each skein progressed gradually across the blue-green range of the color wheel and all six taken together completed the journey from blue to green, rather like one very large skein of very long repeat variegated yarn. I was struck by this. Really. Just...struck. I couldn't stop looking at it. This particular set of yarn was a kit for a mystery lace shawl KAL called "Enchanted Wood" from The Unique Sheep that begins on January 10, and it came with a set of color-matched beads. Now, knitting with beads is one of those things I have long looked at and thought, "That way lies madness." Beautiful, absolutely. But like lace times ten. So it makes no sense whatsoever that I justhadtohaveitrightnow and immediately bought the kit and signed up for the KAL. And, for the record, I'm not a KAL kind of person. It's like group exercise to me: public embarrassment adding insult to the injury of painful physical activity. Only, you know, without the exercise part. Which makes my almost giddy excitement over this KAL all the more perplexing. I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the yarn and already have the swatch instructions in hand (although I expect to come down with all the grace of a water filled blimp once I actually start to swatch). I will document the experience here, for those of you who are interested in commiserating...or laughing your heads off at my ineptitude.

My hope is that this will somehow magically lead to some sort of lace-knitting breakthrough that will allow me to whip out heirloom cobweb shawls in under a week without even looking at the charts or using a single lifeline. Or at least that I will successfully complete this one lace shawl without anyone needing to stage an intervention or break out the tranquilizer darts. Just don't call it a resolution; I can't take the pressure.