Lost and...

Found!

Phew!

For those who are wondering: car trunk. Where I'd already looked twice. Must be one of those space/time continuum things.

Cosmic Smack-Down

I knew I shouldn't have risked lace.

When the cast on couldn't discourage me, the ripping couldn't break my spirit, and the p5tog learned I was more persistent than previous evidence would indicate, the Knitting Goddess had to take a new approach. I discovered a whole new way to screw up lace.

I LOST IT!

Yep. I lost an entire shawl in progress, yarn and needles still attached. Somewhere between spinning group on Friday and sitting down to knit Saturday evening, it disappeared!

%&*$#@!

Swallowing

Could this possibly be?

It looks like...successful lace in progress. I don't want to jinx it or anything, but that is what it looks like, isn't it?

I'm on the first of three border charts. The good news is, I can count the number of rows left to go. The bad news is that every other row requires a truly appalling number of p5tog's. I never, ever want to p5tog again. I had to switch from my KnitPicks Harmony needle tips to my Options needle tips for fear I was going to break a wooden needle. It takes me as long to execute a successful p5tog as it does to knit half a row. Never again.

Here's a close up of the yarn:

I wish I could get a more accurate picture. This is dark teal, not blue. It's really pretty in real life. It's so pretty, in fact, that I want more.

So I've been spinning this:

(Again, apologies for the less-than-stellar photo.)

On the left is some more handpaintedyarn merino roving; on the right is some more hand dyed merino-tencel. Obviously, the merino-tencel is much lighter, but it's the same colors. I think the two will look good plied together, and will give me enough 2-ply to make another shawl or maybe a top of some sort.

Here's a sample of the merino singles:

And one of the merino-tencel singles:

I'm already done with the merino-tencel. It was such a treat to spin that I finished up the entire four ounces in one sitting. The merino is more difficult. I won't order this again; although I love the colors and the yarn from handpaintedyarn.com, their roving is really hard for me to spin. It seems to be semi-felted and is really tough to draft, even with serious pre-drafting. I originally ordered three four-ounce rovings. The first went into the yarn for Swallowtail, I'm spinning this one now, and I have one left. They're all a pain. Not to worry, though; I've already ordered more handpainted merino-tencel rovings from Etsy, so I won't be without lovely spinning fibers for the spring!

Knit, Rip, Repeat

You'll notice there is no picture of my progress on Swallowtail today. That is because, despite several hours of knitting, it looks exactly the same as yesterday. I knew I shouldn't have taunted the Knitting Goddess.

I happily knitted quite a few rows with apparent resounding success. I was even marveling over how quickly it was going. I was thinking, maybe I've finally kicked my lace knitting curse. And then I noticed I had one stitch too many at the end of a row.

Now, a sensible knitter would look at that, see that the error wasn't obvious, knit two together, and move on. At least, that's what I now think. At the time, I thought a sensible knitter would spend three and a half hours trying to track down the error, discover an extra yarn over, carefully tink back, realize the yarn over was actually two rows down, ladder down to the extra yarn over, remove it, work back up, discover that the stitches were far too loose, carefully tug the extra yarn from stitch to stitch, distributing the extra over the entire row, finally smooth out the work to see how it looked...and realize she had removed the wrong damned yarn over. Guess which sort of knitter I am?

Of course, when I moved on to the actual wrong yarn over, and attempted to repeat the procedure, a hole opened up in the space/time continuum and the universe collapsed in on itself, taking my knitting with it.

By the time I extricated it, half the shawl had been ripped back and my husband was giving me his wary lion-tamer look and suggesting I "just put it down...just for a little while. You can have it back tomorrow."

And now it's tomorrow, and I'm back to where I started yesterday. Somewhere in there, I must have crossed over the International Date Line.

Still Alive!

Yes, I'm still alive, but I don't blame you if you wondered. Blogger didn't even recognize me when I signed on. The kids are on Spring Break this week, and if you have kids, you already know where I've been. Between feeding them (and all their friends, who have also been here all week), shoveling laundry, breaking up fights, and running Mom's Taxi Service, I haven't had time for much else.

We celebrate both Passover and Easter (both this week), and--oh, yeah--our good friend is turning 60 on Saturday and my parents' 50th wedding anniversary is next week, and guess who gets to throw the party? Remind me to tell you all about that family drama sometime...when it's all over.

This morning I had a doctor's appointment I scheduled last month that absolutely had to happen exactly today...so of course, my husband got an emergency case two days ago that went to trial when? Yep. This morning. I left my children alone together for the very first time. I have left them each home alone individually before, but never together (they're nine and eleven). Today I just didn't feel like I had a choice. I posted my cell phone number by the phone and held my cell phone in my hand through the entire appointment (although what I could have done for them with my feet in the stirrups, I don't know). And then the doctor was unable to complete the procedure, and I have to go back this afternoon to try again (nothing serious, I assure you, but rather time-sensitive). I'll have to take the kids with me, too, since one of them has to be at a violin lesson less than an hour after my scheduled appointment time...

Just to demonstrate how crazed I've been, this is what I cast on last night:

LACE!!!

If that isn't proof of my complete loss of control, I don't know what is. That's Swallowtail (do I really need to link to it?)--again. I think this is my third attempt at this pattern. The others are best not spoken of in polite company. This time, it only took me four tries to get the cast on right. *sigh* But the yarn is sort of my reward for the struggle. The picture does not do it justice. This is my own handspun, and, at the risk of throwing my hubris in the face of the Knitting Goddess, I can tell you this is the best yarn I have ever made (which admittedly is not saying much). It's the only yarn I've ever been able to spin that might actually make decent lace, although it's really somewhere between fingering and dk weight. But Swallowtail is a tiny shawl, and I wanted something bigger, so that's okay. So far, I seem to have slipped under the KG's radar with this one, but it's still early in the game. Stay tuned for the rest of the saga! And now I have to run. The doctor is waiting.

Swallowtail

All the recent knitting and finishing has left me with nothing on the needles except for one lonely purse sock. So yesterday, I did a little stash diving for a new project. And I found this:

This is hard to photograph, but really quite lovely and soft in person. It is alpaca/silk that I spun a few months ago from a commercial roving. The weight is somewhere between fingering and dk (I think), and I thought it would work well for a heavier weight Swallowtail shawl. Now, my only other experience with a lace shawl was the infamous Icarus, and I've been avoiding casting on for another ever since. But it's not exactly sweater weather here (over 100 for the third day in a row), and I figured, there's no deadline for this, it looks very simple, and with heavier yarn, it should go really fast, right?

And it would be going fast, if I didn't have to tink back half of every other row. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I keep ending up with the wrong number of stitches at the end of the row. See how the needles are in the middle of a row? Yeah, well, that's because that's how I left it last night, after tinking back that half row six times! Each time, I checked the previous row against the chart, and each time, it was perfect. Each time, I carefully followed the chart for this row, and each time I ended up with the wrong number of stitches at the end. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. The real kicker is, this is the fourth repeat of this chart, and every other repeat has worked out. So there's nothing wrong with the pattern. This is purely a matter of operator error. I'm hoping that it will magically work out this morning, with no children or guests around to interrupt my counting.

I'm also not entirely sure about this yarn/needle choice. Being handspun--my handspun--it's not terribly even. I'm a little worried that it is too rustic for a lace pattern. And I'm not sure I picked the right size needles. The fabric looks a little open to me. I don't know if this is good or bad. It may be okay, since the yarn is heavier, and knitting it tighter might make for a stiff shawl. I would probably rip and reknit on a smaller size, just to see, but this yarn is a little fuzzy and doesn't rip well at all. (Think mohair.) I don't have any extra, so I'm pretty much committed.

But one little shawl isn't much in the way of knitting. I think I need another project. I'm not that interested in socks, and I don't want to start another shawl, but I need something that won't be uncomfortable to knit during this heat wave. Nothing in my Ravelry queue is exciting me at the moment. Any suggestions?