Estonian Garden Wrap
My sister Carol and I planned about last February to work on the same shawl pattern with essentially the same yarn, just in different colorways. We each bought the Knitpicks Shimmer yarn on clearance. I bought "Happy Dance", a variegated laceweight yarn (60% baby alpaca, 30% silk) with red-pink-yellow. Carol bought "Flower Garden", a darker colorway with pinks and purples, it looks like.
We weren't sure that a lace pattern would look wonderful in variegated yarn, but
1.) I had bought that yarn just for this project
2.) It feels wonderful
3.) It is laceweight, so I have to make something lacy from it
4.) The colors seem appropriate for a flower garden
So -- even if this pattern might turn out better in a solid color, I am just going to make this pattern with this yarn any way!
The yardage required about 2 skeins of Shimmer, so I bought 3 to be safe.
Here's me winding my first ball using the brand-new swift I bought on eBay - someone has a home craft he's using to make money, it seems. It was very reasonably priced, about $25 with shipping, as I recall.
Here is a finished ball on my winder.
Here are the finished balls with the swift folded up.
I couldn't let myself start this project until I finished the "utility shawl", the scarf for Mom, and the baby afghan. I finally finished the latter on 6/5/08, and the baby shower was on 6/6/08, so on the evening of Friday, 6/6, I started this project, using size 5 needles, and working loosely.
The pattern starts from the middle (on a provisional cast-on) and works out, and appears to be about 3 or 4 different patterns, with the vast majority being this main beginning pattern of little flowers, bordered with Lily of the Valley and edged in a scalloped trellis.
I've done a bit more knitting since this picture was taken on 6/20/08 -- but lace knitting really needs a bit of blocking before photography. So, here's the picture after lightly blocking overnight of my progress as of about a week and a half ago.
This Little Flowers pattern is very simple -- worked in eight rows pattern, with an 8-stitch repeat. I've had it memorized since about the 10th pattern repeat. The wrong-side rows are just purls with 3 stitches of knit for ribbing at the edges. I need to make almost 42 rows. The picture I'm not showing with current progress is almost 20 rows of the repeats of this stitch (for this side) done.
Unfortunately, Carol is taking computer classes in her free time, and hasn't started yet. I was thinking that I might put this down at some point soon, to resume when she's cast on and started.
But, further unfortunately -- as of 7/1 evening, I was only about halfway through the Little Flowers pattern for the first half of the wrap -- and I'm almost finished using up one ball. I really should only use a ball and a little extra for the entire first half. So there's no way I'm going to have enough yarn at this rate. So I decided that I have to frog the whole thing and start over on size 4 needles.
My sister Carol and I planned about last February to work on the same shawl pattern with essentially the same yarn, just in different colorways. We each bought the Knitpicks Shimmer yarn on clearance. I bought "Happy Dance", a variegated laceweight yarn (60% baby alpaca, 30% silk) with red-pink-yellow. Carol bought "Flower Garden", a darker colorway with pinks and purples, it looks like.
We weren't sure that a lace pattern would look wonderful in variegated yarn, but
1.) I had bought that yarn just for this project
2.) It feels wonderful
3.) It is laceweight, so I have to make something lacy from it
4.) The colors seem appropriate for a flower garden
So -- even if this pattern might turn out better in a solid color, I am just going to make this pattern with this yarn any way!
The yardage required about 2 skeins of Shimmer, so I bought 3 to be safe.
Here's me winding my first ball using the brand-new swift I bought on eBay - someone has a home craft he's using to make money, it seems. It was very reasonably priced, about $25 with shipping, as I recall.
Here is a finished ball on my winder.
Here are the finished balls with the swift folded up.
I couldn't let myself start this project until I finished the "utility shawl", the scarf for Mom, and the baby afghan. I finally finished the latter on 6/5/08, and the baby shower was on 6/6/08, so on the evening of Friday, 6/6, I started this project, using size 5 needles, and working loosely.
The pattern starts from the middle (on a provisional cast-on) and works out, and appears to be about 3 or 4 different patterns, with the vast majority being this main beginning pattern of little flowers, bordered with Lily of the Valley and edged in a scalloped trellis.
I've done a bit more knitting since this picture was taken on 6/20/08 -- but lace knitting really needs a bit of blocking before photography. So, here's the picture after lightly blocking overnight of my progress as of about a week and a half ago.
This Little Flowers pattern is very simple -- worked in eight rows pattern, with an 8-stitch repeat. I've had it memorized since about the 10th pattern repeat. The wrong-side rows are just purls with 3 stitches of knit for ribbing at the edges. I need to make almost 42 rows. The picture I'm not showing with current progress is almost 20 rows of the repeats of this stitch (for this side) done.
Unfortunately, Carol is taking computer classes in her free time, and hasn't started yet. I was thinking that I might put this down at some point soon, to resume when she's cast on and started.
But, further unfortunately -- as of 7/1 evening, I was only about halfway through the Little Flowers pattern for the first half of the wrap -- and I'm almost finished using up one ball. I really should only use a ball and a little extra for the entire first half. So there's no way I'm going to have enough yarn at this rate. So I decided that I have to frog the whole thing and start over on size 4 needles.
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