Rework of Estonian Garden Wrap and before/after photos

(To see "After", go to the end of this post.)

Before: Picture at about 170 rows before deciding I would run out of yarn. This is what it looked like about 1/2 way through the Little Flowers Pattern on the first side. Plus there are two more patterns to work on each side -- the Lilies of the Valley pattern and the Scalloped Trellis edging pattern.



Here's how much yarn was left on the ball. It was actually pretty empty, but hard to photograph it because it was falling in on itself. Since one whole side should only have taken 1 ball or maybe a little more, I could only use 1.5 balls for this side. There was no way 3 balls of yarn would be enough for this side plus a complete repeat of the other side.



After: Here's what the re-work looked like while I was lightly blocking it on Sunday. I'd frogged all but the two set-up rows and first 4 rows of the first 8-row repeat of Little Flowers pattern. I'd then knit about 90 rows, and found a problem halfway back and frogged back to about row 44 (46 if you count setup rows). At the point I took this picture, I had maybe 128 pattern rows. About 45 of them had been reworked three times, all but 6 of them reworked twice. I may let future mistakes just stand. (NOT! I just can't stand it!)



I really liked the way the colors got concentrated in sections at first on this rework, and don't know what I've done differently after that section, because now it's more or less striping again. The concentrated sections of color show the flowers better. The flowers show up pretty well on the yellow sections, too, but the contrast with the beige floor doesn't show it off.

Oh, well, it is what it is.

Since taking this photo, I've made a bit more progress. As of last night, I finished 19 pattern repeats (I think) which would be 152 rows - so the picture above must have been only 128 rows or so, maybe 16 pattern repeats.

Progress Notes - Estonian Garden Wrap

Last week, I had worked back up to Row 90 (not counting the two set-up non-pattern rows) when I realized that about halfway back, I had erroneously added two extra purl rows in addition to the one called for in the pattern. So the flowers there were all wrong. So last Wednesday, I frogged back to Row 44.

As of last night, I was at Row 96 of the pattern. So I'm back on track. I had decided I was using too much yarn at about Row 170 of the pattern, so I'm still not caught up to the point where I almost totally visited the Frog Pond.

I almost started over.

OK, so I went home on Wednesday 7/2 with the determination to start over, and didn't even think twice about it. I just had to. I almost completely frogged the progress on the Estonian Garden Wrap. I had put one lifeline right in the cast-on row, because I had trouble picking up the stitches the previous time I'd done a provisional cast-on. And I had left a lifeline that was just after Row 4 of the first Little Flowers pattern, just in case.

Since there were two set-up rows, and 8 rows for each repeat of Little Flowers, that means I left in 6 rows, half of a Little Flowers repeat. I removed about 20-21 repeats of Little Flowers, and didn't even think about it. That is, I removed about 160 or more rows.

So, I almost completely started over - I'm not going to worry about the few rows I left being too loose, they'll look fine when blocked, I'm sure.

As of last night, 7/6, I finished Row 60 of Little Flowers. So I've knit 54 rows since Wednesday, or almost 7 repeats of the pattern.

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.

Missy's Baby's afghan
The next project that I finished in this blog-posting-hiatus was a crocheted baby afghan for my colleague, Missy. This was called the "Baby Waves" pattern, from a kit that included the pattern and the yarn. After I made a few of the motifs, and saw how they'd have to be joined, I wasn't looking forward to the joinings, not only because I prefer to not have to sew motifs together, but because the motifs didn't naturally fit together. But I pursued it to the end.


Unlike some crochet projects, this definately required washing (and fabric softener to try to make the yarn a bit softer), and then full-court blocking to shape, because it was very bunchy after sewing the motifs together.



I worked on this from late March to mid-June, just barely finishing in time for the baby shower we held for her. But Missy and Conrad seemed very happy with the finished product!

Catching up my not-so-active blog!

I have several projects I've completed since last posting, so here are the first two.

This one is what I call my "utility" scarf. I wanted something that I could leave on my computer chair, to wrap around myself when I get a chill while at the computer or in the kitchen. It's from yarn I bought on a whim from eBay, on a large cone. It's called "cotton flake" yarn, and the colorway is "Tropical Nights". I worked on this a lot when I was on jury duty in January. It is a thick-and-thin yarn, and the first couple of lacy patterns that I tried with it didn't work out, so I settled for a non-lacy pattern instead. I used sort of a basketweave stitch to keep it flat, without being something that required a lot of concentration. I think I finished this in March.











The second project I completed in April, just before leaving for Turkey. I had planned to give it to Mom for her birthday, but didn't finish it in time to block it and wrap and send it, so I'll give it to her for Christmas. It's made from Jaggerspun Zephyr laceweight yarn (50% silk, 50% merino wool) in Sage, which should help bring out the green in her eyes. I used the KnitPicks Candleflame pattern. Remember that you can click an image to see a larger version of the picture.

Baby Sarah Burns Gift Set

And, while I'm uploading pictures that have already been taken, we had a new grand-niece born in the fall, and I managed to complete a baby set for her in time. We knew it was going to be the second girl in that family, so this time I decided to do an all-pink set in Caron's Baby Simply Soft.

First, the baby set from a pattern in an old issue of Workbasket which I've made before (booties weren't included, so I used a pattern from Annie's Free Patterns of the Day for those).

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Remember that you can click a photo to see the enlarged version.

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Here's the whole set, including the coordinated baby afghan from the Workbasket pattern, uses a crocheted Shell Stitch, with a special Shell-with-picots edging. (I just smoothed it out rather than blocking it before the picture -- but it machine washes well, so I didn't think any slight irregularities would matter that much!):

Pictures of Mystery Stole 3 at last!

I may have to take another picture of the finished stole, after blocking -- but here at last are pictures of the stole while being blocked. (Click a picture to see larger version.)

First, the beginning part of the stole.











Next, the wing part of the stole.














Finally, two pictures of the entire stole as being blocked (I couldn't get quite high enough to get the far edges completely in the photos).

I know that I'm really, really far behind on this blog and pictures.

I finished a baby set for Fran & Steph's new daughter, as well as I finished blocking my Swan Lake (Mystery Stole #3). And we went to Greece -- where I took over 1,000 pictures. I need to pick just a few of those to post as well.

Mystery Stole keeps creeping along in Clue 6.

I only did 2 rows last night. I think I'm up to 170 active stitches, with about 12 unworked stitches left from Clue 4. I'm much slower per row that I'd have thought. I could do about 2 rows of 99 stitches in 15-20 minutes before. Now it seems to take me 1-2 hours (with distractions) to do 2-3 rows.

And it's been repetitious throughout all of Clues 5 and 6 -- so while it's looking nice, it's been pretty boring. It's hard to stay motivated.

But I only have something like 24 more rows to do. If I do 2 rows a night -- more ore less -- I'll be done in less than 2 weeks.