Among the things on today's list: Spinning. Which is what I shall do now, amused by some nice audiobook (The Princess Bride, just in case you're curious. As opposed to my usual rule of consuming English fiction in English, it is the German translation - but the reading is very, very entertaining).

Meanwhile, here's a link for you about how knitting needle material may affect your gauge.

While we're at that topic, here's the Knitting Reference Library from archive.org... which shows, nicely, that tastes in shapes have changed quite a bit over time!

Occasionally, I am knitting things that require some row-counting. I'm usually not in a state of mind to go down a list of rows without some aid to help me keep track of which one I'm in, so I have been using dice to keep count for me.


Usually this was a special die, though - it's a countdown die, which means the numbers are arranged in a way that you can easily find the next one in sequence. (It also has 20 sides, which is enough for most sequences.) Normal dice have the numbers arranged differently, and I was using a normal D10 (a ten-sided die, for those of you not familiar with this) which always meant some searching for the next face to move up.

Recently, though, there was the Spiel fair in Essen. And, as usually, I went there and had a glorious time and looked at lots and lots of games and game-related things... which includes stuff meant for roleplaying.

Now when you are roleplaying, it can happen that your character gets into a fight. You throw some dice, someone else throws some dice, and suddenly, your character gets hurt and you need to keep track of its health points... and while you can do so with a sheet of paper and a pen, or some other way of counting, there's a new gadget around for this: a life-counter ring.

As in: something you can wear on your finger and use to easily and conveniently keep track of which number you are at.

Are you thinking the same thing I was thinking?

[caption id="attachment_2685" align="alignnone" width="640"] This knitting action is obviously missing the hand I need to hold the camera. Also, the ring should be turned to another spot - it has a clearly marked area for the current numbers somewhere behind my index finger.


Right. New counting thingummy for knitting. I haven't used it in earnest yet (my current knitting project is not in the row-counting part yet), but have tested it, and it works fabulously. There's a little spring wire between the two numbered rings that makes sure the count only changes when you want it. For that, you gently press the ring towards the middle and then turn it. It's made from stainless steel, about one cm wide, and comes in blue (my colour), rainbow, gold, or black. It will also count up to 99, which should be plenty for all knitting purposes.

If you want to have one, too, the company making it is called CritSuccess, and they do ship worldwide. They also have a lifetime exchange policy - if your ring gets damaged, doesn't fit anymore, or you have any other issues with it, you can exchange it for a new one.

Now if I didn't have such a heap of work waiting to be done, I could go do some knitting...

The lovely colourful skein of wool which originally started out as this:


has turned into a ball now:


I'll have a good, long think about what I will do with 745 m of this fine two-ply rainbow. Currently, the thing that sounds most attractive is to take some dark yarn in a similar thickness and eventually knit something wearable in a mosaic pattern.

In case you don't know mosaic knitting - it's a slip-stitch technique where you work with two colours, making incredibly complex-looking patterns that are fairly easy to knit. There's a nice tutorial in a back issue of Knitty to get you started, and if you want more patterns, Barbara Walker has published a whole book called "Mosaic Knitting".

I'm a late convert to knitting - I only learned how to knit when I was 30. Though we were supposed to learn how to knit in school, I only got taught the basics of crochet. In my middle teens, I had asked a great-aunt to teach me, and she dutifully did - she loved knitting, and did a lot of it - but I ran out of steam, and interest, about 30 square centimetres in. (That's about 6 cm length of a 5 cm wide headband, if you want to know.) It was... boring. Drab. Slooow.

When I got into historical textile stuff, my excuse for not doing knitting was that a) a lot of people already know about it and do it, so it's not in danger of becoming forgotten, and b) it's a rather young technique, only coming up into its own in the early modern times, with sparse bits starting in after about the 13th century. So no need for me to get into knitting... at all.

Two things did change my mind: My friend, who gifted me with hand-knit socks (my first pair, that fit totally perfectly, and I fell in love with hand-knit socks at that moment), and one of the colleagues-since-turned-friend at the first Textile Forum, who knit 17th-century long stockings from very fine yarn on homemade wire needles (because you don't get needles that fine anymore). A technique that is used for something as crazy as that? I definitely need to learn it.

So learn I did, while knitting the thing I really wanted to have: Socks. From there, I moved on to more socks - patterned socks, socks knit two-at-a-time on dpns, socks knit two-at-a-time with magic loop (I suffer from a specific variety of second sock syndrome, in which the second sock ends up being two sizes smaller than the first one if I don't knit them simultaneously), hats and lace stuff.

What I never did yet, though, is a sweater. Or pullover. Or (what I like best) a cardigan.

In the end of 2015, I finally had decided that I really want to knit one now, and I picked out a pattern and took my measurements and bought a ton of yarn for it (you remember that "before" photo from a few days ago, right?). I knit a swatch, and washed and petted it, and I was good to go... and then came that book debunking the diet myths. No use in knitting a sweater in a size I won't ever wear again, especially with the incredible speed I knit (read: I do knit moderately quickly, but in the end, it is quite slowly as I tend to put it aside and not work on it for longer stretches of time). I was also not willing to guesstimate any measurements - so the wool went into storage.

It's still in storage. I got a new pattern, though, and new wool (it's not my fault, these skeins just sort of ended up coming home with me, and yarn that comes home with you while you technically have a yarnbuying embargo in place only doesn't count as new yarn if you have a project in mind for it and cast on sort of immediately, right?) and yesterday... I cast on Vignette.


I'm totally excited. My first upper body garment thing. I really, really hope it will turn out well!

I have finally finished knitting the Renaissance Shawl, and it is now blocked on our livingroom carpet and slowly drying. (The cat is somewhere outside, where she spends the days in this summery weather, so there's very little danger of cat attacks until the evening.)

[caption id="attachment_2578" align="alignnone" width="640"] Last week saw the last two rows being knitted...


I finished it off yesterday evening. As is to be expected, it didn't look super-spectacular after being taken off the needles:


... but that improves dramatically with a bit of water, a bit of time and a lot of pins:


I remembered from last time that I knit this that blocking was the biggest challenge for me (followed closely by the bind-off, but that is due to my non-existent practice in crocheting). This time, I started in the middle and basically stretched out the "eyes" (the big holes) and the grid pattern below so they looked more or less round and balanced, and the rest sort of followed suit. I went from the bottom middle to the right and left, alternating, until I reached the last third or so.

Since I added an extra repeat of the leaf pattern in the middle section, the wings did not end up touching each other at the tips, but overlap for a good bit, so I pinned the first one out completely, then pinned the second one on top of it.


Pins for the inner rim were only necessary in the last third or so, where the wing ends are; the rest needed no pins for extra stretch.

And now I shall wait for it to dry - it shouldn't take too long with this warm weather. After that, it's wait and see when it will be cool enough for me to need this shawl... but autumn is coming, and what is more fitting to wear in autumn than a shawl knit from pumpkin-coloured wool?

I did mention that I did some knitting on the evenings after the fair, right?

I have now progressed into the last of the charts, and everything is lining up nicely - I'm quite happy with how the two-colour version looks. There are similar stitch patterns with passed-over stitches and yarnover holes in the first part of the shawl and in this last part, so the colour change kind of reflects the change in pattern.

[caption id="attachment_2555" align="alignnone" width="640"] The last chart. Yaaay! If only the rows weren't so long...


As usual with lace, it all sits rather tightly on the needles, and as the rows have grown, it is now becoming hard to stretch it out, even partly, to admire the look it will have when blocked.


A few more rows to go, and then the crochet bind-off. And then... I will have a new, lovely, orange shawl to wrap around me when the days get cooler.

Well, not as much knitting progress as I would have liked - I had been hoping to take the finished piece with me the coming weekend, but unless I will stumble over miraculous amounts of extra time, I can't see that happening.

There is progress, though - the first row of nightblue yarn is in:


And here's a closeup of the edge with the nightblue yarn:


I'm really looking forward to find out how it will look once the current chart is finished (three more rows only, counting the return rows) and the last one is done as well. The orange and dark blue make for a stunning contrast, but whether that will end up being a stunning piece overall with the colour changes... that will only be seen once it's done. Probably not before the end of next week, though...