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...

The cat is sleeping on my desk again. It must be a wonderful place to sleep (maybe I should try that some time, too?)

The stock-taking is not quite finished, which is due to things being replenished as I find out I'm running low... and there's no sense in counting up things like the spinning pack before making some more, right? (They are counted now. I did make some more. Next up: More tablet weaving cards. And more spindle whorls...)

Humid weather means that washed wool takes an extra-long time to dry out far enough so that it can be packed away safely. Sigh. It's not looking like the humidity will go down soon here... plus the frame I'm using to dry the washed wool on is slowly disintegrating more and more. I might need to make another one. Or find out how to fix the old one. In a way that works better, and lasts longer, than my previous attempts to fix it.

There's actual palpable progress on the Renaissance Shawl knitting - it stayed at home while I was away on holidays, but I've happily taken up work on it again. I'm now almost past the part that I find the most boring one on this piece - the gridwork below the big holes.


It's not getting less boring by the fact that I added more leaves in the previous parts - as that means more holes. And thus more gridwork. It does look spectacular, though:


Well. It would look even better fully blocked... but that will take a little more time. I'm planning to switch back to the nightblue yarn after this grid bit is done. Then it's just one more chart to go, plus the bind-off - and the shawl will be done!

(After that... I have this wool for a sweater project all stashed up. I sense a sweater in my future.)

First of all: Poppies!


These guys are trying to take over the garden, and I actually do not mind at all...

 
And now a few links:

Jim Hines has done some gender-swapping of texts from classical SFF works, and a corresponding blog post about the differences between writing men and women.

If you need a geeky t-shirt for the summer, getdigital has a selection of geeky and nerdy stuff like this "Batoro T-Shirt", printed on fair-trade organic grown cotton. Yay!

In other news, I've been busy sorting out things, washing wool and making new distaffs. I've also made a bit of progress on the two-colour renaissance shawl:


I've finished with all repeats of chart E (I did one extra), and now I'm slowly working my way through F (who'd have thought?). I have also more or less figured out where I want to change back to the night-blue colour, though there's still a way to go. And I'll have to print out the final chart again, as I have all the other sheets (even though they look... mangled, and sport more than their fair share of stains and notes) only not the last one, which probably got re-purposed at some point.

Now the big question is - will I finish this thing before our summer break? Or not?

I've been knitting along in the evenings, and sometimes during my little afternoon break, and the two-colour shawl is progressing nicely:

[caption id="attachment_2484" align="alignnone" width="640"] Renaissance Shawl, Chart E finished once.


It's a beautiful knit, with a really well-written pattern, and I can memorise the sequences well enough to knit in front of the TV (if it's not too distracting, that is).  There's a second round of the chart E to go according to the pattern, and I will add at least another repeat if not even two for some extra length. I have more than enough yarn for that, and I'm not planning to block it very hard - I want the shawl to be cosy and warm, not lacy and airy. Hence also the sock wool, I do plan to really wear it!

I'm moderately happy with the place that I switched colours in; I could have done it a few rows earlier, in retrospective, that might have been even nicer. But it's non-obvious enough that I am basically switching colours inside a pattern, so I don't mind enough to rip back and re-knit.

[caption id="attachment_2485" align="alignnone" width="640"] Detail of the colour change part - a few rows earlier would have been even nicer...


One of the fun things of lace knitting for me, by the way, is figuring out the return rows. In this pattern, you're supposed to work back in pattern (that is knit all knit stitches and purl all purls), and Anne-Lise writes out the sequence in the pattern to help.

However... I am both lazy and a Combination knitter. Which means that, when I purl back, my stitches are aligned the other way around on the needle - instead of having the right leg of the stitch in front as would be the standard Western way, they have the left leg in front. This is no issue at all if you just knit into the stitch, or purl into it on the next row - you just stick your needle into it the right way, and your stitch will be untwisted and totally normal. It's also a non-issue if you do a standard ssk left-leaning decrease - you don't even need to slip the stitches, as they are already aligned correctly for the decrease. Just stick the needle in and knit both stitches at once.

Where it does become an issue, though, is for the k2tog (or kxtog) decrease. With the standard right-leg-in-front alignment, you just knit both (or x) stitches together. If the alignment is wrong, though, you need to re-align the stitches by slipping them individually and then re-transfer them to the left needle so you can work them together. Or you knit one, re-transfer it to the left needle and slip the other stitch (or x-1 stitches) over the knit one before re-transferring it back to the right.

All these maneuvers tend to annoy me, probably much more than they should. So what I do, instead, is work out where I have kxtog decreases coming up in the next right-side row... and when I'm working the row before that, I do a standard Western purl stitch there and only there. So my pattern sheets now have a lot of pencilled-in notes that look like this: P1, p3, k2, p7, k2, P2, p5, ... where the P with upper case means "do an awkward standard purl" and the lower case means "do the Combined knitting purl".

And this, I can tell you, is fun. At least for me. Because, one, the return row is less boring, and two, there is no re-alignment to be done for any of the decreases, which makes me feel extra-clever and pleases me no end...