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...

I'm back home from a very big, very interesting fair - the Nadelwelt really was huge! There were a lot of stalls catering to all imaginable needs around modern textile crafting - buttons, bands, patterns (including patterns custom-made or customised to your measurements), threads, clasps, fabrics and inlays, quilting and patchworking ideas, sewing machines, embroidery machines, needles - you name it, it was probably there.

There were also a few other spinners, such as the Handspinngilde, and of course several places selling knitting yarns, though I think Margit was the only one selling naturally dyed yarns - and I was the only stop for historical supplies. We stood out a little with that... as we usually do when at a fair.

I managed not to buy lots of things there, in spite of all the tempting things. I bought a few clasps for stitch markers (I have beautiful handmade glass beads for these)... and, because I really, really don't need any more yarns...


... I at least did my shopping close to home. At home in our own stall, so to say.

I've been in love with Margit's colourway "Kürbis" (pumpkin, guess which one of the colours that is) since I first saw it and realised that I can actually wear that colour. So this time, after hanging out right beside these skeins for two days.. I gave in.

These three guys are going to turn into a two-coloured Renaissance Shawl, and because it's only half as bad to buy more yarn if you do it for a specific project and cast on straight away, I did:


I'm knitting it with 3 mm needles, so it's fairly tight - but I want to actually wear this one, and use it for warmth when needed, so it suits me well. And the yarn is wonderfully cushy and soft. The middle part (with the leaf pattern) will be knit in the wonderfully bright orange Kürbis colour, and the start and end in the nightblue in the picture.

Now I only need more knitting time..

It's amazing how a few days can lead to a huge heap of emails in the inbox, and some increase of length of the to-do-list - but it was wonderful to have these few days off over Easter and spend time with friends as well as outside for some hiking.

Not only emails have piled up, though - there are also a few interesting links that came in during the last few days!

First of all, and very exciting - you might know that the Incans used textiles to keep records: khipus, which are strings marked with knots. The exact method of how these strings were knotted, and how to decipher them, are yet unknown. There's a little hope that this might change, though. In an excavation about 100 km south of Lima, archaeologists have found several khipus in a storage house, in some cases buried under the produce they were possibly documenting. Research on these khipus and how to decipher them is now going on, and the storage khipus might be helpful in deciphering the non-mathematical content of this very special type of textile records.

Also textile-related, but modern: There's a crowdfunding project for a business going on to bring a twisting machine to the Hebrides, helping knitters turn wool singles (spun for tweed weaving) into plied knitting yarns. If you decide to support this and get a reward, you might consider upping your pledge to account for shipping, as my suspicion is that shipping costs and reward materials will cut considerably in what is left after the campaign.

Now it's nose back to the grindstone, the cat is back on the desk "helping" (take your paw off the touchpad, please, little cat), and purring contentedly. Hm. Maybe she'll do some of the email sorting for me?

 

Remember when I said there would be a hat in my future? The future, it has come, and the hat is finished!

I spent a while knitting up the sides, finally reaching the next interesting part - the brim...

[caption id="attachment_2231" align="alignnone" width="640"] Knitting the double-layered brim...


which is folded over and then cast off to make the double layer, using a three-needle bind-off.

[caption id="attachment_2230" align="alignnone" width="640"] Closeup of the brim in progress. The really interesting part is not yet started, though!


Binding off, for me, is always a little weird. I'm sort of feeling three things at the same time - happiness that the item is finally finished (or almost finished, with the end very much in sight), a little bit of sadness that it's over and I don't get to knit longer or more with the lovely yarn, and annoyance because binding off always takes a good long while (or at least it feels that way to me).Then the hat was finished... and looking very blobby.

[caption id="attachment_2229" align="alignnone" width="640"] It's finally finished! Though still looking very unspectacularly and blob-like.


So it went off to take a little bath, and afterwards it became great friends with a dinner plate, and the two got very close and hung out together.

[caption id="attachment_2228" align="alignnone" width="640"] Cute couple, the hat and the plate, right? (The plate is standing on a glass jar, by the way.)


[caption id="attachment_2227" align="alignnone" width="640"] The hat on the plate, seen from the top. I really love these spiral patterns!


And now it's dry... so yay, new hat! And it is still cold enough outside to wear it!

 

I posted a while ago about the exhibition on knitwear used during WWI, but I didn't mention in that short blogpost how the exhibition idea originated. The reason for this knitting project was a film about two young men going off to war. The film is based on a true story of one family.

The film has been all finished now, and it's available through vimeo, where you can either rent or buy it. There's also a trailer (free to watch, of course) that is already featuring quite a few bits and pieces of beautiful knitting.

Speaking of knitting - my own hat knitting has only progressed very little over the weekend. I'm working on the sides of the hat now, and there's still a good bit (about 12 cm or so) to go before I can get started on the brim (which is the most fun part of the whole pattern).

[caption id="attachment_2210" align="alignnone" width="640"] The hat in progress. Sloow progress... as it's often the case for me.


The one single earring in the knitting marks the edge of the flat crown and start of the cylindrical part, the other ones are my usual stitch markers. I really like to use earrings (the small hoop type) as stitch markers - they are small, they are pretty, they are available in different designs so you can mark different spots, they can be opened and all that gives me a perfect excuse to buy some from time to time. (I like the look of them. I even had my ears pierced ages ago, but I'm not a wear-earrings-daily type of person, and wearing them occasionally only always led to pain and infection... so I stopped wearing them altogether, and now I'm getting the earring-fix through knitting.)