Wednesday, June 02, 2010

What I've Been Up To

I'm doing more paid design work of late, and I absolutely love it, but it forces me to keep the knitting secret. I can't share it with my world!

I've been (mostly) all about lace of late.

I'm into the second of a three-part lace series, in addition to the recently completed Shetland Skies shawl, another circular shawl idea that's cooking, a rectangular scarf, and a less-lacy triangle.

I love designing and knitting lace - but both elements can be an enormous challenge. This current one is a top-down triangle, and I had very specific ideas about how the patterning should line up. And it nearly killed me. I leafed through stitch libraries, and swatched; and then leafed through stitch libraries some more, and swatched again; and leafed and swatched, and leafed and swatched. There was also some serious use of foul language, and lots of drinking of coffee.



But after 3 days, I cracked it. And now all I have to do is knit it ;-). Aided by more coffee, of course. What also helps is that the yarn is some of the nicest I have ever used - laceweight cashmere in a gorgeous warm brown colour.



The colour is important because, as I might have mentioned, I drink a fair bit of coffee. And this way I don't have to worry if I spill any on the lace. The first in this series was worked in a powder blue colour, and I spent the entire time worried I was going to stain it.

And just in case you're worried that the Queen of Socks has forgotten all about socks, there is a quartet (!) of socks in the works, too, to be published somewhere nice a little later this summer. Let's just say that I'm having some fun mixing and matching colours.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi! Just checked into your blog..after traveling to China and back..I carry my knitting needles on all my trips..I carry both wooden and metal, circular, and dpn..I roll them into my projects..no problem until I was in Korea, when young man thought my crochet hook was questionable..I gasped..my grandmother's..it passed.