Saturday again

Slowly on the mend. Still not back at work, though. The quack told me to stay at home and rest for "at least a month" because "you have been quite ill, you know." Thus, I have plenty of time to knit.

The scrawl is done:



All the details are in the Finished Objects blog (link in the sidebar).

Great fun to wear, simplicity itself to knit. Good fun all round really.

Ene's scarf has been photographed on the bod by #1 daughter, again all the info on the FO blog.



Casting around for something else to do, I took up the lace weight Artisan Merino and started the Shetland Triangle from "Scarf Style":



It looks like nothing on this earth. I really want to use this yarn. I can't see how one could knit anything but lace with it but all the patterns I have tried do it no favours whatsoever. I bought four skeins of it to make the Mystery Shawl. I used only a very small amount and now find myself with two and a bit skeins clouting round the house, staring at me from the knitting basket hanging thingie (technical term) and whispering "Knit me, knit me." My only trouble is what to knit with it. Any and all suggestions gratefully received. There has been quite a bit of discussion on one or other of the lace lists I belong to (and I belong to so many I can't pin down exactly which one) about the use of variegated yarn for lace. The general consensus seems to be you either like it, or you don't. I'm starting to think I am in the second camp and I really wish I wasn't.

It doesn't look any better in a close-up:



I've ripped it out.

Work continues on the Romance Shawl. I'm almost to the point where I have to decide what to do about the double border. Do I use some yarn from the Stash (possibly the blasted variegated stuff above); do I dye some of the same yarn I'm using for the body of the shawl and leave the body white; do I dye the body one colour and the same yarn for the border another colour; do I leave the whole lot in the knitting basket and think about something else? It's all such hard work.

In order to put off the moment of truth I've taken the coward's way out and started another shawl. (Someone in the comments once accused me of being "shawl obsessed" - at the time I denied it vehemently, now, I'm not so sure.) This is to be a shawl of my own devising. A square shawl knitted in the round from the centre out and incorporating stitch patterns based on Sea and Shore. I think it's going to be called "She Sells Sea Shells" or "4S" for short. I'm busy trying to learn how to use Excel to chart lace and have joined (yet another) group to help with this. It is slow work but progress is being made. There are no pictures yet because I want to unveil the whole thing with a flourish at the end. Watch this space.

Saturday back field:



is a bit of a cheat this week. I took a picture but you really couldn't see the river (Stour, in case anyone has a burning desire to know) and how it was just about to take over the whole field. I sent #1 daughter out with the camera to get this shot from just up the road. You get the idea.

Kat was asking what blocking was. I could go on at great length but other people have done that far better than I ever could. I refer you to the Knitting Beyond the Hebrides Lace Symposium. Specifically the section on blocking. She speaks of using a cotton thread through the points - I use fishing line. (You can imagine the chap's face in the fishing tackle shop as I tried to explain what I wanted to do with said fishing line.) She also talks about how nice it would be to have a sheet marked off in squares to aid with the blocking. Though she has never managed to find one - I have. It's an Indian cotton bedspread that 'im indoors brought back from India with his own hands. Long before he met me (and I've known him over twenty years). He must have had a premonition about a knitter in his future. It works a treat.