Weeping Willow

I greatly enjoy the shawl patterns from Two Old Bags. This one is Weeping Willow. Details:

• Weeping Willow Shawl from Two Old Bags
• Yarn: Zephyr, 50 percent silk/50 percent merino, color Elderberry (wonderful yarn, wonderful!)
  
• Needles: 4mm (US6)
• Finished size: 35 inches center back

I added 8/0 Japanese seed beads to the center of the diamonds, along one of the chevron and at the tips of the edging. The beads are nearly the same color as the yarn because I wanted to add a bit of sparkle and weight but did not want the beads to overwhelm the pattern or the yarn.

Two Unrelated Cool Things

Cool Thing No. 1: My friends Nancy and Michael framed the doily that I knit. Nancy selected this one, Egeblad, as a housewarming gift for their new home in Tucson. I like the way they framed it. I feel like my work is hanging in an art gallery.

Cool Thing No. 2: We spent two days in East Wenatchee, Washington, bottling wine for Fielding Hills. We helped bottle about 200 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon during our first shift and about 200 cases of the Tribute red blend during our second shift. No photos of the bottling line because we were working.

We enjoyed good company and hard work in a beautiful orchard setting.

And good meals with plenty of Fielding Hills' excellent wines.

One of My Favorites

The Fiber Trends Versatile Scarves pattern is one of my favorites because it is so — well, versatile. Any weight of yarn, any amount of yarn over about 200 yards, solid or variegated — whatever suits you. The pattern has three versions: triple eyelet border, basic garter and eyelet lace.

The particulars of my scarf:

• Pattern: Triple Eyelet Border from Fiber Trends Versatile Scarves
• Yarn: Unique Designs by Kathy Withers; kid mohair, shetland, angelica; 270 yards/2.8 ounces
• Needles: 4mm (US6)
• Finished size: 14 inches back neck length

Fluent Steps

From time to time, I was at the Museum of Glass when artist Martin Blank was making the pieces for his work Fluent Steps. The work was installed and dedicated earlier this month. I love this piece.

Learn more about Fluent Steps here and here.

Yes, I am still knitting. Stay tuned.

Garden Party

Back to knitting. Concurrent with working on the garden, I finished the Garden Party Shawl from Two Old Bags (coincidence?). What's great about this shawl is that the shoulder shaping gives a U-shaped neckline so the shawl stays on better. And I really like the ruffles.

• Pattern: Garden Party Shawl by Two Old Bags (the picture on the front of the pattern does not do justice to the pattern).
• Yarn: Black Water Abbey two-ply fingering organic wool in Dark Welsh, 400 yards/3 ounces; approximately 720 yards total.
  
• Needles: US5
• Finished size: 23 inches center back.
  

Mooch supervises both the garden and the knitting, but participates in neither.

Time for Gardening

We interrupt this knitting blog to talk about the garden. It is finally warm enough to plant in my new planting boxes. This is very exciting. I planted lettuce, spinach, carrots, radishes, and Chioggia and golden beets. I also planted English peas and sugar snap peas in another part of the garden. Potatoes will be planted soon.

I usually wait until late May or early June to plant tomatoes and peppers. Our summer really starts after July 4.

The other edible parts of the garden include a Royal Anne cherry tree, a Gravenstein apple tree, a purple plum tree, lots of raspberries, three blueberry bushes, a few strawberry plants, and a lot of herbs.

We are fortunate to have several excellent farmers' markets nearby for plants and other food. At the first market of the season, we bought some blackberry honey and some hummus made with garbanzo beans and Riesling grapeseed oil.

I'm hungry now. Back to knitting.

Flutter

The first time I saw a picture of this scarf, I knew I had to knit it. It is the Flutter Scarf from MimKnits.

• Yarn: Malabrigo Lace, 470 yards/50 grams, 1 skein. Can't remember the color name.
• Needles: 3.25mm
• Finished size: 7 inches x 60 inches

It was fun to knit and looks like a scarf that will get a lot of wear (and compliments). I probably will knit this pattern again and again and again.

Another Lily of the Valley

Lily of the Valley seems to be a popular motif, from Niebling (see previous post) to Nancy Bush. This is Nancy Bush's Lily of the Valley scarf from Knitted Lace of Estonia. I want to knit everything in this book. Everything. All of it. Even with nupps and even with having to Kitchener the body to the border.

The yarn I used is very, very slippery, which made the nupps more of a challenge, but the I think the yarn and pattern are a good match. The secret to nupps — clearly stated in the book and elsewhere — is to make them very, very loose.

The details:

• Yarn: Naturally Dawn, 50 percent wool, 50 percent silk; 171yards/25 grams; 3 skeins; color Creme
• Needles: 3.25mm
• Finished size: 8 inches wide x 65 inches long

Lily of the Valley

Doilies are fun to knit. This one is Lily of the Valley by Herbert Niebling from the new Anna Burda magazine.

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Details:

• Thread: Kordonnet 80, made in Slovakia, purchased in Prague a few years ago
• Needles: 1.5mm
• 94 rounds
  
• Finished size: Approximately 18 inches in diameter

UFO No More

I started these more than a year ago but stalled after I finished the first mitten minus the thumb. I kept them readily available to remind me to finish them. I am glad that I finally finished them, although our coldest mitten-wearing weather is over for this year (I hope).

I am not crazy about color knitting — give me lace knitting any day — but I decided to challenge myself with these.

• Pattern: Annemor #13 from Selbuvotter by Terri Shea
• Yarn: Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift, 2 skeins black, one skein of a color called Fog
• Needles: Knit the ribbing with 2.25mm needles and the remainder with 2.75mm

Key to success with the patterns in this book is to enlarge the charts so you can see what you are doing and to keep marking off where you stop and start.

These mittens were not the oldest UFO (unfinished object, for you non-knitters) in my knitting bag. And that's all I am going to say about UFOs.

Oooh! Sparkles!

My friend Bridget sends the best, most creative Christmas presents. This year it was a skein of Tilli Tomas Salt & Pepper yarn in a shade called Fitler, which is a square in Philadelphia near Bridget's home. How cool is that? It's spun silk and teeny little beads (hope you can see the beads here).

The pattern is a Turkish Stitch scarf from Loop Knits, knit on US9 needles. Knitting took some care to not split the silk strand and the bead strand (beads are on a separate, very fine thread). The finished sized is about 6 inches wide by 54 inches long.

It's very luxurious to wear. And perfect for Valentine's Day!

Wool in the Desert

Why, you might ask, is Nancy standing in 70-degree sunshine, surrounded by cacti, wearing a wool scarf? Because she is modeling her new scarf.

She purchased the brown-ish yarn (136 yards) from Unique Designs by Kathy; I paired it with two skeins of Jo Sharp DK in a color called Orchard. The result is a brioche stitch scarf with random stripes, 8 inches wide by 64 inches long.

Now she needs some cold weather to provide a proper environment for her scarf.

A Winter Hat

My gift in the Puyallup Knitting Guild holiday gift exchange was this pattern and yarn for a winter hat. Twined knitting. Not my favorite type of knitting, with all of the twisting and untwisting, but the hat and yarn were so pretty that I was willing to give it a go. That, and Joyce egged me on: "You can do this, you can do this."

The timing was excellent because we have had a cold winter and this is a snuggly, soft, warm hat with earflaps. I really like this hat, and I even warmed up (a little bit) to twined knitting.

The details:

• Lisa Ellis Designs Basic Twined Ski Hat
• Yarn: Crystal Palace Taos, 100 percent wool, 1 skein (128 yards), color 02 Gila Bend; trim is Cascade 220 in a sage green from stash
  
• Needles: US6
• Finished size: Adult

Jeanne's Shawl

My friend Jeanne thought that her 80-something-year-0ld mother would enjoy having a shawl. Seemed like a good idea to me.

Eventually, Jeanne selected a Faroese shawl because the shaping would stay on her mother's shoulders better than a triangle or a rectangle. Then she choose the Alka pattern from Myrna Stahman's book on Faroese shawls and seaman's scarves.

The yarn presented a challenge: soft, not too heavy, not too light, no wool, machine wash and dry. With the help of Ravelry's yarn index, I found that Knit Picks CotLin, a DK-weight cotton-linen blend, met my requirements. Jeanne chose the color Lantana.

Knitting on US7 needles, I used about nine skeins, 1,100 yards. I used the leftover yarn to make a few face cloths for Jeanne.

Jeanne gave the shawl to her mother for Christmas and it was a hit. Her mom seemed quite taken with the idea that someone would hand-knit a shawl just for her. She joyfully modeled it before all of her friends and relatives (that's not her in the photo, that's me).

Sun Break

Our escape to Tucson to visit friends gave us a much-needed break from winter. Although it rained a few days, we generally enjoyed a week of warm, sunny days and desert life.

One of our excursions took us to Kathy and her critters. My friend Nancy (below) had sent me some of Kathy's wonderful hand-spun, hand-dyed yarns, so it was a pleasure to meet Kathy and some of her animals.

White Pre-Christmas

A winter storm has covered the Puget Sound region with snow. It may not look like much compared to what others typically experience in winter, but we are not very good at dealing with snow. We don't get it often enough or heavy enough to invest in millions of dollars of snow-removal equipment, and the hills that make up our communities make driving — and even walking — treacherous. Road travel, air travel, ferry travel and bus travel are heavily curtailed by common sense as well as blocked roads.

My backyard. Yes, I should have pruned the rose bushes a little more.

The boxes are new raised garden beds.

The good news is that being trapped at home for several days offers more knitting time and more time with our new cat, Mooch. Mooch started hanging around about two years ago. The neighbors named him Mooch because he regularly cadged meals from their house. Long story short: A neighbor three blocks away is involved with cat rescue. She rescued Mooch, recognizing that he is well adapted to living with people. We learned his story when she called after we gave him a collar with a name tag and phone number.

So Mooch is now part of the household. And he does not especially care for snow.

Holiday Shawlette

I like bright colors most of the time, but especially during the winter. This small shawl, which is Rene' Wells' Bison Shawlette from Luxury One-Skein Wonders fits the bill for the holidays. Rene' cleverly uses three triangles to good effect so the shawl fits nicely over the shoulders.

The yarn is not bison or buffalo. It's Takhi Twiggy Tweed, a discontinued wool yarn. I think I knit six repeats of the main pattern. I put small beads on the bottom points to add a little weight to the bottom. You can't see the beads because they match exactly the color of the yarn, but they do their intended job.

Bhutan Treasure

My friends know that I enjoy all sorts of textiles and fiber-y things. Friends who have traveled extensively in Bhutan gave me this lovely cotton weaving they bought in 1988. It's huge, 8 feet long by 4.5 feet wide. It makes a great sofa throw. The people who gave it to me have used their Bhutanese textiles as tablecloths!

It's a lovely piece and its bright colors warm up dreary Northwest winter days.

Mixed Results

The yarn is as soft as butter and the color is rich with the glow of silk. However, as you can see, the color is wildly different in each of the two skeins; one is far greener than the other. I expected some difference — the yarn is advertised as such — but this was a lot of difference. Also, when I washed it, it bled like a stuck pig.

I know I could have alternated the skeins, but I (and the recipient) wanted to maximize the length of the scarf. The recipient is happy with the result. If anyone asks, I will attribute the color difference to "design feature."

• Yarn: Alchemy Synchronicity, 50 percent silk, 50 percent wool, 2 skeins, 118 yards per skein, color name Dragon
  
• Needles: US6 (4mm)
• Finished size: 6 inches by 58 inches

The pattern is an easy one that I learned somewhere but cannot remember where. It is a pattern that works for many types of yarn when nothing else seems to. It is a multiple of 4 plus 2:

Row 1: Knit
Row 2: Knit 2, purl 2, end knit 2

Of course, you can vary the number of knits and purls to suit yourself and your yarn. And you can add slipped edge stitches if you prefer that look (I do).

I Love This Book

The book is "Knitted Lace of Estonia" by Nancy Bush. This pattern is the Raha Scarf. I happened to have a skein of qiviut that decided it needed to be this scarf.

• Yarn: Moco 100 percent musk ox qiviut, 1 ounce, 220 yards; this is the softest yarn I've ever used
  
• Needles: US4
• Finished size: 4.5 inches wide by 62 inches long (although I could probably block it slightly wider and shorter)

This book has so many beautiful patterns that I want to cast on for all of them immediately.