I have to give you guys a lot of credit. If you want to watch speed knitting you are looking in the wrong blog. Because of my woeful inability to focus my attention on one task and finish it, you are forced to witness progress in tiny bites over multiple shawls. It's only gotten worse with menopause (or as we like to refer to it in my family, mean-o pause). With the demise of most of my hormones I find that I just run off and do whatever I want to whenever I want to. My inner-childish whispers in my head, "Bored with knitting Spider Queen? Well what the heck, lets knock off a row of the Wedding Ring Shawl!" and off we go "Wheee!" the roller coaster of lace knitting, that's me, and you all get to come along for the ride.
See above. I've finished 4 repeats of Spider Queen and have 1 and a third pattern repeats to go to finish the center. I am not doing the original border or edge so I can't really call it a "true" Spider Queen" after that. What will she do? you ask. Hell if I know. I will likely just take the border from another shawl pattern and modify it for Spider Queen. I've been looking at the border for the Unst Shawl and the one for the Christening Robe, both in Sharon Miller's, "Heirloom Knitting" book. I think I will deep-six the idea of having an actual "crown" in the border. I just haven't found one I like. I am up to row 142 of Boundary Waters Shawl's border (it goes to 171) and it's looking pretty nice with only one error that I fixed. I don't know about all of you, but I almost never have 100% error-free knitting. I usually have one or two Homer Simpson "good enough" fixes in them and only really sharp-eyed knitters can find them. Most people just enjoy the eye candy. And lastly, I'm up to row 20 of WRS. Not as nice stitch definition as misslacefayes because of my choice in yarn but still pretty nice by my standards. I have some nice cashmere/silk from ColourMartUK that I want to try and I know I will get nice clear stitches with that.
Speaking of ColourMartUK, they now have their own store/shop outside of their store on E-Bay which you can go to by clicking the hyperlink. I have to confess that I have purchased yet more laceweight yarn on that site even though I'm sure I will likely die before knitting all the stuff up that I already have.
In order to feel a little less like I'm hoarding, I have de-stashed a lot of my non lace related yarn (I used to do a lot of cable knitting) by giving it away to new knitters in my family. It's really good yarn since I have always bought nice yarn and there is no guilt at all when you give it away because you know they will love it and use it. I've seen several sweaters and scarves walking around in my ex-yarn and they look darned good! On top of that, I have high hopes to give away even more yarn as two more co-workers at my job have expressed a desire to either learn to knit or to have help to re-start knitting. For actual newbie's I usually bring nice yarn and some of my own circular needles to teach them. I don't have them buy anything at first because if they hate it, then they haven't wasted any money. Also, it's easier to "quality control" the yarn if you bring something you would use. Once they have knit with "good", it's much more difficult for them to justify buying cheap yarn. I have nothing against yarn that is inexpensive vs cheap. Cheap yarn feels bad in the hands and knits up worse. It creates a negative learning experience to knit with bad yarn. Inexpensive yarn may still be quite nice but cost-effective. In any case, I think something she can knit on a US 8 or US 9 is in order and Voila! you have an instant de-stash opportunity. I think I will stop now while I can still kid myself that I'm being virtuous. Good Night and Good Knitting!
