Thursday, July 22, 2010

WIP's in da house.

For all the 'busyiness' during the day these last couple weeks, I've been a knitting fool lately at night. No stitching to speak of though the last couple weeks. (I *did* put a really good dent in the Watermelon LHN pattern the week before then and need to get back to that soon, methinks.)

I finally finished up my Spring Forward socks. Last we left this one, we were not on speaking terms because I had, quite tragically, knit the leg of the second sock too long............but didn't notice until I was at the very end. Grrrrr. So it was alllllll rippppppppppppppppppped back to the leg and redone.

Next up after that was a Haruni shawl. A friend had recently knitted up a GORGEOUS Haruni and talked me into trying one for myself. I had 1 1/2 skeins of DIC yarn leftover from the Stitches East show last fall that fit the bill just perfectly so this project was even a stash buster.

(This is not my knitting - the picture is from the sample.)

This knitted up very very quickly but I'm not going to lie: I was not always on speaking terms with this one either. *cough* The provisional cast on was murder, following the first 31 rows was murder: I'm talking ripping out one row for every two that I did. Mostly because I'm a dolt who 1) has a very hard time interpreting knitting charts and 2) I'm just a dolt who needs to LOOK DOWN once in a while and actually PAY ATTENTION to what I'm knitting. But things went on swimmingly and quickly from then until I got to the last 8 rows, where the chart changes up a bit, and WOW. FAIL. FAIL. FAIL. You know - because when your gut tells you you've screwed up somewhere, what do you do? KEEP ON KNITTING A FEW MORE ROWS HOPING IT WILL MAGICALLY GET BETTER ON IT'S OWN. We's not so smart, us knitters. So I had to painstakingly unknit 6 rows, each row having about 234511324121451234123 stitches in it by then. Painful.lesson.hopefully.learned.
The bad thing about knitting lace though is that it always look like CRAP once you are done. It just scoots up into a tight, wadded up ball of UGLY once it's off the needles until you wash/block the ever-loving-bejesus out of it. To that end, it is currently soaking in the sink and waiting for me to pin it.
Look at the water on the first soaking?? It was a crazy deep fuchsia. Took three rinsings before it stayed clear. Hopefully that's the last of it because I'm going to have to block this on the floor, because of it's large size, and I don't want my carpet turning pink.lol (Though I suppose that would be a good way to insure we finally deal with the new carpet or wood floor question we've been kicking around for a couple years.)

6 comments:

Margaret said...

Nice! I love your knitting. So pretty! I hope that shawl is good and doesn't run anymore. (Unless you really want that new carpet. :D )

Anonymous said...

Your Spring Forward sock is gorgeous! Isn't that a great pattern.

It's one of the few that I've knit more than once.

Minerva said...

That whole "ball of ugly" thing has always kept me away from knitting lace. Someday I'll get the courage up to try it. Lace socks are the closest I've come.

Meadows08 said...

I commend you and your knitting! Just the thoughts of it gives me heart palpatations!

Pumpkin said...

Awesome socks!

Wow, there's some extra dye in there ;o) Can't wait to see the final product.

Laurie said...

LOL at your description of lace and blocking. Ain't it the truth!

I love the yarn you used for the socks - reminds me of peppermint ice cream. :-)