Eight rows left to knit. Yarn all gone. I knew I shouldn’t have whacked that spider.

This is a secret post, so no peeking Diane!

Has she gone?

Are you sure?

Then I’ll begin!

(more…)

So finally, after three hours, the Peacock Feathers Shawl is cast off and ready for blocking. That is, the cast off took three hours. Knitting a shawl in three hours would be quite a feat. Maybe one day…

I’ve not tried a crochet cast off before and as crochet and me are not the best of friends, I was dubious about it. I find that a lot of techniques that are useful actually use crochet, such as Emily Ocker’s circular cast on, so it’s a case of having to get to grips with the hook, really, if I want to do these things and to stop being a wuss. I’m a leftie, which doesn’t help matters, of course, but that’s just an excuse. And of course I wasn’t going to skimp on the cast off after spending so long on the shawl. So after a few false starts, I got the hang of it.

(and the photo doesn’t even show the cast off after all that! Pfft!)

It was slow progress, but I’m hoping for that “wow!” moment after blocking that will make it worthwhile. I would say I’m looking forward to not sitting on my bum and knitting furiously for a while, but there’s still another August birthday present to finish.

I realise I’m overdue with my weekly Mystery Shawl progress post. Anyone would think that I had started clue 3, made a mistake, tinked, dropped a stitch, couldn’t find it, frogged the whole thing, restarted, made another mistake even earlier in the pattern, frogged again and then started from scratch for the third time and am now finally just over a third of the way through clue 3… *blushes*

There will be an update post hopefully on Friday. I think I’ll have to leave Clue 4 for a while, though, as there’s a certain other project to finish which has a definite deadline.

So much of my recent knitting has been the unmentionable sort. What with knitting for the first two issues of The Inside Loop and then for a couple of secret projects that must remain un-named, it’s been hard to write an interesting post on here when the knitting content is missing.

But all that is over for now, at least. Though my knitting still has to remain unseen by prying wizard eyes. That means you, Cairi!

(more…)

Clue 2 of the Mystery Shawl was posted yesterday, and I imaginatively went for Chart D again. I think now I can stretch the shawl out a little more that Clue 1 is looking a little less scribbly, but looking at the shawls appearing on Ravelry, I’m wishing I did Chart A which has a nice, sweeping, swirly thing going on. But I can always knit another shawl, and once this one is finished and blocked, it will probably look better. And I’ve moved up to a 60cm circ now, which I’m hoping will be long enough to take me through to the end. Mainly because both of my 80cm Addi Lace needles are in use..!

I suppose Clue 3 onwards won’t be posted on here so soon after being released. Now with 288 sts and the next clue being 48 rounds, I imagine it’s going to take a tiny bit longer!

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’m taking part in the Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl Knitalong. Clue 1 was released yesterday - a day early - so I sat down yesterday evening and made a start. An advantage of only having part of the pattern at a time means that this project won’t distract me from my other knitting. At least, while each section is only a few rows.

This is Clue 1 completed in all its glory. Not much to see for an evening’s work. Most of the time was taken up with re-learning Emily Ocker’s Crochet Cast On. I used this for my last Pi Shawl and when I actually manage to do it, it works. And last night I had a lot of practice. I got to about round 10 of the shawl and my yarn snapped. I think due to inefficient spit-splicing on my part, though it didn’t make me feel any better. The worst part is trying to knit in the round with 9 stitches with yarn that’s as thin as sewing thread and bamboo dpns that are going in every direction but where I want them to go!

Anyway, after a break for a calming cup of tea and a toasted crumpet, I started again and this time managed to get to the end. For anyone reading this who is also knitting the shawl, I used Chart D. It doesn’t really look like anything much once it’s knitted up. I’m wondering if the pattern flows into the second section and so on; one disadvantage is not having a photo of the completed shawl to refer to so that I can be reassured that what I think looks like knitted scribble is actually a thing of beauty.