Knit Club @ Wool Bath

Finally, I came around to taking some pictures of our knit club this week. See the absence of biscuits and other treats? We were good this Wednesday and only had one packet of biscuits and, admittedly, one cake, both unintentionally but expertly hidden in the photos. Of course Laura offered us tea and coffee again so we were well cared for. There were quite a few of us and we had two dogs come to visit us as well. It was fun as always with lots of chatting, laughs, and knitting advice (not to mention networking with potential colleagues/employers).

I arrived in time to grab a seat on the comfy sofa and had enough space to spread out my knitting. I was struggling with getting the edging of my shawl started and connected to what I had already knitted. Luckily, it is easy now that I have done a part of it and I simply have to knit a 16-row repeat all the way round. Tiring, yes, but also worth it in the end, I'm sure.

It is always hard to knit in such a lovely shop and not come home with new yarn. Most of the time, I manage to resist. Alas, this time I couldn't wait any longer and bought a beautiful skein of Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace, the same I am making the shawl from. This time, though, I bought it in teal. The image doesn't even do it justice. It's just too pretty not to buy. Though I had nothing in particular in mind for it when I bought it, I think I shall knit the Bachforelle shawl in it instead of using Noro Kureyon. Should be lovely!

Progress and Further Projects

Print o' the Wave is progressing nicely and I am working on the edging now. It is a bit frustrating how the edging alone is done with two different methods: picking up all the stitches around the edge and knitting around it only to knit the lacy edging onto it by knitting the last stitch of the WS rows together with the shawl. I would have preferred to do it all in one go and seeing how this very same pattern seems to show up under different names on Ravelry, I wouldn't be surprised if someone had actually done it. That really annoys me.

Anyway, it should be done in a short while unless I get distracted. That said, I am not in any particular hurry at the moment. Also, I haven't yet bought the beads I need for the next project.

Right now I am waiting to buy The Knitter's fourth issue from a Raveler so that I can finally knit the Katerina Shawl I saw in it. This was the first issue I decided not to buy because there was only one pattern in it that I liked. However, I kept thinking about that shawl so I simply have to have it now. One thing I better not think about is the cost of the yarn needed for it!

A Maritime Theme

In my last post I wrote about the pattern for Kleine Bachforelle that was confusing me. I think I may have found the problem now: my printer. While asking for help with the patterns at yesterday’s knit club, I realised that the boxes in the chart that looked like knit stitches actually had faint marks in them. My printer’s fault entirely. It turns out that those boxes were meant to be YOs, which explains my confusion. Let’s hope that is all the trouble I will have with this pattern because I am very much looking forward to knitting it. I will need to pre-knit it, I think, just to see how it goes. Until then I won’t buy the beads I plan to use, though the wait is killing me.

Since I seem to have been bitten by the bead bug now, I couldn’t resist having a look at Bijoux Beads in Bath yesterday. At first I was just trying to find beads for the pattern, but, as I suspected, they do not sell those. Instead, I got drawn in by all those colourful beads around the room and ended up buying some to make fishy stitchmarkers to go with Kleine Bachforelle.

The fish charms are in silver and gold and I am actually thinking about using them along the edges of Kleine Bachforelle in the end. Very tempting! The golden fish stitchmarkers have an aqua goldstone square bead that seemed far too large at first. In the end, it turned out to be an excellent match for the fish, though. For the silver fish, I used peacock glass trumpet beads instead that look a little undersized in comparison. They are still lovely markers nonetheless. Each marker uses white glass pearl beads (4 mm) as separaters, and they are strung onto a light blue tiger tail thread. To hold everything in place, I simply used silver crimp beads. Et voila!

These markers were quick to make and one of the ladies at the knit club said I ought to make some and sell them on Etsy. Maybe someday. I am already using these ones for Print o’ the Wave.

Speaking of which, I have finally taken a photo of this work in progress. Seems a bit pointless as you can’t see the pattern until it is all done and blocked. Still, you can see the lovely soft and shiny Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace yarn here. It is beautiful to knit with and the best thing is probably to use wooden needles with it. I am not, so the yarn is quite slippery. By now I have finished 30 of the 37 repeats I need before I can knit the edging. Not far to go now!

WIP: Print o' the Wave and a New Project

I am making progress with Print o' the Wave. For the most part, my issues with the number of stitches has magically resolved itself. Even though I happened to have an extra stitch sometimes, you can't actually tell when you look at the result. At least that's the impression I have so far without have a blocked shawl. It may be quite a different matter once it's been stretched to within an inch of its life.

The Scrumptious lace yarn is incredibly soft and I love knitting with it. So far I have finished 27 of the 34 lace pattern repeats for the centre panel, so the end is slowly coming into sight. As such, it doesn't really take long to knit, I have the impressen. Still, last evening I timed my knitting and it turns out I need about an hour for just one repeat over 12 rows. I am looking forward to the final result and hope making the edging will be straightforward.

However, since I have only been knitting this shawl without having any other projects going, I also can't wait to start something new. Particularly, having all this new yarn at home isn't helping matters. I have found use for one of the new skeins of Noro Kureyon I bought in Exeter (where I didn't knit a single stitch for a week despite having my shawl with me). I want to make the Kleine Bachforelle, a german pattern that is also available as an English translation. That said, I wll most likely use the English one since I am not that used to German knitting terms despite my being German. The pattern also uses beads, so right now I am on the lookout for the kind of 4mm Rocailles that our local bead shop does not seem to have. Looks like an online purchase is in order sometime soon. I guess if I already had the beads, I'd start that pattern right now!

Image: Ute Sturm (Ravelry)

I will try to make that shawl twice as wide if I can. I am a little confused by the pattern because it looks far too confusing for such a simple thing. I hope I can get my head around it.