Progress

After at least six weeks, I have finally finished the edging on the Lerwick shawl. Feels good to have made some progress.

The yarn is 2/20 or 2/30 (can't read the label) which means extremely fine and the stitch pattern is worked on both sides - those two factors really slowed me down, plus there were 128 repeats of the 16 row pattern (36,864 stitches) - no wonder it took so long.

The last step was to graft the two ends together. I wanted to graft it in pattern and knew that would be really confusing even though it was only 15 stitches. I decided to make a swatch in a heavier yarn with the row that was to be grafted knit with a contrasting color that I could follow when I did the actual graft:

After my sweet husband set up some lighting so that I could see what I was doing, I was ready to begin the operation (he said it looked like I was performing surgery):

I removed the provisional cast on and put those stitches on a second dpn, checked five times to make sure that I didn't have the length of edging twisted and was correctly matching up the ends, hitched up my glasses for optimal magnification and began..........

TADA!

The next process is to pick up stitches (1,200+) along the straight edge (only took three tries to get it right) and knit the mitred border which is about 100 rows long - this could take a while - so far the four rows that I have knit took about 2 hours per row.

On Sunday I went to a spin-in at Barb's (I don't spin but the nice fiber ladies let me bring my knitting). A couple hours of knitting, eating, chatting - before I knew it I was ready to knit the toe on the second sock of a pair I've been working on since the start of the year. Always glad to finish the second sock! The pattern is a 7-stitch twisted rib cable. The yarn is by Neighborhood Fiber Company (purchased at The Loopy Ewe):

I had a lot of fun designing and knitting this colorful modular scarf in Crystal Palace Mini-Mochi purchased at The Kirkwood Knittery. The pattern is being test knit and then it will be available on Ravelry and on my blog through Ravelry (you don't need to be a member of Ravelry to purchase a pattern). The scarf is knit in garter stitch trapezoids, there are no seams. One length is knit with the first skein and the second length is attached as it is knit with the second skein:

This yarn is a very loosely spun fingering weight wool. It's very soft and has a pretty halo (makes it hard to rip out) with long repeats of various colors.

Inspiring Retail Designs

I can spend hours on the internet looking for inspiration and noting current knitwear trends on the websites of retailers (Dillards, Lord & Taylor, Nordstrom's, Bloomingdales, Ralph Lauren, Spiegel, Victoria's Secret, etc. etc.)

I had so much fun creating (knitting a knock off) of this sweater:

Here is my version:

Recently I noticed this sweater on the Victoria's Secret website:

The last few days I have been working on knitting something similar for myself not necessarily as a pattern to publish.  I'm using a yarn that I am "re-purposing" (that's a new term I keep hearing on HGTV - it seems to have replaced their catch phrase from last year "makes it pop") from an unfinished sweater that I frogged last week. Not my favorite yarn (Reynolds Mandalay, 100% silk) - if it doesn't work out I'll send it back to the bottom of the frog pond permanently.

Then coincidentally, yesterday I came across this blog of someone else admiring this type of design: Olgajazzy.

On the Duplicate Designing Phenomenon

There is a phenomenon that has been discussed on other knitting blogs across the net, and even noted by Lily Chin at a last month's Greater St. Louis Knitters' Guild event: it is quite common for designers to come up with very similar designs at nearly the same time.

I talked about this on my July 13 post below relating to the stitch pattern used in the ever popular Monkey Socks.

This morning I woke to find this thread on Ravelry: http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/patterns/323852#reply_form.

If you're not on Ravelry, Krystofer came up with a sock design that he also didn't realize was essentially the same as Monkey socks: http://queerknits.blogspot.com/.

So 'unventing' applies not only to technique, but also to design.

Updates

Woven Diamonds Faroese Shawl Classes.........
The class at Kirkwood Knittery was a lot of fun and I learned a bit about teaching.  It was rewarding to see several of my 'students' complete their shawl...here's a photo of JoAnn's shawl before blocking:

Barb's been working on her shawl but her grandson put a crimp in her progress.....you might say that this shawl is so much fun even babies eat it up!

I'll be teaching this class again, this time at Knit 'n Caboodle starting in September.  Contact Knit and Caboodle in St. Charles, MO or watch for information in their newsletter if you're interested in taking this class.

Patterns now also available at Loopy Ewe............
the patterns for Woven Diamonds Faroese, Ariel Socks and Man's First Socks are now available at Loopy Ewe.

UPDATE 09/24/2008 - Woven Diamonds Faroese pattern is also available through my Ravelry Pattern Store or by clicking the link at the right hand side of this page in my 'profile' section.

The three patterns are also available at Kirkwood Knittery and Knit and Caboodle.

Also be sure to check out the Flower Scarf - it is a quick project that uses approximately 150 yards of laceweight yarn. I knit this one with cashmere/silk from Hand Maiden.

It's a FREE PATTERN!

Guild Workshops.....

Last weekend the Greater St. Louis Knitter's Guild hosted workshops by Lily Chin for Guild Members.

Friday evening she spoke about What to Look For in Yarn and gave some tips to help evaluate various yarns and how they behave.  She talked about her stash (so large it has it's own storage space lease), gave some great and amusing ideas for places to store your stash, and advice about why one should not feel guilty for having a stash.

Saturday morning I attended her workshop on Pinstripe Knitting and came away with a lot of ideas for using that technique.

Saturday afternoon the subjects were Design Inspiration and Interpreting Fashion Trends.

Lily brought along a lot of her original garments - very cool to see and touch actual garments that have appeared in magazines and books.  I got to be one of the models which was a lot of fun.

I very much enjoyed meeting and chatting with Lily.  It was really a great event.