Road Knitting

I had a lovely weekend, on the road to visit Charleston SC (about 90 minutes away) and Folly Beach, just outside of Charleston.

I like to knit in the car but need something easy, as this really nice guy I know was driving. (I also keep knitting in the car during the work day, in case I need a knitting fix while parked, or happen on to a really long red light).  I am working on this

It's a center square for another hap shawl, but no patterning.  I will keep this one in the car so it may be a long time to the finish...

The yarn is the  beautiful Mountain Colors.   This yarn is River Twist, its supposed to look like handspun.  This yarn is 2 ply 100% merino and lovely and springy and soft.  A joy to work with.  I do love a springy kinda wool to knit with.  They have more yarns than last year, and the Winter Lace wool-silk blend in laceweight is calling to me...

Here are some pix from the Folly Beach

Laughing gulls (larus atricilla) flanked by 

ringed-bill gulls (larus delawarensis)

A larger view with pale blue ocean

Loved this "shell trader  take one, leave one"

Common Sand pipers  (Actitis hypoleucos)

 Big jellyfish, couldn't id, didn't touch it or eat it...

 

Vernal Equinox: Low Fiber Content

I've been having fun documenting the spring popping up around here, and I JUST realized that the vernal equinox is past.  It was Sunday the 20th, at 23:21, UTC, coordinated universal time. If you wanna know more about UTC, you can read it here. 

Here are signs of spring where I live

Carolina jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens) 

Viburnum (don't know which) not yet fully out

Rosemary in bloom next to the birdbath

Loropetalum chinense ("Chinese fringe flower) in bloom at the left of the birdbath and feeder

A better closeup of the pink fringes

Fuschia azalea about to pop

Mom's white azalea in my living room

This very nice person for whom I knit some socks trucked over some incredibly heavy railroad ties and put in a serious garden for me (before, I had just been faking it), here it is in progress

I think I owe him more socks

Crack Silk Haze

I thank my friend Nancy for informing me not long after I met her in Scotland in 2009 that I was working with not "Kid Silk Haze" but something more commonly known as "crack silk haze" due to high rates of physiologic addiction.  At the time I was working on this:

Evelyn A. Clark's Shetland Triangle Shawl,  a good choice for this trip considering that we went to Shetland.  It is done in fir cone lace, the same as this scarf from a previous post. Of course, most Shetland shawls are squares, so Evelyn's is aptly named.

I put some dainty little beads on the border.  Hard to notice them.  I'm sure I threaded them on, it was before I knew how to use a crochet hook to get them on.  I doubled the yarn on this to make it easier to work with, also so I could blend a little between colors.

Nancy had finished the Modern Quilt Wrap 

from it.  Also quite marvelous.  Apparently the pattern is free

I decided after this shawl that I could probably handle one strand.  I now have two more crack silk haze projects going, and am almost done with one.  Here's a preview:

 You know, cats easily get addicted to crack silk haze too

Camellia in bloom as of last week

FO: Socks

His socks:  done.  First pair I've finished in a long time.  I like Anne's pattern, The Sock Pattern to End All Sock Patterns.

I do know sock pattern ratios in my head, but this pattern was helpful with using my gauge to the intended's foot.  I think it came up a little short, and I was too impulsive to add length.  But the width is great.  I do think my gauge on 4 double points does tend to vary during knitting.  But they are very pretty and I love the yarn, Online's Supersocke 100. Very very soft, contains some angora.

OK and why DOES my "Christmas" cactus bloom closer to spring equinox than winter solstice?  Perhaps its age (5) has caused it to revert to more normal blooming tendencies, as the light increases??  Worth waiting for...

 

Garter Lace Shawl Recovery

OK, so I've had an idea.  I'm going to abandon the Wild West shawl for now, and do something simpler. I've started a plain triangular garter shawl.

I'm planning on finishing the bottom of the shawl with a very simple garter lace pattern and lace border that I can intuit easily.  I am hoping that it will look a little like a traditional Faroese natural brown yarn/garter lace combination, although not with Faroese shaping.

I love the addi turbo I'm working on...go get some if you don't have any...I usually use a wooden needle with a slipperier yarn like this one, but it's a good combination.  I'm hooked.

In the meantime, here's a bit more spring for you.  The only poem I know by heart is this one

                                                  Loveliest of Trees

LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

                                                 A.E. Housman

The ornamental cherry trees are in full bloom here in the low country of South Carolina

I love an allée don't you?

Garter Lace Frustration

OK so I think that this may be too much for me at this time, or maybe just the wrong combination of stuff.  I frogged this at least 5 times at the beginning.  I was still having a hard time seeing the pattern with the dark, slippery yarn.  After about 20 rows I felt I was getting the hang of it.  But...just now, I thought I would do 2 more rows before taking a photo to post, and  dropped a stitch.  Couldn't recover, frogged back 5 rows, I think.  It may be time to put this away till frustration subsides.

On the other hand, you may be able to tell that I have a new camera.  Photography inclined sons talked me in to a new Nikon digital SLR.  Don't ask me details, I haven't gotten beyond the quick start sheet.  But it takes a fine photo.

 B took that.

Another nice thing, it's spring here in SC. Hope you have spring soon, too.

Istex and Lopi Lace Weight

I got a scanner  for Christmas with the intent of scanning old family photos for my ancestry.com records.  (I  believe that online and digital storage media will replace those genealogy trees recorded on crunchy brittle old pieces of paper, and want to get information in newer format for my boys, when they turn 50 and go through the middle-years-genealogy-discovery-developmental-stage).  

At any rate, I'm also having fun scanning fiber-y photos that I can't locate in digital storage and just did some from a trip to Istex in Iceland. 

Here is part of the story, reproduced from an earlier post:

I was lucky to go to Iceland in the summer of 2006. I dragged my poor Mom on the bus out of Reykjavik to Mossfellsbaer to the Istex store. It was a little desolate, no signs like “this way to Lopi” or anything, just the two of us alone on a bus in a foreign country where the driver spoke some non-Germanic language and no English, no wonder Mom was nervous, I was a little too but the call of the fiber soothed me…. once there, I found this great lace weight which I hadn’t seen before. The store is great and the ladies most helpful, after we finished shopping they gave us a ride in the Alafoss Lopi logo bus to Halldor Laxness’ sort of nearby home-museum, he is Iceland’s Nobel Laureate for fiction. I’d highly recommend the trip out of Reykjavik to go there, lovely shop, lots to look at for us fiber junkies and really at-the-source. Maybe now the bus has an ad for it!  

It was only a 40 minute bus ride, I should add.

Here we are in front of the store, which was amazing 

 

Lopi logo bus with sweet driver

 I knit a peacock tail lace stole which is a little short from Lopi lace weight

 I do love the ostrich plume lace

The ostrich plume is also in the feather duster shawl which is in my Ravelry queue.

Here again is the Wing O the Moth also from Lopi lace weight

Halldor Laxness is a challenging read, perhaps he needs a new translation of his novels;  his characters have difficult lives, but his writing has plenty of humor as well.  When I asked a librarian friend who reads everything if she'd read any of his novels, she just laughed.  Don't let that stop you from trying.