Catching Up

For those who haven't heard, Interweave Knits will have a new Editor in a couple of issues. Eunny Jang will be taking over at the helm of the magazine. As a follower of her blog and an admirer of her designs, this is an exciting announcement. She has a great attention to detail and puts an extraordinary amount of thought into her patterns. Congratulations to Eunny!

The lace shawl I'm currently knitting for my sister's-in-law wedding, is a Eunny Jang design. The shawl is the Print o' the Wave pattern off her website. So far, it has been a very easy knit. I originally used stitch markers to segment each repeat section. I quickly abandoned the stitch markers for a couple of reasons. First, the pattern repeats become easy to read as the knitting grows. Secondly, the repeat sections are flanked by K2tog or SSK and occasionally, they would consume a stitch on each side of the stitch marker making me do this crazy balancing act of slipping off the stitch marker with a couple of fingers and then precariously holding the stitch marker between some free fingers while I try to knit, then placing the stitch marker back on my knitting. After doing this for a couple of rows, I decided to be darning and flung my stitch markers to the side. I felt liberated.

The pattern tells you to start with an invisible cast on. There is actually a cast on called the invisible cast on. This was news to me and I'm glad I took the time to look it up before I started knitting. You will need a piece of waste yarn and you will end up with live stitches. Could you imagine my surprise if I had used the long tail cast on and then gotten to the "pick up stitches part" for the edging? The Victorian Lace Today has wonderful instructions for an invisible cast on. The tutorial in Victorian Lace Today is also better than the instructions in The Knitter's Companion by Vicki Square. Although The Knitter's Companion has pictures, the instructions in Victorian Lace Today were a bit easier for me to understand. I didn't look at anything else in The Knitter's Companion, so the rest of the reference book may be quite handy.

The shawl is definitely growing. I was casually working on it last Thursday at my bi-weekly knit night, and was talking about the pattern with blogless Lynsey. I was happily relaxed thinking I was over halfway done with the center panel and could easily knock it out by the end of the month, when a small comment made me realize that I was only halfway done with one of the two center panels. I started to panic. Since Thursday, I've been knitting furiously on the shawl and the sweat and swearing and tears have paid off. I finished one of the two panels Sunday and have casted on for the second panel. With luck, I can have the shawl finished in a couple of weeks. I am completely loving the pattern. It's an easy lace knit. I think there will be much more lace in my future.


The Picovilo is also growing and is almost a half top.


My spinning is also progressing at a decent rate. My LYS has a very large supply of Ashland Bay fibres. I was lucky enough to score some bamboo: