This is a quick post – I just have been out walking with the kids, and persuaded a my husband to take some shots of the Ene’s scarf on me. It was insanely hot and glary getting these, so you will have to excuse the squint.
That gives you the idea! Taking photos of lace is tricky – especially when I do not need to be wearing a shawl.
Project details here. The colour is much more accurate in the first shot.
Today is a typhoon day in Hong Kong, and schools (and the post office) are closed until the storm passes. I’ve taken advantage of the temporary break to finally finish my Ene’s Scarf (Ravelry link), and conquered my completely idiotic fear of the three needle bind off.
The colour is most accurate in the first photo - the wild weather meant that while photographing, the light changed every 10 seconds. As a classic triangular shawl, I was planning to block this with my blocking wires, but they appear to have completely disappeared. If I loaned them to you, could you put me out of my misery? Otherwise, the only other rational explanation is that someone broke into the house to only steal my blocking wires…
I started this shawl in Shanghai, on this trip. I motored through chart 1, without a single error, while the kids had an extended afternoon nap. Chart 2 is substantially easier, but on completing it, I discovered that I was three stitches over. I shoved the scarf in a dark place and tried to ignore it. Ene’s Scarf remained untouched through summer, and I had visions of me wearing it at the Sock Summit, so I decided to rip back Chart 2 on the flight to the US. I ripped back, picked up the zillion stitches and reknitted chart 2, and discovered that I was exactly three stitches over again. This time I said to myself “I’m not entering it in the Royal Easter Show” (that’s the equivalent of the state fair), and in the final row of chart 2 I planted three extra decreases. After that Chart 3 was pretty easy going, probably because the lace pattern is the same one as in Cozy.
I usually take two projects with me for long haul flights – some thing lacy, for the long boring stretches of the flight, and a stockingette sock for when I am tired, or when there is some engrossing TV viewing. I have had very few troubles with security and knitting needles, even flying to and from Australia, but never take a project on long needles, and will always have some bamboo DPN’s stashed in my handbag for the very rare occurrence when a security guard takes exception to a sock knitted magic loop on a metal tipped circular. While I find using DPNs to be like wrestling with a porcupine, the wrestle is preferable to sitting with idle hands for 9 hours or more. I was pretty confident about getting this finished at the Sock Summit, so much so that I asked Sandy to bring her blocking wires from Seattle, so that I could block it on the bed in the hotel room. That didn’t work out, but finally it is done! I’ll take some modelled shots this weekend, when hopefully the gale force winds will have died down.
Pattern: Ene’s Scarf (Ravelry link), by Nancy Bush, from Scarf Style. Borrowed from Hong Kong Public Libraries. You can reserve a library book over the internet, and they will deliver it to the branch of your choice, for the princely sum of HKD $2.50 (about $0.34 USD).
Needles: Addi Metal 80cm fixed circulars 4.00 mm.
Yarn: Yarn Workshop Awaba, kettle dyed with Ashford Acid dyes a dark green.
Modifications: None apart from correcting the three stitches extra.
I was delaying blogging these socks – thinking that when I had finished younger daughter’s pair, I would write an everything I do, I do 2 times post, inspired by Siow Chin. The socks are the plain vanilla Classic sock from Nancy Bush, knitted with cuffs, heels and toes from Louet Gems, and the body of the sock in Socks That Rock Lightweight. The size is the one where you cast on 48 stitches. The girls chose the colour in 3 Bags Full in Vancouver. The contrasting heels and toes mean that one skein of Socks That Rock would definitely extend to two pairs of elementary school sized socks with a relatively long leg. This pair are modelled by younger daughter, but were actually knitted for older daughter.
Younger daughter’s socks were my knitting group, and after school activities project, and I assumed that they were almost completely mindless. I cast on for the second pair at knitting group and then continued working on the leg at the Hong Kong knit bloggers meet up, and then turned the heel fairly quickly. At knitting group last Friday I had picked up the gusset stitches, and was checking my stitch count when I noticed that something was astray. It seemed like there were two extra stitches at the front of the sock. I pondered this anomaly, and wondered if the gusset stitch markers were askew, and I’d picked up the wrong number of stitches. Nope. Upon studying the sock, I realised that I had cast on 50 stitches, an error so glaring, that in the cuff, there is a bank of four knit stitches instead of a neat knit 2 purl 2 rib. Despite the helpful suggestions of my knitting buddies that I make the error a a design feature; I instead had a sulk, threw the socks into my knitting bag, and thought that I should photograph them as a blog post.
This sock has already been frogged, and I have done a row of purl stitches around the ribbing to distinguish younger daughter’s pair from her older sister’s. When I cast on, I checked my stitch count twice…
Apart from astonishingly stupid knitting errors, I spent a couple of days last week in Shanghai trying to track down some new yarns. I did stop in at Heng Yuan Xiang, and picked up some laceweight, and the shop has moved directly across the road, and now has no English signage at all.
