I love to see the pattern blossom after blocking. It looks so pretty!!
To had to put a little bit of thinking on how to block the stole. I usually use the bed which is normally big enough to hold shawls but this time this stole was way to long. I had to add a little piece to the bed. To do so I used a foam matress and my new Ikea bobbin lace pillow. It worked pretty well.
Blocking: wires and pins make miracles!
Grafting is like magic. It is barely possible to say where the grafting is. Isn't it?
The liliac leaf pattern. The pattern has so much movement and that is thanks to the garter stitch frame around each leave.
Blocking has become so much easier since I got the blocking wires. Holy blocking wires. They don't only make the hole process easier but also the result is a lot better. The straight borders become really straight and the scallops look a lot more beautiful!
Notes about the shawl:
* Body pattern: Liliac Leaf Pattern 1 from the book The Haapsalu Shawl.
* Edge pattern: Taken from Madli Shawl from Knitted Lace of Estonia.
* 3 1/2 balls of Loðband (icelandic lace yarn) Each ball is 50g.
* Needles: 5.0 for casting on and off and 4.0 for knitting.
* Casted on 100 stitches using the knitted on cast on technique (my favourite for shawls).
* Made 34 repeats of the 16 rows leaf pattern slipping the first stitch with the yarn in front of every row.
* Made two edges that I grafted to the each end of the body. When grafting watch the tension, it is ver easy to have an extremely tense graft with will be a problem when it comes to blocking.
*Final measurements: 62 x 230cm
The hole thing :)
It is too bright outside but I guess that it is still possible to see the pattern.
Folded, ready to be packed and given :)
I am very, very, very, very happy with the result. It exceeded all my expectations :)
The long five days of Easter weekend are over and now everything goes back to normal again. Even the weather decided to calm down a bit around here. The weather during Eastern was CRAZY even scary at times.
The wind was blowing almost constantly during most of the weekend while we were getting all you can imagine falling from the sky! In a matter of minutes it went from sunny to cloudy, raining to hailing to snowing and then sunny again. Take a look at this two clips: sunny and snowing and a few minutes later somekind of blizzard!
As I said: CRAZY!
Despite of the weather,I would say it was nice, nice weekend. This kind of "cozy weather" kept us mostly at home except for one day that we decided to go out biking because the weather seemed to be calmed enough to do so but in the middle of our "trip" guess what!? Yes, rain and hail... not fun considering that we live on top of a hill so biking all the way up (which under the best conditions is terrible) was HORRIBLE! We watched some movies, played some games, cooked and baked bread, had friends visitings. In one word: COZY.
Settlers of Catan
Sourdough bread
Skyrterta
"Sunday breakfast"
Sunday, humm sunday was really nice... chocolate eggs! I really like icelandic chocolate eggs. They come in different sizes and filled with candies but the thing I like most about them is that each of them come with a little message inside (called málsháttur in icelandic). My favourite this year was: "Sá sem þekkir aðra er lærður sá sem þekkir sjálfan sig er vitur" which translates "the one who knows others is educated the one who knows himself is wise". If you want to know more about icelandic eastern eggs look at this video that I found :)
About knitting: I finally finished my lopapeysa (Vetur n°3) that I was knitting using one thread of plötulopi (and that was actually the second one after having knitted exactly the same one but resulting in a size that was too small for me). As soon as I finished it I darned all the loose ends and blocked it. The new size is a lot better than the one before but still I think it is not perfect. It is a little bit short in the arms and sleeves but nothing terrible. As I mentioned before I find it really hard to knit for myself. I am too critic about the things that I made but this time and I decided just to relax and enjoy the pullover as it is and see all the god things: I love the colors, love the pattern, it is very light to wear (so it will be PERFECT FOR SUMMER) and I can wear anything I want on it! So mission acomplished!
I also finished the first one I made before (the little one) and blocked it. They look so cute together! But they are not exactly identical:
* The pattern above the ribbing is slightly different
* The pattern on the sleeves is different. I made more simple in the new one.
* The neck is different. For the last one I decided to make it double (folded and sewn). It gives a more finished look to the F.O. and at the same time makes the neck line more resistant than just simply binding off.
And here I am wearing the holy lopapeysa :þ
Liliac leaf
As soon as I finished both pullovers I started with the wedding shawl for Irene. At first I wansn't totally convinced about the pattern that Irene chose but now that I am knitting it and seeing how it is developing I am really liking it... and a LOT. What I like most about it is the garter stitch frame that surrounds every leaf. I guess that it doesn't show so well right now... but you will see it after it is blocked. The other great thing about this pattern is how simple and easy to memorize it is! I think that (at least) the body of the shawl will be ready pretty soon.
Remember that I got my Zenit camera last week? Well, I already tried it and it works WONDERFULLY! I had forgotten how much fun it was to use a fully manual camera and how exciting it is to have the film developed and get to see if all those things you pictured look how you were expecting them to look like. FANTASTIC! I feel like a kid with a new toy.
I am done with two 36 exposures films. This is a little sample of the pics I have taken (and also some of the pics posted above):
