Ýmislegt or various things

I have not been knitting much lately, at least not as much I normally do. The bobbin lace has me too excited and it is taking a lot of time to achieve every exercise (which are getting more complicated, of course).

I still have a few things to finish but for now, priority number ONE is to finish the Liliac Leaves Shawl. It is going pretty well. I am done with 20 repetitions of the pattern and I am planning to make 30 and see how long it gets. The idea of Irene is to wear to over the shoulders and tie it on the back so it has to be long enough to cover shoulders, back and be tied.

Liliac Leaf Shawl: Progress

After I finish the body of the shawl I have to calculate the number of stitches that I have to cast on (it will be a HUGE amount of stitches!!) to knit the edges. I will make it in the Estonian traditional way: Edges are knitted in stitch stitch always (WS and RS) so it knits really fast and the edge is made in two parts that are I sewed on the body of the shawl. I have done that once before and the result is pretty neat.

Maikell: Detail of sewed on edge.

Maikell: Body and edge. It is not so easy to tell where the sewing was made.

Svanhvít Lilja with her Christmas present on Christmas day :)

For now, my goal is to have the body done hopefully on saturday. I still have a little more than three weeks to finish it. Irene will be going back to Italy at the end of the second week of July and I want her to take the shawl with her.

I really want to finish this shawl soon. I need to start something new!! I am already thinking about the next project and it will be from a book called Victorian Lace Today. I found the perfect, cute shawl for a friend! I will let you know which one is it when the time to begin with it comes!

Mirage (Taken from Rowan 49)

Last week, my dear friend Laura from Asturias, asked me for some help to understand a pattern from the last Rowan magazine. I had never read a pattern from Rowan before and I must say that it was pretty complicated to understand exactly what had to be done! It kept me thinking and reading the pattern (it was actually a paragraph only) over and over again for almost one hour! I thought I understood it but to be sure I contacted the people from Rowan and to my surprise I got a reply REALLY quickly and very detailed!! I also got some help from a forum in Ravelry (Ravelry people NEVER fails! It is so cool to know that there is always someone there ready to help!) and after all I wasn't so lost on terms of what I understood from the pattern at first.

One thing that I learned (and that I hadn't noticed before): British terminology is SO different!! I think that until now I hadn't come close to any british patterns... things like a simple YO (yarn over) is a YFWD (yarn forward?!!) among others.

Tomorrow people will be meeting in Reykjavík (in a place called Austurvöllur) for knitting in public on the World Wide Knit in Public Day. I am thinking about going. Since I began to knit I have never taken part of it but this year will be different. The only concern I have is the weather. According to the metereological office it will be raining... if so I don't think I will go. But you never know! The weather prediction changes constantly here in Iceland... it is actually fun to look at the website of the office regularly and check how they change the reports many times... even during the same day!

About bobbin lace (aka the new obssession). I am already done with exercises n°3 and 4.

Exercise n°3 was about cloth stitch. I am not very happy with it. The net section look good but the solid parts (cloth stitch) don't. I was checking pictures on the net and it wasn't that I was making it terribly wrong (though I made some mistakes... some turns with there shouldn't be). It always looks kind of messy. So, cloth stitch: Definetely not one of my favourites.

Exercise n°3: This kept me busy for several hours!!

Detail: The net looks ok but the solid parts... not so convinced.

Exercise n°4: This was a wonrderful exercise! It was about spiders! I made a sampler  with three different kinds of spiders: a diamond spider (not very pretty I think). A crossed spider (my favourite one) and a group of little croessed spiders. I still have to work the tension better. As you probably can see in the pictures the some legs of the  spiders are a little bit too loose. I have to practice more!

Spiders sampler.

Not my favourite one. I really need to watch the tension much better.

I really lked this one. The same again: Some legs are too loose.

Four spiders.

Yesterday I developed a couple of films that I took two weekends ago, when Sjómannadagur (Sailor's day) was celebrated in Reykjavík's harbour. I still have to scan the negatives so the pictures will come on the next post :)

For now I will just hang a picture I took when we were coming home from Spain. Landscape in Reykjanes (the area where Keflavík airport is) is so nice... lava fields, moss fields. geothermal fields and amazing cliffs. In this picture if you look carefully you will find a lighthouse (Reykjanessviti) :)

Coming home.