Winter's Whisper Shawl MKAL

I am a sucker for KALs. MKALs doubly so. Free MKALs? Sign me up! Don't care that I have a handful of WIPs and I just started a new job and I have another KAL I signed up for already.

Ok so I was really crazy to try to do all of that in February and I was not 100% successful. It took me a while to get adjusted to the new job and that really cut into my knitting time. This MKAL won, however, because I was having a really great time knitting it. It had elements that were completely new to me and a couple I hadn't done in a while.

This is decidedly not my style, but was still a lot of fun to knit. It's in my stash of things to be gifted someday. It's a beautiful combination of lace and cables. The pattern is Winter's Whisper from Designs By Mesha. I used some yarn I had that I had purchased from someone on Etsy as a destash. I got three skeins of the yarn for a steal. I had to dip into the second skein to finish this off, but I have a ton left. It's a wool/silk/viscose blend and feels delightful.

This pattern had beading which is something I have never done before. There was a bit of a learning curve to figure out the best way to do it. I went with the crochet hook method. Finding a crochet hook small enough was a bit hard. I ended up finding a set of small hooks on Amazon.  I naively went to Joann's for beads. Never again... They were very inconsistent as far as hole size, which made stringing the beads on with the crochet hook very difficult. I think I wasted nearly as many beads as I used.

I ended up adding way more beads to the pattern than were called for. I added some in the first clue because I wanted to get the hang of it before we got to the section that would have a lot of beading. I also added some at the end just because I still had a bunch of the beads left. 

I have done cables before, but nothing as intricate as this one was. It was a very fun one to do to get back into those. I ended up adjusting the pattern a little bit to bring the end of the cable section to a point. They ended a bit suddenly and I wanted to make it smoother. I wish I had known enough to do that at the beginning as well.  

You can see in the pictures above that the YOs between the center panel and the wings is a little wonky on the left. That is due to the YO being between a knit and a purl on the WS. I didn't realize that it was making a much larger YO until a ways into it. I found that switching the direction of the YO on the RS helped to pull those tighter. So instead of doing the YO by taking the working yarn from the front of the needle to the back, I brought it from the back to the front. This was only necessary on the one side where the WS had the last knit stitch of the cable panel leading into the purling of the lace sections. The one on the other side worked just fine as normal.

Overall I'm very happy with how this one turned out. I will probably never wear it myself, but I'm sure I'll find someone that will! 

Things I learned from this project:

• Beading - I'm not a huge fan of sparkly things, but I do like the weight that beads can add. I used a crochet hook to add the beads to this one. I've since acquired a fleegle which i pretty darn handy. I'll have a post about beading tools later.
• Cables without a cable needle! - This only works over small cables. This pattern is a four stitch cable. You slip the first two stitches with the yarn in front or behind depending on the cable and then knit the next two and then swap it around again. I watched a couple great videos on youtube that helped with it. 
• YO direction is important - Nice even YOs make things much prettier.
• Pulling yarn from the outside of the cake - I had a major yarn barf moment with my caked yarn... I had to rewind it and learn how to pull from the outside of the cake. I think I may be a convert on that front. Not having the cake collapse as you get to the end is kind of nice. 

No, that is not three separate balls...

• Joann's beads are not good for knitting - The beads were insanely inconsistent on size. I've since switched over to using Toho beads in some other projects and they are leaps and bounds better and pretty comparably priced if not actually cheaper.
• I love lace knitting! - I want to knit all the lace things. I don't want to wear them, but I want to knit them.

Tiny Needles and Tinier Yarn

Lace man, lace is my newfound true love.

I want to knit all of the beautifully intricate lace patterns.

I do not want to WEAR the beautifully intricate lace items.

Slightly contradictory, but I'm sure I can find people that do want to wear them.

I'm nearly done with my first project using actual lace yarn. The shawl is a MKAL. It's fun with lace because you see the pattern develop. The yarn is so tiny! I'm finding that my gauge is quite a bit looser with lace yarn. I'm totally sold on it though. I've already collected a good stash of lace yarns. I have another project that I just started that is on US size 2 needles with a nearly cobweb yarn. I had to get new circular needles because the ones I had were not pointy enough and had trouble catching the yarn.

Sooo tiny

The other lace shawl I'm working on is by Anna Victoria. She has STUNNING shawls. It's the first one I cast on because it was a free pattern and it felt like a great way to test out how I felt about the intricate laces. Needless to say, with how much lace yarn I'm collecting and how many patterns I've favorited I'm very happy about it. I'm using a variegated fingering yarn for it and let me tell you the knitting world has THOUGHTS about that... Mostly the response I've gotten is that I should use a solid or tonal yarn for laces so I can "let my work shine". Despite the many passive agressive comments about variegated yarns and lace I'm trucking along anyway and honestly, I'm loving the look so far.

Sure, the intricacies of the yarn are slightly muddled, but I think it looks really cool.


Now I just need to find people besides my enthusiastic eight year old to wear them!

Makariri Shawl KAL Recap

I am so glad that I decided to follow the rabbit hole off of the Ravelry patterns page all the way to the Fiber Muse Sanctuary group on Facebook run by Francoise Danoy of Aroha Knit.  I figured I would do the Makariri Shawl KAL and probably be done, but it is such a wonderful group of supportive, helpful knitters. I can't imagine not being part of that now.

Back in the Saddle

It's going to take me a while to get into the swing of blogging. Frankly I've never been very good at it, but I think if I stay diligent I might just pull it off.

Right now all of my knitting focus is on the Makariri shawl KAL from Aroha Knits. I'm on the last section of lace and if I can finish it up by Monday I qualify for prizes. I certainly won't say no to prizes.

I'm really enjoying this pattern and I still love my colors which is a better place than I was with the Building Blocks KAL. The section I'm on is the third lace section and I really feel like I've got the hang of it now. Almost no mistakes. Go me! I feel pretty good about getting it done. 

Once that's done I will figure out what sort of format I want to follow with this blog. I think if I come up with some theme days I will have better incentive to remember to actually add thing here. I'm definitely going to do a WIP Wednesday. Maybe I'll do a monthly progress update. That might shame me into finishing up some of those projects lingering at the bottom of the basket...

I HAVE DEFEATED THE LACE!

Well… one of three lace sections. I’m hoping all the trouble I went through will help to make the other two easier to do. I know now that I need five gazillion stitch markers and I will be counting stitches every row. In 84 rows I get to do it all again… Luckily it’s all garter stitch and a couple of increases until then.

This lace pattern is killing me. I have not done a single row without an issue yet. Only six rows then I get to do garter stitch for a while.