DesigKnit

I haven’t been making much progress on any one thing lately, but I have been working on lots of different projects! We took some pictures of the finished Passegiata shawl the other day. The colors really glow in the light from the setting sun.

This closeup also shows a little bit of the i-cord bind off that I used for the project. I’ve never tried one before, but am really happy with how it came out. I did just a three-stitch version, so it’s pretty tiny, but it’s very flexible and gives a nice finish to the very stretchy fabric.

I intended to make a second version of the same shawl, but the Passegiata has a bit of a hump at the center back that I wanted to get rid of. I did some poking around online looking for shawl-shaping strategies, played around a bit with different yarns, and before you know it, I’d gone off and designed my own shawl instead. We all knew the pattern thing couldn’t last long, didn’t we?

This is a photo of the new shawl from a couple of weeks ago. I was playing with different options for the color patterning in the main body of the shawl. The two yarns are almost too similar; you can’t see the stripes at all in the stockinette rows at the bottom of the piece, using either the solid pink or purple as the contrast band. In the end, I settled with the option that I tried first: four rows of variegated yarn separated by two rows of garter stitch in the solid color. That adds a little bit of extra dimension that helps the contrast rows to (literally) pop out a bit.

I’ve also been doing a bit of weaving, here and there. I cut this piece off the loom a couple of weeks ago, and gave it a good wet finishing last week. This is my first foray into using novelty yarns in weaving, something that I’ve long suspected I’d enjoy. The left hand side of the accent stripe is made up of 7 strands of novelty yarn – two of a bumpy-spun peachy rayon, and 5 of a black glitter yarn to give a bit of sparkle. It’s subtle and toned down, but the fancy yarns add a lot of interest to the piece. I also added details in the off-white background fabric by interspersing random threads of a thicker gauge to help give the ground fabric a more interesting texture. It was a little slower to wind the warp, but I really like the result.

Now that that’s off the loom, I’ve started working on the next project, a set of tea towels in summery teals and yellow.

This first one uses yellow as the weft color also – probably not my favorite combination, but it does make a nice greenish color for the main fabric, and I have a lot of yellow yarn and not as much teal. This project is just puttering along in an on-again, off-again way, but it’s nice to have something on the loom.

In keeping with that spirit, I’ve been planning a new warp for the big loom, too.

This one will be a more complicated project, with lots of different colors to mix, so it will take a while to get this one ready to weave. The main warp pieces (piled on the table in the photo) are a pair of warps that I painted in Madison at a guild workshop in 2010. I knew I wanted to make them into a wider fabric, so I held off until I got the bigger loom, and just haven’t gotten around to warping it up since then. I’m hoping that will actually happen this summer; I’d like to turn these into something I can actually weave!

I’ve been doing a major reorganization of my studio lately, which is how I came across those warps again and decided to pull them out. I also came across a bunch of fabric cut out for project bags, just waiting to be embroidered. Rather than sticking it back in the drawer I found it in, I decided to throw the whole pile of stuff in the middle of my office floor so that I’d be reminded to deal with it. (This is a favorite method of mine for getting things done that I never seem to get around to. If I can’t put it away, it will make me crazy that it’s out, and I will actually work on it. Making a mess is surprisingly effective at motivating me to get things done.)

I’ve been doodling a few accents here and there.

That last one is a deliberate attempt to do something completely outside of my comfort zone. It’s so easy to stick with things you know and like, and to shy away from things that feel gaudy or “too much.” I find that shaking things up a bit often helps to jumpstart my creativity in other areas as well, so every once in a while I’ll decide to do something completely unlike me. “Hideous” is the word I probably would have applied to this particular pattern through most of its evolution, but I have to admit that it is beginning to grow on me. It’s not my style – a bit too 70’s/retro for me – but it is starting to come together into a coherent design. Sometimes it’s fun to see where “I would never” can take you.

I’ve also been spinning a bit, after neglecting my wheel for too long. I didn’t want a big, long project to start off with, so I pulled out the braid of yak/silk blend that I bought at SPA in February, and started working on that. It’s hard to capture the luster in a photo, but it really does shine like gold. I must be in the mood for sparkly things lately, because this really appeals to me. (There were metallic threads in the embroidery, too, now that I think of it…)

And finally, yesterday a friend of a friend came over and taught a tatting workshop at my house. I’ve never tried tatting before, and it was fun to play with. I still need a bit of practice, but I ended up with something that looked almost like the butterfly in the pattern by the end of the day. It’s always good to stretch those learning skills and try something new!

Inspiration is a tricky thing. Sometimes it comes naturally, slipping in quietly and curling up against you. At other times, it pours in torrents too fast to contain. And sometimes, you just have to go and hunt it down, pounding the pavement in search of something that catches your fancy.

Lately, it’s been in the latter category for me, and I’ve simply been too busy to do much about it. But my student finished up her summer work in lab the other day, and things are beginning to quiet down. (Sort of. Or at least change pace. That counts, right? Often, a change of direction is as good as a rest. I’m hoping, anyway.)

Last Friday, Branden and I headed off in search of the ocean after work. It was a gorgeous day, but a tiny bit on the cool side. We decided to explore Wingaersheek beach in Rockport. I’ve never been to Cape Ann, but it’s supposed to be very nice. Despite being back in MA for three years, we’ve hardly even begun to explore beaches on the North Shore.

When we got there, the beach was deserted. It was right around dinnertime, and the cooler weather seems to have discouraged the usual summer crowds. The tide was out, and we probably walked for a mile or so each way. I don’t think we saw more than 10 people the whole time we were there; we had practically the whole beach to ourselves.

We walked along, finding tiny treasures

and admiring the wind patterns in the sand. (I could look at sand patterns all day.)

And then there are the tracks left by the water as it recedes

I see lightning bolts, tree roots, dendrons and axons. What do you see?

Then there were our own tracks, stretching back across the sand.

Even tire tracks took on a slightly magical feel. (Wouldn’t that look nice as a raised slip stitch pattern?)

As the sun got lower and lower, the sand sparkled like gold.

The sky above us was just as amazing.

And there is so much of it.

I love the sense of wide open space at the ocean. Some part of my just sighs with relief at the sense of expansion by the sea. (There’s a tiny person out on those rocks, to give a sense of scale.)

It’s hard to find wide open spaces in New England, except for these huge stretches of land that the ocean reclaims a couple of times a day.

See that tiny patch of marsh grass?

If you look a little closer, you might just see some of the colors from my Passeggiata shawl.

Maybe that’s why I like it so much.

The Tunisian crochet cowl lived a very short life, I’m afraid. The curling didn’t get any better when it dried, so I ripped it back and cast on for a Passegiata instead. (Please excuse the cat shadow…it was all I could do to keep her off the shawl long enough to take the picture.)

If you’ve been here for a while, you know that I’m not usually interested in knitting from patterns, but there’s a lot going on in the background right now (some of it hard, all of it voluntary, much of it good), and I don’t have the bandwidth to design things from scratch at the moment. There’s some comfort in knitting a gauge swatch and just casting on, and it was either that or not knit for another month or two until things settle down.

The latter clearly wasn’t an option, and so to Ravelry I went, where I reveled in the amazing variety of projects available to knit. I went with something simple – a garter stitch crescent shawl with increasing stripe width. Doesn’t get much easier than that. True to form, I’ve made a couple of minor, unintentional “modifications” to the pattern (mostly having to do with not keeping track of stitch counts) but the design is forgiving enough that it doesn’t matter.

It’s good to have something on the needles again. I’m kind of amazed at how fast it is flying along, actually. Having a project that pulls me in and makes me want to keep going makes all of the difference.

I love how the colors are working in the shawl. Having the two yarns separate lets them play off of each other really nicely, and I’m actually liking the bright green undiluted. There’s enough variation in the dyeing to keep it interesting but not enough to pool, and I think I like the green yarn better balanced but not subdued by the teal.

Of course, the fact that the pattern is flying along means that I have a new problem. What to knit next? I will be out of knitting again in a couple of rows, and need to come up with something else to cast on. I thought about going back to Ravelry for a second round, but I think I might play with color/stripe variations on this same shawl design instead.

I did some digging in the stash, and came up with a few color combinations that would work.

Based on yarn quantities, I’m thinking that the purple set in the middle will be the next one to go. Depending on how much time I get to spend on knitting this afternoon, I may even cast on tonight. It’s nice to feel some forward momentum again!