Gauntlets Done & Strokkur Choices

Elegant Gauntlets

Elegant Gauntlets

I finished weaving in the ends of my Elegant Gauntlets.  The yarn, Merino Mia by Prism, stretched out horridly when wet and I dried them in the machine to counteract this.  Even so my gloves are looser now than when I washed them.  This is what I get for not washing my swatch in advance. However, the entire hand portion, most notably the thumb, was longer than expected going by pictures and description.  I suppose this means I have particularly short digits.  They look to be a ‘casual’ length but were knit for the shorter 1″ post thumb opening for dressy version.  My thumb is practically eastern up by that lone inch:

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poor missing thumb….

As I mentioned last time the colors are glorious and I believe they show up  much better in this post than last.  I enlisted my beloved husband into helping me take the pictures but the close up was taken under a light by myself in hopes of getting all the brown, blue, and purples in the smoke color way.

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pretty colors

I am fairly certain that I will not rip out the thumb and tinker with it at all.  I figure a few washings and drying in the machine will work their magic and shorten my mitts a bit.

I am excitedly working on Strokkur.  When I ordered the yarn I went with the called for gray for body and ash for 1st contrast color.  Ysolda knit this with a yellow for the 2nd contrast color and to be honest I don’t actually wear much yellow.  I do own a yellow bee scarf that I tie into my hair occasionally but other than that nothing primarily yellow in my wardrobe.  I am being drown to the gray/yellow combos I am seeing so may end up adding a bit of it here or there.  However I do own a Pendleton Wool skirt from way back when.  It has accents of pink and lilac which I tried matching via online color cards.  I did well with the pink and rose shades but the lilac is way off.  I would have preferred the lilac since pink is another underrepresented color although I do think it looks great with gray.  I have completed one sleeve so have quite a bit to go before making my final decision.

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Strokkur Color Choices

yarny days and knitterly evenings to all

Elka

Royal

  Brandywine is done~ such a lovely and fun pattern. I used a yarn from stash purchased on Ebay oh my goodness at least 5 years ago. Mainly because I haven’t Ebayed yarn since the ex and I split up. No particulars on weight or yardage but I had a disappointingly large amount of yarn leftover. Disappointing because I am a large woman and like big shawls but followed the instructions to a T and now suspect I could have done more repeats. Anyway it is what I like to call purple. A marled yarn, 100% geelong marketed as fingering weight, composed of one strand of navy and one strand of purple. Aubergine of the blue black variety~~ YAY. More lovely shots:

 

Rosemary Hill is so very very clever.  BTW this style of working the edging on with body ~ starting with a few stitches and working up towards a triangle~ was first seen, by me, in a Spin Off article written by Robert Powell.  The issue is from the Winter of 1996 so probably impossible to get however if you can do library loan the pages are 30-37 inclusive for a tutorial and sample shawl.  If you have any interest in shawl design there are a couple of pages covering motif placement within the body of shawl.  I have been interested in the concept since I first read the article but never quite got around to applying it since the proliferation of lovely shawl designs can be a bit overwhelming.  It is really nice to see it in use.   FWIW Powell’s designs are not widely available.  I believe he had a few in A Gathering of Lace but otherwise, with the exception of this article, I believe they are only available via Catherine Knits in kit form.  Although…. I think his earliest kits are now available as patterns also from Catherine Knits.  I have purchased kits, which I usually avoid like the plague, from Catherine and been very pleased with the service from her shop.

More pictures~ one of the point and another of the frame:

 

 

Earlier I said what I like to call purple and that is for a reason.  A lot of times when people say purple I see red violet.  Or just plain blue red which I consider red.  Or lavender.  Being a lover of the cooler end of the spectrum and all a lot of blue in a red is not purple but the shade of red I would wear.  If that makes any sense.  Now other people hear purple and think a totally different color.  For example my middle daughter is quite fond of purple and I recently knit a lacy baktus for her.  Mainly because she was trying to swap mine!  I had taken her down to The Loopy Ewe one day while she was off of school and she picked out some Dream in Color Smooshy with Cashmere in Pixie Pour for herself.  Okay in reality it was for me although I sincerely doubt I would have picked that shade for myself.  Despite her claiming it was purple.  Either way I was in the mood to shop and she *does* knit.  Kinda.

And another daughter requested that I knit some Toast so that she can give them to one of her oldest friends on the Sweet 16 soiree coming up this Friday.  Favorite color of BFF since Kindergarden?  Purple of course.  Thankfully Toast doesn’t take long to make since I only have a few days left:

As soon as I finish this purple pair of Toasts I need to knit another in some Dreams in Color Starry so that another daughter may gift them out.  We are all fully outfitted in our Toasts and apparently they are still a big hit with the youngsters since my daughters’ friends make sure I hear how lucky my kids are to have me knit them.  Hurray for knitting!

yarny days and knitterly evenings

 

It’s here it’s here it’s here it’s here it’s here

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Do you wanna know how totally sweet and adorable Miss Toni is? She is this sweet: So I loaned her some magazines to fuel her doily fixation and she sent me two Fiddlesticks patterns and the cutest little ceramic tiles/magnets you could ever imagine. Hey and do you see how she crossed out the price of the patterns as if I hadn’t sent her a link to exactly which patterns I most coveted? Just in case she really insisted on purchasing me something for loaning her a few magazines. Which I did assure her was totally unnecessary. Well I have been sitting on these for a few weeks and today I get the shetland cobweb yarn I ordered from J&S. On super sale click the stock clearance button for bargain of the century. Retail therapy does work sometimes ;^>

In knitting news I started another shawl. This one is Sharon’s hap shawl. My friend Liz gifted me with the kit for the holidays last year and it is just so perfect right now~ not as bulky as the almost done STT and not as chart intensive as Spiderweb. Retail therapy again~~ I purchased the newest HK offering: Shetland Lace Wedding Ring Shawl. Did you know that it costs as much as if not more than the book did when it came out? For some reason I think HK cost $40 when it was originally published but it is now listed at $55 is that right? The shawl came out to $50 can you believe that? When oh when will our economy improve…

OK off for today. Yarny days and knitterly evening

Silky Chic Peplum~ed Pullover

OK here she is. Late. Not too late since its officially due August 1st and today is July 7th but I had planned on mailing it out say the 5th. Anyway I received bad father news yesterday and didn’t sit down to seam til oh 4 am. Haven’t been sleeping well and nothing puts one to sleep faster than mattress st. Woke up super early this morning to hear about London from a frantic mommy…. baby sis lives in the area and often spends time there. All is well and I hope all is well with our UK knitters and their families. Well I wish all were well with everybody but newscasts assure me thats not the case. Mid afternoon the phone rang again for Great grandma illness update. Depressing enough? To chear us up~ and lets face it soothing repetive motions such as knitting calm the most worried of minds~ the slightly askew FO:

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Knit on through all crisis, Elka quoting EZ duh