The adventures of Savannah! (the stole formerly known as SOTSii)

Well, it's official - I am a lace knitting champion and Viking Queen!

Why? Because I have finished the Savannah stole by Nautical Knitter.


The stole pattern was given to me through a mystery knit-a-long... my first, but by no means my last! It was originally known as Secret of the Stole II.



Although I had very severe growing pains initially with the project (I would consider it my first major lace project) and as a result nearly flung it off the balcony in a hissy fit on a couple of evenings, I'm now very glad I stuck it out.



Even though I did all the work for it (with encouragement from my blog friends and the very kind Nautical Knitter, I should add), it's almost like getting a big huge belated Christmas present!!


Specs:
Yarn: Malabrigo Lace, 125 grams (2.5 skeins) - laceweight merino in Azul Profondo colourway

Needles: 3.25mm

Start Date: 21 January 2008

Finish Date: 18 March 2008

(Amazing to think that it grew so much in that space of time, really!)

Unblocked size: 62" by 19.5" d



Finished size: 70" w by 24" d

(approximately 11 inches too long for me to model with the traditional wing thing (I don't know what you call it). This is the closest I could manage:

Notes:

- I already have a ton bunch more Malabrigo in the stock. It drapes wonderfully and is ultra soft!


- The pattern was relatively simple once I managed to figure it out and to learn that I am not invincible and just have to count and use lifelines like all the other mortals!


- DK (Nautical Knitter) was extremely encouraging to myself and others. It was a pleasure to meet her and I would definetely recommend any future KAL with her.

- I added beads in between rows 153 and 412 (I think). I enjoyed doing this but in future would place them with a crochet hook rather than stringing them on.

- as usual, it looks better on Aphrodite than me!

- I had a lot of fun photographing this. Because the sun was shining (for once) on Saturday, I decided to take a little stroll to Casa Loma:

...which some guy, Sir Henry, who decided that he wanted to live in a castle built between 1911 and 1914. A fitting tribute to my SOTSii, I thought.

However, in order to get to Casa Loma I had to walk through Millionaires' Row a rather high end part of the city which is either referred to as "Lower Forest Hill" or "Upper Annex" in the real estate ads depending on which neighbourhood is more popular that week.

Although these are not gated communities (yet, anyway), the people who live here seem to think that they are entitled to special treatment. For instance, one woman who lived in a house which looks like this:


... came outside and started to give me a piece of her mind for daring to take a photograph of the SOTSii on her sidewalk. This on the public pavement, mind you.

Well. She didn't realise that she had a pinko who also happens to be a lawyer on her hands. In other words, I have many years of professional training in talking for hours and boring people to death until they agree with my point.

So, I did have a few words with her, something along the lines of "Where there are municipal signs,

...I am free to walk - my taxes pay for this privilege and as a tenant I pay proportionately higher property tax rate, more than double, as it happens - so in fact this means that if I want to bring a lawnchair along, put on some tunes and hang out here all day, I'm free to do so. And, by the way, I've been known to sing aloud in Greek and the background music can be quite whiny indeed. Oh, let me advise you that should you have a problem with me, you're free to call your City Councillor and see how far you get... "

She ended up fleeing the scene. And I ended up getting a rather good picture of the SOTSii taken right on her property!!

Heh heh heh.

I wanted to try the same stunt at this place:

.. but thought they may well have two or three guard dogs who love to feast on red pinko trespassers.

So I headed straight to Casa Loma, where apparently they had been warned that I was on my way:

I must confess I did have a look around for the smoking police (did you know they have more tobacco by-law enforcement officers in this City than residential property inspectors?!). Seeing no one, I did get this photo:

... as well as many of the others above.

As I was leaving Casa Loma, I spotted this huge residential property across the street:

You won't be surprised to know that it was actually this which caught my attention:
... so of course I just had to take a photo.

So, after a fun filled morning it was time to take the yellow blue brick road

out of Millionaires' Row (how I do love slumming)


... and back to my very own humble abode.

Happy Monday (and if you have today off as a holiday, I don't want to hear about it. I'm on my way to work. Grr.

But here's my newest spooky creation in progress:

heh heh heh.

And... a free on-line mag accepted my Shazam! pattern for publication! The site is called All Free Crafts, and it's great. The Shazam! is found here! Yippee!

Secret of the Stole II - progress!!

I managed to get 40 rows done today, and only frogged once!! This is a photo of what I knitted today... from rows 55 through 94!

Yay! Also am liking the yarn quite a bit more (although did I mention that it bleeds colour?). Maybe I can become a lace queen after all...

Hope I didn't just jinx myself... :-)

Best of luck to all in the KAL!

vale Kristina, Queen of Lace!

Ahem... well, that might be overstating it a tad. However, bloodied but not bowed, I return from the Land of the Secret of the Stole II (Clue No. 1) - triumphant!!!
Obviously the photographic skills still need some improvement... but you get the drift.

Perhaps my wee rant yesterday got my demons out of my system, I don't know. However, I finally have a beginning that I can live with - just in time for the release of Clue No. 2!

Isn't she pretty?

I'm glad I finally managed to figure out this diamond pattern in the middle:

It may be a bit messy, but it's mine! And I'm glad I switched back down to the 3.25mm needles - I like this fabric better than the first one I came up with.

So - clouds, silver linings, all that!

(It strikes me in hindsight that I should have been much less hard on myself - after all, I have managed not so long ago to come up with these works: the Montego Bay scarf:

...whic, as you may recall, morphed into this tunic:

...as well as these two scarves:



So, a couple of tips from the front line for other neophytes to lace:

• be patient and don't go flinging UFOs off balconies - in only because you brain a neighbour, you might get evicted, and then wouldn't have anyplace to keep your laceweight stash!

• as beautiful as it is, avoid using Malabrigo laceweight for a first major project. It sticks to itself a bit too much, making the inevitable frogging more difficult.
  

• do not delude yourself that you are so skilled as to not have to use LIFELINES. Millions do, apparently.
  

• do not attempt knitting lace when your eyes are tired from having spent 11 hours that day revising extremely boring legal papers on computer screens.

• did I mention LIFELINES?
  

Anyway, I'm quite chuffed. In addition to finishing Clue 1, I managed to get this little hat done as well - to go with my new car coat!

It is actually still in progress - maybe. The pattern is the Beaded Tresses Hat by Cat Bordhi. I may or may not add the tresses... but don't you like the beads?

Yarn is Manos del Uruguay 100% yarn. Initially I wasn't too fond of the bumpy texture, but now I think it works with this design quite well. The scarf, by the way, is done in Fleece Artist Goldielocks and is also Moebius in nature.

And what are the big plans for the weekend, pray tell? I plan to get a good start on a design project using this:

(Handmaiden Silken. The colourway is Sangria - more red than I can manage to reproduce here. Beads by Earthfaire.) I have submitted this idea to Interweave Knits sometime back but have heard nothing - so I suspect I'll be putting up photos next week regardless.

But not tonight. Why? Because tonight is the monthly summit of the Tenant Advocates!!! Today's excuse: it's Rabbie Burns Day!!!! So right now I'm sipping on a wee dram (of diet coke - can't stand whisky!) in honour of the grrrreat JJ, King of Tollcross... and will be hoisting something a bit stronger come 3:30 p.m 5:00 or so. I will be toasting all those (Scottish or not) who left me kind messages and words of hope regarding my lace travails.

Slainte!

it's not easy being green!

Just call me Kermit, folks.

Why? Because I spent so much #$&*#$^*@#&$^ time ripping back while trying to complete the first Secret of the Stole II hint last evening that I no longer know how to speak... only to "ribbit".

The knitting day had started off well. I made a lot of progress on my Moebius scarf - all but one row that you see here was knitted on the TTC!

So I came home, ready to tackle the Secret of The Stole. I figured I had mastered the relatively simple pattern by now.

Nope. I think I knitted the same six rows at least seven times again. On the sixth try everything was going swimmingly - until I realised that I had pulled the "skip the easy row" bit so that the right side now featured purl stitches instead of knit stitches. I would have taken a picture of this but I was worried that I might just fling it together with the camera over the balcony in a little hissy fit.

And, to top all this off, my lovely Malabrigo has not-so-lovely "stick to itself" properties which make it very difficult to frog without taking out all sorts of other stitches below. SIGH.

So, instead, I turned to one of my coping mechanisms:

What?!?! Have they put the Cookie Monster on a diet? What is wrong with these people!!! Is this some sort of anti-child obesity campaign? Goddess knows I hear enough about it on the news. Have they no shame? I mean, check out this cookie hating campaign!!! I mean, really.

Hmph.

Ah - that's better. I was worried there for a minute.

Anyway, fortified and revitalised, I went for round seven of the Battle of the Stole:

Success!

I gave up at Row 44, however (there are 53 rows in the hint) - I decided it was time to leave well enough alone. Tonight I will tackle the remaining 10 rows.

It does look pretty, though, doesn't it?

Well, that's enough blather for now. Must get to the subway station and do some more knitting on the Moebius scarf. And then I'll be logging into my work computer for another day at the coal mines:


Wishing you a wonderful frog-free day!

the knitting and spending (mis)adventures of Brouhaha

Well, last evening was all fun and games at the House of Brouhaha, I must tell you. First off, I started to swatch the Secret of the Stole II mystery project.

The swatch called for was meant to measure approximately 7" x 5.5". Here's my first attempt, using 3.25mm needles:


Why did I stop part way through? Because I'm a lazy@ss slacker Because, with my usual stunning attention to detail, it took me approximately 10 rows to notice a big big boo-boo. This dayglo overexposed alien photo will probably show it better. The background of the pattern is meant to be all stockinette.
See what I did wrong? Sigh. How did I manage to skip out one of the "easy" (non-YO) rows that I look so forward to?

Perhaps it was my yiayia (grandmother) putting a jinx on me for having taught myself to knit despite her best efforts against this endeavour:

(This is the engagement photo of my yiayia and papou on my father's side. My yiayia lived with us for a year or so way back when and did beautiful knitting and lacework. I asked her to teach me how and she refused, saying that this was a pastime only for uneducated people and that I should focus on my studies instead. I was resentful of this at the time and went ahead and taught myself to knit - although in later years I got her point and found it rather sad. This photo now hangs in my office as a reminder of my origins - and also because I think yiayia would be proud that her photo is hanging in a lawyer's office!)

Anyway, I didn't like the tightness of the fabric on that one, so did another swatch with 3.5mm needles.

My (lack of) patience with swatching, as you will note, is truly astounding. I managed to get through about 10 rows before packing it in... to work on something a tad simpler - the Gathered Pullover by Hana Jason:

This is my progress on the front/back of the sweater, knitted in the round. It is going very quickly. I've also made quite some progress on the sleeves, thanks to the increasingly slow service offered by the TTC:

These remind me of Santa Smurf hats at present. They were actually supposed to be knitted in the round on DPNs but I have found the experience of working with those very traumatic and avoid it at all costs.

And - here is the cable panel detail (halfway through the panel)!
I've done this without a cable needle! It's like magic!

In other news: earlier in the day I popped up to . I was just looking for a book [ED: come off it! If you want to buy a book, go to the bookstore, not the yarn store. Do you really thing you're kidding anyone?!?]

Anyway, the book I was looking for, alas, was not in stock. However, just as I was heading out the door, the following yarn leapt into my hands called out my name caught my eye.


So, despite the fact that I have six other skeins of Alchemy Silken Straw in the stash, I just had to snap this up. Can you blame me? The name of the colour is "Clio's Fancy"! I think I'll use it to make a short sleeved top along the lines of the Oriel Lace Blouse but with a different stitch pattern (this pattern, by the way, is why I bought the other Alchemy in the first place. Now I find the stitch pattern a tad too femmy for my tastes... so, we'll see.

(An aside: I don't know why I've become completely addicted to lace knitting - or at least the concept of it. So much so, in fact, that I joined up for aYear of Lace 2008 club yesterday. Just what I needed - more laceweight yarn! 6.9 km of Handmaiden products just aren't enough... but there is at least one pattern by Sivia Harding - the creator of the River Rock Scarf and one of my big heroes. Anyway, it beats the Fruit of the Month Club! And - I'm shopping Canadian (the shop is in Calgary...).

[ED: Enough with the rationalisations!] By the way, JJ didn't even ask me what I wanted to use his credit card for, unusually. I think he simply doesn't want to know about any more yarn coming into the house. Puir wee JJ!

Anyway, so today is a new day:


and Asteriz et al are fleeing from the oppressors! I live with one (at least, he keeps insisting he is Viking in heritage, as opposed to Irish, which is closer to the truth, methinks) so Asterix has a point when he says "Those Vikings are crazy!"

This morning on the way to work I rather stupidly walked by the John Fluevog shop.



I've been coveting these ones for months, and now they're on sale!!! They had better have them left in my size...and aren't these ones cute?


Hmm. Where is that JJs credit card when I need it?!?

And - I wonder what he'd think if I came home with this fancy chandelier this evening?


At $1,100.00, I don't think I'll chance it.

Happy Friday to all!