As soon as this baby is off the needles, I will cast on for the Chevron Stole. Conveniently, the yarn I have planned to use for the Chevron stole arrived in my Loopy Ewe order today.

I do so like it when a plan works out well.

This new yarn is once again Madelinetosh Tosh Sock, this one in the “Logwood” colorway. I have two skeins of it, because I think the stole will take more than one skein.

From time to time people ask me what I do with all these shawlettes. A girl can only wear so many shawls, right? I always keep a couple at the office for starters. and the smaller ones I’ve been making lately make great scarves. I do give some of them away. And right now, three of them (Argus, Seaside, and Miss Woodhouse) are visiting for the next few weeks over at fibre space.

Lucy has indicated that her own fluffy fur coat is sufficient for her, thank you.

Nope! It’s my pretty red sock blocker, purchased at The Loopy Ewe.

See?

Lucy and Wildlife

And a couple of you commented wondering how Lucy slept through the brief encounter with the squirrel. Lucy was a good seven miles away from the squirrel!

I live on the 10th floor of a highrise condo. Lucy is an indoor-only kitty. It would be a very intrepid squirrel indeed that managed to show itself to Lucy! We do get birds landing on the windowsills from time to time. I have a large window in the living room:

Here’s the view from that window:

Lucy does go nutsy-cuckoo when a bird lands on the windowsill!

And she does sleep a lot:

She is particularly tired today because she spent a good part of last night waking me up to play with her.

New Sock

Here is the sock I just finished:

I did not put it on a blocker to avoid confusion.

Here’s a side view:

The yarn is ShibuiKnits Sock in “periwinkle.”

Newsflash!

The KnitNation website for the event in London next July has today been updated with the class choices. Check it out! I believe that registration opens on December 1.

Book Winner

And the winner of the Kristin Nicholas book is Linda in Chicago. Linda, I’ve emailed you.

Thanks to everyone who left a comment!

Tune in tomorrow for a “Name-the-Pattern” contest!

A Droid resting quietly (next to peppermints from The Loopy Ewe):

Still life with banana and pen:

A sock nearing completion:

Possible yarn choice for next sock design:

My supervisor:

I saw your double knits
I thought they were the pits

Bonus points if you can name the album too.

If you stopped by here yesterday, you saw that I have something pink on the needles, and I showed you just an itty bitty corner of it cuz I am a tease. Here is what it looks like today:

This hunk o’ knitting is on its way to becoming a cowl. It looks a bit odd in the photo above because the top of it is smooshed up on the needle.

The bottom edge of it is a nice deep lace edging:

I knit the edging first, joined it into a round, then picked up stitches on the long straight edge of it and started knitting upwards from it, in the round.

The yarn is one of my new favorite sock yarns — Alchemy Juniper. The colorway is “Evening Pink.” I bout mine at The Loopy Ewe. I’m using a size 7 (4.5mm) needle to get a nice lightweight open fabric. My stockinette gauge is 4.5 stitches and 7 rows to an inch, so that’s a far cry from sock gauge!

Why a cowl? Necessity is the mother of invention.

Those of you who have seen me lately know that I’ve let my hair grow and I now have a metric ton o’ hair. I went all summer letting it air-dry. It occurred to me that it may get a tad chilly going to work in the morning this winter with wet hair. So I decided to knit a cowl — one that can be pulled up over the head while outdoors in the cold.

We’ll see how this works out.

Because I am now on the boring stockinette portion of this knit . . .

. . . I started something else, too!

Wheeeeeeee!

As you can see, Lucy is enthralled.

P.S. A bunch of you have asked what the rainbow-colored sweater is that Gwendolyn wears under the shawls she models. It’s Alice Starmore’s Lismore! My Ravelry project page for it is here.

The Sandvik shawl is now available for sale on Ravelry, but you can purchase it from here, too (and from my Patterns for Sale page):

Sandvik Faroese Shawl

This shawl is knit from laceweight yarn (Black Bunny Fibers alpaca/shetland blend) on a US 3 (3.25mm) needle at an unblocked gauge of 6 sts/8 rows to the inch. I used between 900 — 1000 yards.

You can make the shawl longer or shorter by simply knitting more or fewer rows. The bottom is finished with a seed stitch band

Unblocked: 52” across the top edge (wingspan), 22” down the center back
Lightly Blocked: 64” across the top edge (wingspan), 26” down the center back

Miscellaneous Item Number Two

A view of the sky at 6:00 this morning:

Miscellaneous Item Number Three

What I’m knitting:

It’s another Faroese shawl, this one being knit from the bottom up. And a lot faster knit than Sandvik, because it is knit from a much heavier yarn, using a US 7 (4.5mm) needle.

The yarn is Lorna’s Laces Pearl, and I bought it a few weeks ago when The Loopy Ewe had all Lorna’s Laces yarns on sale. It’s dk/light worsted weight and it’s a blend of bamboo and silk. This is my first time using it and I’m loving it. My colorway is “Mineshaft.”

DK weight on a size 7 goes much faster than laceweight on a size 3. Imagine that.

Lucy sez:

“Well, duh.”

Then I spread it out on the floor for an bird’s eye shot.

The yarn is an alpaca/shetland blend laceweight handpainted by the always delightful (not to mention talented) Carol of Black Bunny Fibers. I used a US size 3 (3.25mm) needle and under 1000 yards to knit a shawl that when lightly steam-blocked, measures approximately 26″ down the center back, and has a 64″ wingspan.

This is a Faroese style shawl, which means it has extra shaping in the shoulders that helps it stay put when you wear it.

It has a Celtic-braid-looking thingie down the center back, flanked by an all-over diamond pattern.

Over the weekend, I coerced one of the workshop attendees to model Sandvik for a photo shoot. This is Vicki:

Vicki did her best to convince me to write a shawl book, to no avail. But let me tell you, she can be very wheedlesome! Even though I flatly refused to consider a shawl book, she obligingly did a “wingspan” shot, too.

Expect the pattern for Sandvik soon, very soon.

Speaking of patterns, you can now buy a hardcopy of the pattern for The Exonumist’s Shawl over at the Loopy Ewe, here.

Just sayin’.

Lucy Sez:

“Where did she put my pink blankie? Is it here?”

I love the sky when it has a pinkish hue!

Speaking of a pinkish hue, I am knitting along on Sandvik. I actually got a fair bit done last night, for which I congratulated myself a little more than was really necessary.

It’s a relatively easy pattern — you have a lot of the same stuff over and over so at this point a glance at the chart now and then does it for me.

It’s the purling back rows that slow me down because I get so bored.

I’m working on a design for a rectangular shawl that has lace patterning on every row — that’ll keep me awake while I knit!

Please to Note

If you want to be entered in the pattern drawing, you need to leave a comment on Sunday’s blog post with a movie title with a state name in it. I mention this because there are a lot of comments on yesterday’s post with state names.

To draw the winner, I go into WordPress and look at the comments for Sunday’s entry only, see how many total comments there were and generate the random numbers within that range of numbers. Then I can easily find the winning numbers from within that group of comments. The comments from other entries aren’t among this group. This is the least labor-intensive way for me to do it. I need to be spending time knitting on my pink blob, not entering comments in a spreadsheet.

Happy Anniversary, Loopy!

If you read Sheri’s blog (and if you don’t, why the heck not?) you will see that she’s got another anniversary contest going on — to enter, all you have to do to enter is leave a comments saying where you first heard about The Loopy Ewe on this blog post. Reading through the comments, it makes me very happy to see how many people I’ve enabled into shopping at The Loopy Ewe.

Loopy rules!

Lucy grudgingly agreed when I told her that she rules more.

I’ve still got a fair amount to go on this but I’m not sure how much — I’ll know when I get there.

Before I left for Minneapolis, I took my chart off the magnetic board and instead marked the rows with carefully trimmed slips of post-it notes.

I do own some of those “pattern tamers” but I don’t like them for use on a single sheet of paper. I can’t easily slide the thing up as I complete a row — I need to pul it apart and reposition it.

Anyway, when Karen saw me with my makeshift post-it note strips on my pattern charts, she gave me a roll of highlighter tape.

Oh highlighter tape! Where have you been all my life?

By the way, I am pleased to announce that the pink blob now has a name. I’m calling the design Sandvik. Sandvik is the name of a town in the Faroe Islands and translates to mean “sandy bay.” As good a name as any, eh?

By the Way . . .

Did you notice that all WendyKnits patterns are on sale over at The Loopy Ewe? Just sayin’ . . .

Lucy Sez

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . “

There were a couple of questions about using a heavier yarn to knit it — you could definitely knit it using a worsted weight yarn. I’d recommend a U.S. size 8 needle or thereabouts, but you could do a swatch to see how you liked the resulting fabric and adjust accordingly. And of course the shawl — well, blanket now, would be much larger. But I guess that’s the point, huh?

Thanks for all your kind comments about this design! I am very happy with it. It was fun to knit, not very difficult, but entertaining enough to keep my interest, and I love the yarn — Dream in Color Smooshy. So what’s not to like?

By the way, I purchased my Smooshy for this shawl from my very favorite purveyor of yarn, Sheri at The Loopy Ewe. Note that Sheri has an anniversary sale going on right now — The Loopy Ewe has been in business for three years now! This week, through Friday, all Lorna’s Laces yarn, Knitspot patterns, and Zecca accessories are on sale — 20% off! What a deal! I might have purchased some Lorna’s Laces last night.

Sheri is having two more sale weeks this month to celebrate the anniversary, so keep an eye on her blog for news and updates.

So.

I’ve moved on to a new lace project. Behold — a pink blob!

This, as I mentioned yesterday, is some lovely Black Bunny Fibers laceweight. It’s 1300 yards of an alpaca/shetland blend. Not too fine — the 1300 yard skein weights 230 grams (a bit over 8 ounces). I particularly like slightly heavier laceweight, so this is just about perfect as far as I’m concerned. And good golly, look at that yummy colorway! It’s called “Hot Lips.”

I’m using a US 3 (3.25mm ) needle, because what I’m going for is a more solid rather than airy look.

I have embarked on a Faroese shawl, knitting it from the top down. It’s kinda hard to see what’s going on here, but here’s a pic of the center back motif.

So far, so good!

Lucy Sez:

“Yes, I am still lying on Momma’s shawl. But look how cute I am!”