Lily of the Valley Shawl

This post’s title warrants its exclamation point. And perhaps some trumpet fanfare! The Lily of the Valley shawl is finally done, photographed, and ready to be shown to the world. According to the instructions, there are over 90,000 stitches in this gossamer web:

Pattern: Lily of the Valley by Galina Khmeleva, as published in Knitter’s magazine, Summer 2004
Yarn: 1.25 1000-yard skeins Just Our Yarn Wool Angora, no percentages of content given, item WA0905C10
Needles: size 5
Blocked size: huge (each edge is about 7 feet long)
Started 3/22/2007, grafted the border 8/19/2007, finally blocked 6/8/2008

I broke in my first pair of Addi Turbo Lace needles on this project. The 5-stitch nupps were easy-peasy with the sharp-tipped Addis, especially at the second repeat by which time I had learned to make the increase fairly loose.

Just Our Yarn no longer carries Wool Angora, at least not according to their website. It is very light and the angora content makes the shawl surprisingly warm. I really like that I picked a blue yarn for this one rather than the traditional natural sheep color, but the dye runs terrifically. When I washed the shawl the water was a very bright blue. The lightness is great, except I live in San Francisco, where it is windy a lot. Don’t know if I can actually wear this except maybe on the 2 days a year it’s still. I’m glad I got a shawl pin at Stitches West this past February to hold it in place.

It’s hard to photograph light shawls on the body in summer, with the wind blasting from the Pacific nearly daily, but here’s the blocking photo from a couple of weeks ago again so you can see the border properly:

So, why so long from start to finish? I started swatching Lily in Febuary 2007 but she didn’t get any blog mention until April 1 when I was finally a few inches into the first border strip. I don’t remember swatching taking that long, but by golly, it must have. By the end of March I was struggling with the weirdness at the end. I didn’t realize going into it that the triangular shape makes approximations necessary. From the pattern, verbatim: “Galina estimates that the diagonal should consist of approximately 30% more rows than the body.” The pattern dictates short rows at regular intervals but apparently Knitter’s went for an exactly mathematical 30%.

What happened is that when I was at the last little bit, the three charts were at different places in the pattern repeat with no hope of meeting up. I ended up ripping out and reknitting that little corner 3 or 4 times, then emailed Knitter’s to get their take on things (unfortunately the quick response was unhelpful, as their knitter ended up on completely different rows than I did on all 3 charts), then got out graph paper and tried to make a graceful exit to the whole thing. Lily sat crumpled for weeks at a time, then I’d get her out and fiddle with that last corner. In August I grafted the border as it was but left in my lifelines before the graft in the hope I could figure out the problem. In October I gave up and she sat in a heap on the corner of my desk until 3 weeks ago, when I felt I really had to get that pile of lace off my desk. I tucked in the dangling ends and put her in the water. I will have to turn a blind eye to that one corner. No one else will notice, of course.

Here is one of the two good corners, taken under my new and wonderful Ott-Lite:

Here’s a scary story for all lace knitters out there: Lily went with me to Sonoma two weeks ago and I slung her over my purse handles as Mr. MmmYarn and I walked to The General’s Daughter for dinner. When we got to the restaurant I noticed my purse handles were bare. Uh-oh. I asked Mr. MmmYarn to let the hostess know we were on time for our reservation as I dashed back out and along West Spain Street, looking for a crumpled heap on the sidewalk or in the street, hoping no one had decided she needed a new home. Two-thirds of the way back to our hotel, there she was, lying forlornly in front of a house. Whew! Mr. MmmYarn wasn’t too far behind me and we went back to our dinner. I wore my shawl pin when we walked back.

I found January One’s blog post today interesting, discussing the changes to blogs in general and to knitblogs especially as Ravelry has gotten more popular. In Mmm… Yarn I try to write mostly about knitting and spinning, leaving most personal stories out of the posts unless they are related to the craft. In this post, I count the paragraph above as knitting-related as Lily of the Valley was a key player. But for the most part, I use this as a tool to chronicle the technique details of projects and so far I don’t find Ravelry to be a substitute for that. I like putting my projects in Ravelry (find me there as mmmyarn1) because it brings together all the yarn and project information for easy reference. I especially like browsing other versions of projects I’m working on. But for sharing the details of my works in progress and finished items, and especially for patterns I made up on my own, I still prefer this blog, and usually a WIP or finished item will end up here before it ends up in Ravelry. I guess I mean to say I intend keep Mmm… Yarn around a while longer.

In other knitting news, no Sunday night desperation tonight as the blue slanting yarn over scarf isn’t done. It will take a few more bus rides to finish that one.

Last week’s bus knitting, another spiral hat:

Pattern: own (K3P3 rib, multiple of 6 minus 1 so it spirals on its own)
Yarn: Cascade 220, 100% wool; 1/5 skein color 9452, heathered blue; 1/5 skein color 8011, heathered gray
Needles: size 6
Size: Child

I mentioned to Mr. MmmYarn that I didn’t really like these colors for a hat (since I make a lot of stuff to give away or sell it doesn’t usually matter whether I like something as long as I like knitting it); I liked the bright teal and yellow one from a few weeks ago better. He laughed, and pointed out that I carry this every day:

Ahem. Enough said. The hat actually matches it quite well…

This week’s bus knitting is a Koigu scarf in a simple stitch pattern:

Yesterday I worked on calculating the weirdness at the end of the Lily of the Valley Shawl and actually finished knitting the last 2 inches of it, then grafted and saw the rows didn’t line up. I undid the graft, flipped the ends around, and re-grafted. Humph. Threw it on the table in frustration. I’ll give it another go today, and if I’m successful I’ll block it. Since it’s warm out (wow, the blocking gods must be happy today) I might even get it to dry before the sun goes down so I can get a picture.

And so my audience of about 2 readers doesn’t die of boredom with all the spiral hats, I leave you with a picture of an art car Mr. MmmYarn and I saw yesterday at the farmer’s market. I like the flowers on top. This photo was taken with a phone camera with the car in the shade and sun streaming toward us so it looks a bit like a watercolor, but it’s just a trick of the light:

It was bound to happen.

Four beautiful skeins from Fearless Fibers’ Etsy shop.  From left to right, two skeins of sport weight superwash wool in Kildare and Stargazer, then two skeins of sock weight superwash wool in Chocolate Pink Cherry and Robin’s Egg. The yarns and colors are fabulous and the service likewise. I ordered these late Friday night and the parcel was waiting at my door when I got home from work Monday.

No worries, I am still knitting from my stash. I am doing the finishing bits on the long striped scarf tonight (4 stash skeins) and started a short sleeve summer sweater last night (another 4 stash skeins). Let’s not get into yards or ounces, though.

I am completely stuck on the Lily of the Valley shawl. I am at the last little bit, right before beginning corner 3, and none of my rows on the charts are matching up with what is in the instructions. The borders and middle look great; no mistakes there. My only thought is that I missed or doubled up on some of the right-side row decreases, but I checked and had a friend check and they look fine. I’m off 8 and 10 rows, respectively, on the two borders. A couple of rows I could fudge, but with that many… I’d have to frog a pretty huge chunk of it to make it look right. I did take the instructions on faith one time through and came up with something completely wrong. So I emailed KnitU and got a helpful email yesterday from someone who has made this thing but I have yet to implement the help.

I found the Fleece Artist yarn, split the skein in half (quite a few knots in there, by the way), and started my first toe-up sock today. Here’s the wee bit of toe I managed to get started on my lunch break after fiddling with the Eastern cast-on for 15 minutes:

The colorway is called Sea Storm. The green and blue are really bright, not that the photo is any indication, and reminds me of a parrot. Here’s how the yarn looked on the swift and wound in a ball:

This toe is going to Las Vegas for the weekend, to return as a finished sock, and perhaps stuffed with winnings. Just kidding. Socks aren’t allowed to gamble, I’m sure. I am gambling, though: I am going to fly blind and design as I go. I certainly have made plenty of cuff-down socks so this will be a fun mind-bender, trying to see the sock from the other direction. I already had moments of should-I-use-left-leaning-or-right-leaning-increases while trying to work the toe, since I had to imagine it on my foot. The handy thing about working them this way is I can put a work in progress on my foot and see it rather than having to imagine it. Of course, I did not think of this before ripping out and starting over. It’s just as well. If I’d gone nuts knitting on the bus ride home I’d have half a foot already, and then what would I do on the airplane tomorrow?

Lily of the Valley is nearly done, but the last bit is complicated because the border rows I’m on do not match up. They’re a few rows off. In the pattern, the borders are worked at the same time as the body as the triangular body narrows. I’ll have to fudge it a bit with short rows to make the borders meet up properly at the corner. This is too much thinking for me the night before a trip and after a glass of wine, so Lily will need to languish on the table until next week sometime.

And May spinning? None. Mr. Mmmyarn has held the wheel hostage for most of the month. Humph. Although before you think anything harsh, he gave me permission to remove his bobbin and put on mine. I just didn’t do it because I don’t like it when someone does that to me.

Lily of the Valley is creeping slowly (oh, so slowly!) toward completion. Every two rows I get to decrease one stitch on one side. Spread out along the needle, it looks like this:

But if I squish it together, it looks like I should be finished in another row or two. Quarter included for scale:

Seeing it as narrow as a quarter makes me feel like I’m much closer to being done than I actually am. This is some fine yarn I’m using. The finished product will likely fit through my wedding ring. But the project has reached that point where I am mentally finished with it. I swear that I have been slogging away at the last 100-ish stitches for forever and Lily isn’t any closer to being finished than she was the last time I photographed her. So what did I do? I cast on for a log cabin blanket for an animal shelter resident with some more of my stashed acrylic (I know F (focus) + PL (project loyalty) = FO, but there is also something to be said for variety) and spent the week dreaming about a small project or two to make next weekend, when Mr. Mmmyarn and I are going to Las Vegas. Where did I put that Fleece Artist sock yarn I bought in February?

No finished projects this week, but a number of projects are in progress. I did not work on the Icelandic yoke sweater at all but Lily of the Valley is a few inches longer and it is already nearly time to break into the second hank:

It is not as big as I thought it would be. After so many hours of knitting, I figured the sphinx would be much more covered. But blocking usually does wonders, so I will take it on faith that it will be bigger once it’s done. Plus a lot of the shawl is draped over the sphinx’s other side so this photo is not quite representative of all I have done.

I have some reservations now about the yarn I chose to make Lily. It is very light; the slightest breeze scuttles the work in progress along several feet, even with the weight of knitting needles in it. Getting the photo above was not easy in breezy San Francisco. I had to take several shots until the wind finally settled at the exact moment I pushed the camera’s button. To me, this translates into something I may not be able to wear here at all once it’s finished. Sigh. But perhaps I can take it on trips and wear it then.

This week’s bus knitting projects include a baby hat and a double thick striped scarf, both about a third of the way done:

My red cabled sweater is still resting in the bag I stuffed it in about a month ago. I have a strong suspicion that it will not make it to Knit in Public Day on June 9.

Yesterday evening I pulled out an old friend:

This sweater is my second entry in the WIP Hall of Shame. I started this sweater in 2004 and shoved it in a plastic bag in the closet when we had houseguests… and it stayed in that closet for 6 months. At some point I dug it out of the closet, and since then the bag has made appearances all around the apartment but I haven’t worked on the sweater even though there’s not much left.

I sat there last night trying to decipher my old pattern notes, then banged out a few yoke rounds. I remember it was a fast knit since it is thick wool, so very different from the thin stuff I’m using for Lily of the Valley. I spent maybe a week of evenings swatching and designing it and then only 10 days or so knitting it to the start of the yoke. I am really enjoying the feel of the Icelandic wool in my hands again. It has a lot of lanolin still in it.

You would not believe how many sets of circular needles I found in the plastic bag with the sweater. Apparently I had all kinds of things on separate needles for trying-on purposes at one point. It’s nice to see all these tools again. I think I might have too many (!) size 5 circular needles now (not that you can really ever have too many tools).

Don’t worry; I haven’t neglected Lily of the Valley:

Or on the pink, rather. The Addi lace needles (with a pink cord to distinguish them from the regular Addi Turbos) finally arrived Monday, and none too soon because Lily of the Valley was ready to proceed beyond the border. I have to say the needles are great! The pointy tip allows me to execute the knit-5-togethers easily.

It is still light out when I get home from work and I had the bright (read: foolish) idea tonight of going up to the roof to get a photo in natural light of Lily in progress.

The roof is painted silver so I thought it would make a nice background. Today is really windy, though, and as soon as I laid my minuscule shawl down the wind grabbed it and blew it a few feet… along with the attached ball of yarn. I dashed after it, quickly since it was headed for the edge, and carefully, too, as our roof has nearly no lip at the edge, making it dangerous both for the knitting and for the knitter. But all was well, except the wind caused a slightly blurry photo and would not let me show off the lace at all. So here is the beginning:

Knitting progress is slow this week. I have a cold which makes it hard for me to concentrate on a lace pattern. I am about 3/4 of the way through the first Lily of the Valley border strip:

It does not look too great yet, does it? I usually knit with consistent tension and I find this is looking a little uneven.  Perhaps it’s my use of pins instead of wires for the photo.

I have to say the instructions sound a little daunting: more than 90,000 stitches in this pattern. This past week I was able to try out the Addi Turbo lace needles and decided I needed a pair for the remaining 89,500-ish stitches in Lily. The Internet came to the rescue again and my needles are on order. I prefer to shop at my local yarn shops (7!) but no one has these yet. Ugh, wasting valuable tool money on shipping costs.  

Socks are so automatic for me that my latest pair is proceeding at the usual pace despite my having a cold, although I did drop a stitch a few rows before the toe shaping that I did not see until I was nearly finished decreasing the toe. Still, reknitting a short bit of toe is not a big deal and got me through part of another bus ride. The second sock is nearing its heel flap:

And red singles are ready for plying: