From Sheep to Sweaters 'n Socks

Mostly knitting related comments on my life.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Olympic Training update...

I've done some of my olympic training for my shawl.

The following results have been gathered:

Indigo Zephyr yarn: 0 points. It just wouldn't give me the "fluffyness" I expect of a faroese shawl. I've never seen a faroese shawl in real life, but I have this "image" of them being fluffy without being made out of mohair or one of those other long haired yarns.
To be honest I feel this indigo Zephyr is destined to become some beaded shawl. I have tons of beads, but no beaded patterns :) I know there's a pretty famous book out with beaded shawls, but I don't have it. It's funny last year I was in Maryland in May and anywhere you would look where they'd sell books I'd see at least a copy of it. As I didn't know knitted lace back then I wasn't interested in it. Then, when I was in Oregon in October and I WANTED the book BADLY... I couldn't find a single copy of it!!!!

So off I went to find some other laceweight yarn that would be used in my Olympic efforts. I have several colors of Zephyr, so those were all out. Next I have a couple of skeins of Helen's Lace and even 2 skeins of Cherry Tree Hill yarn too. Those were out of the running too as I didn't want any of the (harsh) color changes in my shawl. So the sole solution was my stash of Handpainted Yarn. Luckily I have quite a stash of that too :) Although most are single skeins so not enough. When I got to the bottom of my box with yarn I found 2 skeins of the Stone Blue colorway. In the picture it looks pretty bright, but in reality it is the color of well used and washed blue jeans :) The color is absolutely perfect!!!

Next I got some needles. The chart calls for 3.75 mm (US 5) needles. The finished size of the shawl sounds a bit small to me, so I decided to use size US 7 (4.5mm) needles instead. I dislike garter stitch though. I made swatch number 1 using stockinette stitch... hmmmm me dislikes the result... no fluffyness. I thought and thought about it and decided to give the garter stitch a run too. I think I found the exact ingredients for the fluffyness I was looking for :)
So now I'm all set... just sad that I won't be home for the start of it on Friday night.
PS: sorry that this gets posted after the start signal of the games... Blogger messed it all up once again...

Picciepoo:


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