WIP Wednesday: Blinded by the White Edition

Lace is a good thing to knit. It looks fantastic, it's fun to knit and there's always a bit of magic in the transformation from lumpy spaghetti monster to an elegant, lovely piece of art. However, it's not a great-looking project on the way to the finishing line. You knit, knit, knit and knit and the piece gets bigger but it is basically impossible of its final size or look from the WIP on your needles.

Case in point:

I am halfway through the edging and at this stage it does not look like it is going to end up as a flat circular blanket. You just have to have faith that 1) the designer knew what they were doing and b) you have not massively cocked something up. Fingers crossed!

 I have to admit that I am not particularly enjoying knitting the edging on. Because I am knitting the shawl in the round while the original was knitted flat, I have made some modifications to the pattern. I cast on provisionally, using a cable from my KnitPicks interchangeable set to stand in for waste yarn. I then started knitting...

..but I just wasn't happy with the look. When you turn the knitting after joining the edging to the main yarn and reducing one stitch, the pattern instructs you to slip the first stitch. I had been doing that with the yarn in front.

Here, you can see the difference. On the right of the picture, I had slipped the stitch with the yarn behind. On the left, I had slipped the stitch with the yarn in front, which then formed a visible stitch.

So I ripped it back, started again and am much happier with the new border. But it's still just the same 8-12 stitches, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth (and so on).

I am also not enjoying knitting with white yarn. It is so boring! Especially when combined with the relentless grey of the Melbourne winter sky and the bleakness of day after day of overcast weather. After two weeks of non-stop white in the middle of winter, I just couldn't take it anymore! So, I cast on a pair of socks in the brightest yarn I could find.

The relief is palpable. Thank God for colour.

WIP Wednesday: The Welcome Back Edition

Hello! It's been a while since I posted. The last two months have been busy! I moved house, which is always insane. Even now, five weeks after moving in, I still don't know where all of my stuff is. The funniest thing was as soon as we moved, people wanted to just drop in. The day after I moved in, I had a guest pop over uninvited who wanted to stay for a chat. This is what I looked like that day (in the mirror on the middle left):

It was not a good day to visit and I was not a gracious hostess! Now, though, everyone's welcome - the more the merrier.

In the last five weeks, I also found out I am going to be a step aunt. It's an odd situation - my dad, who lives in France, married a woman who also lived in France but whose children live in America. I have met my dad's wife, but not either of her children, who are my step sisters. One of them is up the duff (do they use that expression in America?), so I thought the step sisterly thing to do would be to make her a baby blanket.

Because the blanket needs to be mailed, I wanted something lightish but still pretty. I settled on the Baby Bubble Shawl, which I think is both pretty enough to be ornamental but not so lacy that it is only good for special occasions. 

I am using Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 3ply in Frost. As always, it's lovely to work with. Plus, it's machine washable, which is super important for babies.

Because it is so very white, I wanted a really strong, protective project bag to hold it, so I popped an old rice bag in the washing machine, dried it thoroughly and Bob's your uncle (do they use that expression in America? I clearly need to do some research).

I have now done 14 of the 18 repeats of the lace panel, then I just need to do the 900 rows of the edging I'm done. I need to get it in the mail by 1 September, which I should be able to do without problem but it is so relentlessly white I might need to do something with a bit of colour just to take the edge off.

Lucy kind of hates it, but she hates everything at the moment because it's winter and she's not allowed outside. Poor little thing :)