Jaali

One of the things I love best about Ravelry is browsing other people's favorites. There are knitters who have the same taste as I do, and some of them have thousands of favorites. My meagre list only has about 200 entries, because when I see something I like, I spend a lot of time admiring it and then forget to click the little heart.

One morning, while perusing one such glorious Favorites list, I stumbled across Jaali--a shawl similar to Percy--both use the elegant Frost Flowers pattern as the main motif.

Jaali was especially lovely to knit, because it starts at the bottom by casting on a zillion stitches and decreasing to the top edge. By the time the honeymoon period is over, the rows are short and getting shorter; I found it difficult to put down because I wanted just One More Decrease.

The yarn was handspun by me from an EverImprovingMe batt--merino, firestar, and angelina--using a Tibetan spindle. I added a few beads (6/0) on the border, and, in a miracle of pre-planning, I actually did not run out of them before finishing that section.

There's not much else to say about this piece--it's a relatively quick knit, especially if you choose the small or medium size. I went with the large size, because it required 680 yards and my skein of handspun was 700 yards. I had exactly 18 inches left over and knit the last five rows holding my breath.

Crocus Shawl and a Bunch of Excuses

Hello? Hello? Anyone out there? Ahem, tap, tap tap....

Fleegle surveys her faithful readership and lobs a handful of flash-bangs at the audience to get everyone's attention....

So, now that we're all awake and alert, I can list all my excuses for not having posted in, um, a while.

1. I was in-country on a secret mission.
2. I was out of the galaxy on a secret mission.
3. I was out of my mind on a secret mission.
4. I was out of order on a secret mission.
5. I was out to lunch on a secret mission.

Having supplied a surfeit of incontrovertibly believable excuses, I will now wrench your attention towards my latest knitting effort--the Crocus Shawl.

 

This piece was knitted with Malabrigo lace yarn (Amoroso colorway), to ensure that it will be especially warm and cuddly for my friend Kyoko-san. If I were to knit it again, though, I would use a finer yarn and larger needles to better emphasize the complicated patterns. And, as you can see, even slight variegation caused the pattern to buzz a bit--a plain color would be a better choice.

I have decided that large, glittery crystal beads are fun and blingy, I used a profusion of them in this shawl--4mm roundelles on the nupps themselves (yes, the pattern features beaded nupps) and 6mm roundelles on the border. They make the shawl a bit heavy, but also cause it to drape nicely.

The reason that this shawl took months to finish is because I am clearly unable to correctly place a bead order. I first ordered 6mm beads for the nupp section, but those were too large, so I revisited the Fire Mountain Gems website and ordered what I thought were the correct number of 4mm beads, but naturally, my calculations were, erm, imperfect, and I then had to order two more packets to finish that section.

When I got to the border rows, I started using the 6mm beads I ordered by mistake (waste not, want not), but, not surprisingly was exactly three beads short of a finished shawl. Back to Fire Mountain...

Placing a bead order before finishing my morning coffee turned out to be a bad idea, because when the new shipment arrived, they were 8mm...and well, it took a week for each bead order to arrive so this shawl just went on and on...you get the idea. The people at Fire Mountain are likely convinced that a certifiable nutball lives at my address, but they keep sending me catalogs and free stuff like pens and magnifying glasses anyway.


All's well that end's well, and I am now planning to knit Tiziana's lovely Meridiana shawl. Ooo, it has nupps, so I'm working on the bead order, which will, of course, be the wrong color, wrong size, or wrong quantity. As I have often said, consistency is important.

Percy Shawl

I received a huge pile of lovely batts for my birthday, custom-blended by the incomparable Ever Improving Me. I admit to having been lazy--I didn't photograph them. But I've spent a lot of time spinning them, and one of the batts just seemed perfect for Percy. The pattern is, unbelievably, free, and a fantastic knit--interesting, non-repetitive, and adapts easily to any length.


I wanted the top of the shawl to be a bit darker in tone than the rest, so I snitched some orange fiber from another one of EIP's birthday batts and spun it up first. The yarn, a two-ply spun on Tibetan spindles, is merino with lots of lovely, sparkly angelina and firestar, which makes the shawl twinkle happily.


No matter how it's wrinkled and folded, it looks lovely:


The top portion of the shawl is a little cat's paw design. You can repeat this motif as long as you like.

The pattern then segues into Frost Flowers, which some people don't like to work because it's patterned on both knit and purl rows. I confess I enjoyed knitting these--they look so lacy and delicate.




Alas, I didn't have enough yarn to work the border nupps, so I ordered some 6mm faceted round, glittery Czech glass beads and used them in place of the nupps...


Note to Self: When calculating the required number of beads on one-half of a symmetrical shawl, don't forget to multiply by two, or you will have to sit around for another ten days waiting for the rest of the beads to arrive.

The yarn was one continuous strand--I didn't have to break the yarn to make the colors work. I just kept knitting the Frost Flowers pattern until I was into the greens and then proceeded on to the border. I did stop the Frost Flowers pattern in the middle of a repeat and just decreased away the extra stitches.

I fully intend to knit this pattern again, making it a bit smaller next time for a little scarf that will tuck gracefully into a winter coat.

Spinning for Lace, Part 3: Fiber

After some high-powered nudging from an assortment of readers, I've finally gotten around to writing the third in a series of blog posts about spinning lace yarns.

Let's start by defining lace yarn so we know what we are talking about. Just as there's no standard sweater yarn, there's no standard lace yarn--you can knit lace out of hawser line if you have Really Large needles and a good-sized backyard. But conventionally, lace yarn is that which is finer than fingering weight--in the area of 10,000 meters per kilo--about 5,000 yards per pound. The finest handspun I've seen was made by beadlizard: 171,360 meters per kilo (85,000 yards per pound), useful to people with the eyes of a hawk, the patience of Mother Theresa, and the mindset of, well, words fail me.

Bear in mind that the thinnest yarn you can spin is comprised of three fibers. Yarns of this grist were used, three-plied, for Shetland lace.

There are some spinners on Ravelry who aspire to such wispy (and fragile) yarns, and several who have accomplished this impressive feat. I confess to have spent a week making about 100 meters of this stuff out of Optim merino, which was carefully plied on a charkha, wound off into a tiny ball, and reverently placed in a drawer so I can admire it periodically. I have no compelling drive to knit with it anytime soon. I estimate the plied yarn to be about 37,000 yards per pound--about a 150/2 grist.


I am frequently asked what sort of fiber is best for spinning fine lace yarns, and will answer the question this way: There's no Best Fiber, because the ability to spin fine grist is all about fiber preparation.

If the batt or roving is immaculate, my hands will be spinning away as I read a book. Perfectly prepared fiber draws so evenly that, with a bit of practice, you shouldn't have to do more than glance at it once in a while. Clearly, producing an even yarn is just a matter of rhythm. Your hands will be repeating the same steps over and over--draft out a length, twist, and wind on. If the fiber prep is flawless, the rest of you can be doing some thing else--a pleasant application of multi-tasking that's well worth mastering.

If the fiber is less than optimal, I will put it away and use it for another purpose. If there's one thing I have learned, it's that raw material will always dictate what it wants to be. And some of the batts and roving I have bought insist they want to be sock yarn. Or hat yarn. And in one sad unspinnable case, the only thing that fiber wanted to be was stuffing. And so it was.

Here is an example of a lovely, smooth batt eminently suitable for fine lace spinning (the dark pink dot is dye, not a fuzzball):

And here is one that is not:

The nepps (little wads of short fibers or snarls) are circled. You can, of course, hold the batt up the the light and daintily tweeze them out. Not being that energetic, I spun that particular batt (merino, silk, and angora) in a heavier weight yarn and thus avoided all the delicate plucking and concomitant mumbling, and whining.

It's often difficult to tell if a batt is really smooth by inspecting the prettily wrapped or folded fiber you see on the Internet. You can ask the artist to take a picture of the batt with light behind it--most sellers will be happy to show off their carding prowess.

Roving, because it's machine-made, tends to be more uniform than batts. However, if you are buying dyed roving, you need to make sure that the stuff wasn't felted or over-handled by the dyer. A good close-up picture will give you good idea of spinability, but no guarantee.

I almost never get lumps in my yarn, probably because I learned long draw, my preferred spinning technique, from a master spinner in New England 40 years ago. Lumps mean your fiber prep was not perfect and/or the twist is running into the fiber too quickly. You will also get lumps if your fiber is sticky. Some fibers are naturally sticky; others may have too much lanolin and just require a good wash to make them easily slip by each other. Adding silk to a fiber mix dilutes the natural tendency of wool fibers to cling to one another. But too much silk makes for a non-elastic yarn and I like my yarns to be springy.

Because I really hate it when people talk in generalities, I will give a few sources for superior fiber that work especially well with long-draw and supported spindling and have produced, for me, exceptionally wonderful lace yarn.

1. Dragonfly Fibers 65/35 merino silk top. Utterly flawless mixture that's a bit springy, a bit shiny, and altogether perfect for fine drafting.


2. Ever Improving Me Batts. Her batts are scary. There's not a tangle or nepp to be found. Fluffy and perfectly blended, they set a standard for carding fibers for lace. She has also mastered the rare ability to evenly blend in sparkle. Make sure you order smooth batts, though. She also offers art batts--lovely, but not so good for fine yarn. Sorry I don't have a close-up of a batt--I've spun everything I bought from her. No leftovers.



3. Adventures in Fiber Batts: Just as frightening as Every Improving Me products, these batts often feature gorgeous color gradations, which keep me from getting bored with a single color.


4. Optim Top. Optim is a fine merino (19 micron) that has been mechanically stretched to a finer fiber diameter (14 microns) and chemically fixed to prevent bounce-back (14 microns is a typical diameter for cashmere fiber). Optim is silky, lightweight, and and very strong. The three-fiber yarn I showed above was spun with Optim; the picture below is heavier--about 30,000 yards per pound. It's a bit difficult to dye--it resists wetting out and floats around on top of the water for hours. If you don't want to spin white fiber, weight it and then soak it overnight before trying to dye it.


5. Corgi Hill Roving: Heart-melting colors in all sorts of fiber. I am particularly fond of her angora/merino and the wonderful merino/silk blend shown here:


If you take a peek at my Ravelry stash, you'll see that I am helplessly in love with her batts, as well. However, the fibers are sometimes not uniformly blended, which makes it a bit difficult to spin uniform frog hair. For heavier lace yarn, though, you can't go wrong with her carded preps.

It's certainly possible to spin from a loose cloud of fibers--just be certain that the cloud is uniform and doesn't contain bits of short second cuts. For example, here's a lovely sample of Rainbow Farms Pygora goat fiber spun on a Gripping Yarn Snakewood Russian spindle:


And a bit of Rambo's prime German angora, spun on a Russian supported spindle.


Finally, there are vegetable fibers, such as cotton, that can be spun very fine. I don't care to knit with it, so I don't have anything much to say about it. Bamboo and similarly processed plants are just rayon. Some people love the stuff, but I don't care to spin it or knit it either. There are several Etsy artists whose color sense makes me swoon, but they add bamboo to everything. About the kindest thing I can say about bamboo fiber is that it's shiny and cheaper than silk.

The next post in the series will probably cover charkha spinning. Or not! Stay tuned!

Echo Flower Shawl

I actually finished this little shawlette a few weeks ago, but had a Japanese Embroidery student here from England for several weeks and didn't get around to posting the pictures until today. This shawl pattern is one of those amazing designs that looks exquisite regardless of the yarn or needles used. In addition, you can make it any size you like simply by adding repeats. No advanced arithmetic is necessary to compute border stitches.

I finished the shawl in less than a week, knitting a repeat here and there when I had a few minutes to spare. Yes, it has nupps on the border and those pesky 2-into-9 and 3-into-9 increases, but only every fourth row or so, and was surprisingly easy to knit. The shawl was made with my own AK-47 20/2 silk yarn in the Grapeful colorway on US size #4 needles. I added a few #8 orange beads to the border just because I haven't beaded anything in a while and felt like picking up small round thingies from the floor.

 I fully intend to knit it again with some handspun, and I don't believe I have ever before knitted a shawl pattern twice. It's that sweet a pattern.

This is a short post, so I thought I would take the time to remind everyone that I always reply to comments so long as there is a way to do so. If you don't have a Blogger account or otherwise leave me a way to contact you, all I can do is try to reply by telepathy. This usually doesn't work well because there are mentating animals in and around our house that cause interference.

I am off to SAFF tomorrow, so if you happen to see a short lady with a pink stripe in her hair, stop me and say hello, will you?

Spinning for Lace Part One: Tibetan Spindles

Back at the beginning of the year, I promised to make some videos of lace spinning. And today, Roy and I managed to produce the first in the series. My personal comfort zone is a grist that, when two-plied, makes a laceweight yarn and when three-plied, makes a fingering yarn. Needless to say, all the techniques shown can be used to spin other weights of yarn.

I particularly enjoy supported spindles because:

• You don't have to stand up, lean over or perch on a chair. Spinning can proceed easily in the space allotted for an airplane seat.
• Supported spindling puts no strain on your wrist, neck, or shoulder. 
• Unlike the pendulum action of drop spindles, which is sensitive to car movement, supported spindles act like gyroscopes and can be easily used in a moving vehicle.
• You don't have to worry about dropping your spindle and watching the beautiful wood chip, splinter, snap off, or roll underneath the refrigerator.
• Yarns spun supported are pouffier. Gravity doesn't yank on the fibers, which can squeeze out the air, producing a less elastic yarn.
• You can fit a whopping amount of fiber on a supported spindle. I've crammed four ounces on my Spanish Peacock Tibetan. Even better, the more fiber you have on the spindle, the longer it spins.
• For me, supported spindling is about five times faster than drop spindling. I don't have to stop and wind on after a length, as you will see in the video. Every half-hour or so, I butterfly off the temporary cop at the tip and whirl it onto the lower part of the spindle--a big time-saver.
• The whirring sound is hypnotizing.
• Because I am spinning in my lap, I can read a book at the same time, doubling my happiness quotient.

There's no sound in this video, because the process is (I hope!) self-evident. The video is long because there are two slow-motion segments so you can actually see what's going on. And Roy carefully filmed from two different angles over my shoulder so you can spin along with me, if you wish.

I used two different Tibetans in the movie. The first one, with the red merino/firestar yarn, was crafted by The Spanish Peacock. The second, smaller Tibetan Lite was crafted by Grizzly Mountain Arts. Weight is not a big factor with Tibetans, so I never bothered to put them on a scale. The Spanish Peacock spindle is 13" from stem to stern. The Tibetan Lite is only 10". Both are perfectly balanced and a delight to both the eye and the hand.

So, make some popcorn and watch the video. I hope you find it worthwhile!

Three Lovely Shawls

None of which are actually on my needles, because I am literally knee-deep in The Queen Susan. Having finished the center, I can testify to the fact that it going to be huge. A rough-block of the center measures about 40x40 inches--almost large enough to be a shawl in it's own right without the border and edging.

When I get tired of plowing through the border rows, I have three shawls in my queue competing fiercely for Right of First Cast-On.

Luiza

Designed by Jane A. (Mawelucky on Ravelry), this masterpiece is the Harry wants to knit first, if only because of the magnificent colors (matches his belly button rings, I was told). The original, shown here, was knitted with fingering-weight yarn, but the pattern is open-ended and can be made with any weight yarn by increasing the number of repeats or doubling a finer-weight yarn. You can buy the pattern on Ravelry, or get it free with my very own kit in my Etsy store. The kit yarn is a Zephyr-weight called Firebird (2/20 60% merino, 20%  cashmere, 20% silk),--a lustrous, soft, luxurious yarn custom-spun for me. The default kit is Black Plum and Black, but any main color, for example, Lapis) may be ordered instead.

The Persian Princess

This exquisite shawl was designed by Bad Cat specifically for Love Potion #3. The design is intricate and made even lovelier by the addition of sparkly beads and a feathery border. The pattern is free if you purchase a skein of LP3; otherwise, you can buy the pattern directly from the Ravelry store.

Faroesertuch mit Blättern und Blüten 

(Photo by uta953)

The name means "Faroese shawl with Leaves and Buds," which doesn't do justice to this breathtaking beauty designed by Utlinde. The original was knit with sport-weight mohair on size 7 needles, so it should be a fairly quick piece to do. Alas, I do not stock any such yarn in my store, but I do have some stash that would work beautifully for this--a ball of Lisa Souza's mohair in the Mother of Pearl colorway flashes to the front of my brain. The pattern is, believe it or not, free from the Ravelry store.

 

The Queen Susan Shawl

Yeah, yeah. Harry has been following me around for the last few days, poking me with his swagger stick  to remind me that I haven't posted a blog entry in weeks. Because his swagger stitck is an exquisitely sharp quilting needle equipped with a customized leather handle, being poked with it gets the point across (Ouch! Bad Pun!).

Most of my time for the last few weeks has been sucked up into a fascinating collaborative project called The Queen Susan Shawl (based on a photograph by M. Sutherland, from The Shetland Museum  Photographic Archive). 

The project is remarkable in so many ways. It shows, first of all, the power of a social networking site such as Ravelry, to foster communication across the entire globe. The shawl is so lovely and so complicated, but by combining all of our skills, The Ravelry Heirloom Knitting Forum has re-created the pattern for this masterpiece. Right now, the only missing bits are the corner chart and a paragraph or two of  calculations. We are hoping that by the New Year, The Queen Susan shawl pattern will be available on Ravelry, free to anyone who wants to hoard, knit, or just cherish this delightful design.

Because I have been working like a little fiend on all aspects of the shawl, I am not going to recapitulate the history. Instead, I am posting, with my own permission (seeing as how I wrote it), the introduction to the pattern booklet. It's a lovely story, so please enjoy!


Little did Clarabeasty realize what a firestorm she would start when she innocently posted a shawl picture from the Shetland Museum on the usually quiet Heirloom Knitting Ravelry forum:

October 16, 2009
Clarabeasty: Does anyone recognize the border pattern on this piece of lace? Specifically the part that looks like little wreaths and twigs.

Sophiphi137: No, but it is beautiful! I also am now very curious about it.

M1K1: Look again in the Shetland Museum photo library. There is a close up detail of another shawl which has the scalloped (wreath) effect made by placing roses.
You can get a really good look at it by selecting Large Image.
Isn’t it a fabulous effect - softening the straight lines of the zigzags.
Actually this might be the same one you showed above...

fleegle: Wow! That’s the most beautiful border I’ve ever seen…..gets out graph paper immediately….

This innocent, offhand exchange would result in a mammoth project involving more than 30 people and hundreds of hours of charting, swatching, proofing, writing, editing, and layout.

We started off rather simply with the center design, which we recognized from other shawls. The pattern, called Spider Webs, Spiders, and Diamonds, was easy to chart from other sources. But then, Msleoknits, presented an alternative center that she had charted and used for another shawl. Her design eliminated the garter stitch interruption in the spider webs, and many of us preferred her design to the original one.

Similarly, Q-Knitter graphed the original edging. a variation of Mrs. Sutherland's Fine Lace, a coincidence that made us all smile with delight. EdithCone subsequently presented a second, more delicate pattern—a variation of Alpine Lace—and made a chart for it, as well.

Now we had charts for two centers and two edgings, and the project was not so simple anymore.

The border, clearly the charm point of the shawl, presented numerous problems. First of all, the original shawl was clearly knitted in the traditional manner. The center and borders were worked separately and sewn together. We all decided that we wanted to knit the piece in the modern way, that is, knitting the center, then picking up the border stitches and knitting the rest of the shawl in the round. And this method meant that we had to invert all the motifs in the border.

Piece by piece, each motif was charted and test-knitted. In many cases, we had to choose among several alternatives. After a few weeks of experimentation and decisions, we had a semblance of a genuine, workable border chart.

The corners presented more difficult decisions. While we liked the original corners, we wanted something special. KnitLab became our Guy in the Corner, working up the beautiful flower sprays that integrate so well with the main border area. In what can only be called an astounding feat of charting, M1K1 not only charted the complex corner, but turned part of it inside out so less-experienced knitters could better see how the pattern fit together.

When all the parts were finally defined, LarasCreations spent weeks developing the calculations. A few days after M1K1 and LarasCreations had mostly completed their assignments, fleegle jokingly suggested adding a row above the bottom row of flowers:

fleegle: Not terribly radical. Although you would have to regraph the entire corner.

fleegle climbs into her nuclear blast bomb shelter and closes the hatch. Click.

larascreations: Well…….it does seem like it might look nicer with another 1-2 between?
What’s one more line?
……runs to keep fleegle company

fleegle: …fleegle yells through the blast door, informing Lara the price of admission are the new calculations…

laceknitterlois: “NOOOOOOOOO”….flipper proofer runs & throws supercape over m1k1’s computer screen.

“Don’t look, m1k1!”
Points pointy finger accusingly at larascreations & fleegle:
“Sure, go ahead and give m1k1 heart palpitations. And where does that leave us? Without our Professor of Corner Chartology!”
Makes ultimate threat:
“Which means you 2 would be sentenced to take over corner charting duties. Knock it off, ya hear?”
Leaves scene whistling. Just keeping the world safe, one knitter at a time.

As you might expect, the concept of an additional row was tabled forever, amidst heartfelt apologies entailing considerable virtual groveling. Gentle humor and mild tangents that drifted into totally unrelated topics made all of us smile amidst our piles of graph paper.

In the meantime, we realized that we needed to think about how we were going to present the finished pattern, and we needed to bring the Shetland Museum into the loop.

The consensus was that the pattern should be placed into Creative Commons without copyright protection, and should be available as a free download on Ravelry, a highly popular site for knitters. But we wanted to alert the Shetland Museum to the work and give them the files, so visitors to their web site could download the pattern from there, as well. Perhaps the museum would be able to use the pattern as a donation magnet.

Here is the original letter written by edithcone to the Shetland Museum.

Novmber 6, 2009
Dear Ms. Christiansen,

    I’m writing to you on behalf of a group of knitters who were very inspired by one of the shawls in the Shetland Museum and Archives Photo Library. The shawl in question is found in the photos numbered S00019 and S00024.

    We are members of Ravelry, an online community of knitters and spinners from around the world. Within Ravelry, our group, Heirloom Knitting, is particularly interested in fine Shetland lace knitting. The shawl shown in the photos above, was brought to the attention of the group and the design was so well-liked it was proposed that a collaborative effort be made to create a chart of the original design and produce a pattern that could be downloaded free-of-charge from Ravelry. After much debate, the shawl was named The Queen Susan shawl.

    We would like to give mention to the Shetland Museum for housing the original photo which led to the project. We also thought you might be interested in being able to offer the pattern for download from the Shetland Museum site (thereby making it available to non-Ravelry members).

    Is it possible you have any background information about this shawl, such as the name of the knitter/designer, the approximate date it was made, the location, etc.? M. Sutherland is noted as the photographer. Was the shawl likely made by a member of his family? Any information you could give us about the shawl would be very helpful and appreciated.

    Because this is such a large project, it will be some time before any of us finish knitting an entire shawl. In light of this, we would be extremely grateful for the use of one of your photos (with credit given to the Shetland Museum), so that we can show a completed shawl in the pattern instructions.

    There has been a tremendous co-operative effort within the group and at this point, most of the elements of the shawl have been charted. There are few Shetland lace shawl patterns of this complexity available today and none, as far was we know, that have been produced by knitters from all over the globe. It is exciting to be involved in this project, one that we hope will make a beautiful Shetland shawl design available to knitters everywhere and help continue the tradition of Shetland lace knitting.

    I hope you will entertain our request to use one of the photos mentioned at the beginning of this letter. I look forward to your reply.
Yours Sincerely,
 Denise Furukawa
(on behalf of the HK Ravelry group)

And here is Dr. Carol Christiansen’s response:

November 13, 2009
Dear Denise,

Many thanks for your email. We were delighted and intrigued by how our photographic archive has been put to use once again.

The photographer M. Sutherland was Magnus Sutherland, of Colvadale, Unst. He was related to a number of expert lace spinners and knitters, some of whom are pictured in photograph R01400. He took the photographs of the lace pieces in the late 1890s or 1900 – one scarf has the date 1899 knitted into it and it is likely that the other lace pieces were photographed at the same time.
This shawl is not part of our collection. However, we have several other shawls and stoles knitted by the Sutherland women, one of which is on display. It has similar centre and border motifs to the one you are knitting. Our records indicate that the border of the shawl on display was designed by the brother of the Sutherland sisters, probably Magnus himself. It is possible, but by no means certain, that Magnus was involved in the design of the shawl you are knitting.

The Sutherlands designed and traded patterns with one another, as you can see from Magnus’ photographs that many of the shawls bear similar motifs but used in different combinations. If the designs were written down by the Sutherlands, which is unlikely, this information has not passed to us. However, the reason we have these early photographs of Magnus’ is that they were passed on to Ethel Henry, who donated them to the Museum. Ethel Henry was herself an expert knitter and knitwear designer, working in both Fair Isle patterning and some lace – she designed wonderfully stylish fine lace jumpers in the 1950s! We have two of Ethel’s lace notebooks, one in which lace patterns are written out, in another where they are charted. Some of the motifs found in the Sutherland laces are described in these notebooks. Unfortunately, Ethel stipulated that the notebooks not be published, and therefore, we can only offer them as study materials here in Shetland.

Have you completed the pattern for this complex shawl? If you are struggling with any parts of it, please let me know and I will see how I can help.

I will meet with our IT person next week to discuss sending you the Magnus Sutherland photograph for the completed pattern and how to attach Ravelry information/download to the photographic archive website. I shall get back to you with this information in due course.
Best wishes,
Carol
(Dr. Carol Christiansen, Shetland Museum and Archives)

Having received an enthusiastic response from the Shetland Museum, we continued the cycle of chart, knit, proof, write, edit, chart, proof for several months. Until finally, we had all the material at hand, and this pattern booklet could be assembled for what we hope is your visual and knitterly delight.

It was decided to name the shawl The Queen Susan, because several of the ringleaders bear that name or have close relatives who do. We also felt that the name conferred a certain dignity on this lovely piece.

And finally, although fleegle wrote the introduction, EdithCone pointed out that she barely mentioned her own contributions.  So, I will lapse into the first-person at this point and say that I was the initial instigator; graphed the original center and border; assigned the test knitting; wrote the bulk of the text; designed and laid out this pattern booklet; and generally pushed, poked, and prodded the participants where necessary to get the pattern assembled in a timely manner. I was the hub around which activity whirled, but without the other contributors, the project would never have come to fruition.

The Ravelry Heirloom Knitting Group now presents to you The Queen Susan Shetland Shawl, and hopes that you will derive as much pleasure in working it as we did in developing the pattern.

Shieladeedee’s post sums up the project thusly:

I’m feeling a little weepy here. Think of it - a piece knitted before the turn of the last century, designed by a close group of family/friends living in an isolated area, preserved in a photograph, being recreated by a far-flung band brought together by technology and a love of this craft.

It's a Sweater! It's a Shawl! It's Honeysuckle!

Although I love to knit shawls, I do not love to wear them. The sole exception is my tiny Hyrna, which slips neatly into my purse for A/C protection during the summer months. As for the rest of them, I take them out for show-and-tell when somebody asks. Otherwise, they sit around in a drawer, playing cards, drinking beer, and watching PBS's Knit and Crochet Today on an iPod Harry installed for them.

The Honeysuckle sweater immediately caught my eye, because it combines the best of all possible worlds. I could knit some simple lace with my favorite luxurious Hamanaka mohair/silk and have an actual, wearable knitting object.

This inspired pattern appears in Issue Six of the elegant British magazine, The Knitter, and was created by Sarah Hatton, Rowan's in-house designer.

 

Of course, I changed the pattern a bit. For starters, the original configuration is a circular shawl knitted flat and seamed. The sleeves also knitted flat and seamed, and then sewn into the bind-off/cast-on slits created for the armholes.

Well, all that sewing seemed ridiculous, tedious, and annoying. Instead, I knitted the shawl in the round, using a contrasting thread for afterthought armholes. I then picked up the sleeve stitches around the contrasting thread and used Barbara Walker's clever short-row sleeve cap method to knit the sleeves downward.

I also added beads to the sleeves and sweater front, and changed the boring edging to the more dynamic Ocean Wave from Miller's Heirloom Knitting. And, there was a lot of plain knitting in the original pattern; I dropped in a few Shetland cat's paws motifs to break up the monotony.

  The only mild setback was the cuff area. I have thin wrists, and even though I doubled the decreases at the end, the cuff was still too baggy for me. Instead of ripping out the mohair (urgh), I threaded some narrow ribbon through the final row and gathered the cuff.

Best of all, Honesuckle informs me that she detests beer, can't play cards, and doesn't enjoy TV, so leaving her out of the drawer and actually wearing her pleases everyone. Well, except for Harry, who is always looking for another sucker for his rigged poker games.

More Wickedness

A while back, I posted a pattern link to this lovely shawl (Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Karen Walker).

 Although I love the red, I know that I would be bored to tears knitting miles of it, and this shawl is BIG. And it seemed to me that Something Wicked needed Something Black...the most wicked of colors. I begin a thought process.......

......Time passes. Aliens come and go in the back yard. Harry assassinates karaoke from Albania to Zanzibar. The RIAA sends Al Jolsen a copyright infringement notice. The FDA issues a recall notice on water (too much water will cause people to explode and that's not acceptable). Blue Cross/Blue Shield announces that having been born is a now considered a pre-existing condition and will no longer cover any illness or injury for any claimant who has undergone this process........

.......I think about knitting the edging in black. Nah. Too abrupt. Then I think about dip-dying it. Nah. Too chancy. Then I think about spinning the yarn and new possibilities present themselves. I finally emailed Anna at Corgi Hill Farm, sent her a picture of the shawl, and explained what I was looking to do. She's brilliant, folks. She carefully dyed a graduated series of silk/merino batts for me that will, after I spin it all up, give me a nice flow from Wicked Red to Wicked Black.

I have about 7 ounces of batt, and need about 2200 yards of two-ply, which works out to 314x2=628 yards per ounce. And that, after consulting various tables, is about 80 WPI. Doable, but it's going to take some time.

So the only Wickedness you're going to see around here for a while is Harry. Apparently, he had a nice gig at the Two Tables Restaurant in Zanzibar City. Unfortunately, a two-table audience was way too small for his ego, so he's taken some time off to kayak the Zambesi river. The guides discovered on his first day that Harry's rendition of  Moon River caused crocodiles, algae, and hippos to flee from the river at Mach 2. The tour company is trying to sign him to a long-term contract. I personally wrote him a stellar letter of recommendation.

Current Knitting (and Spinning)

 King Bat Shawl

I slogged my way to the finish line of the shawl body a few days ago. As you might imagine, I am very tired of pink. I have miles of edging to knit on before the thing is completed, but I am putting it aside for a while to let my Pink Receptors recover from extended stimulation. Cindersall's reversal of the crown motif was masterful, and I think it looks better than the original.

Honeysuckle Shawl/Sweater
Having carefully placed the Bat shawl on the bottom of my UFO pile, I decided to treat myself with my rendition of the Honeysuckle shawl/sweater thing, which appeared in Issue #6 of The Knitter.

This design is beautiful--elegant, graceful, and feminine. I had to read the directions four times because I simply couldn't believe that the designer would actually take a round shawl and convert it to flat knitting. Thus, the reader is instructed to knit across the pattern row, turn, purl back, and then, when the piece is finished, sew up the back seam. Nah. I am knitting it in the round like a grown-up.

For the sleeves, the original design calls for casting off 40 stitches one one row and then casting on 40 stitches in the next row. The sleeves are knitted separately and then sewn into the gap. Why make an ugly seamline at the shoulder and force the knitter to do even more sewing? Instead, I will knit a contrasting piece of yarn over 40 stitches. When I am ready to do the sleeve, I will carefully undo the contrasting yarn, pick up the stitches around the armhole, and knit the sleeves from the top down to the wrist.

In an incredible display of foresight, I decided to bead only the sleeves and the front side of the sweater. I realized that if I beaded the entire thing, I would wear the sweater once, wonder why my back felt like llittle glass beads were digging into it, slap my forehead, and put the thing away forever.

I am using Hamanaka mohair/silk Parfait yarn and some pretty beads that have been languishing in the closet for a while. Harry finds the piece rather restful. Too restful. I have to shake him out of the thing every time I want to work on it.

Spinning
I love Corgi Hill batts. I love them to pieces. I want to make an entire room out of Corgi Hill batts and live there. While I am busy accumulating the raw materials for the Corgi Hill Extension, I actually spun some up. Here's a neat ball of Navajo-plied merino/silk:

It will probably become a scarf for Kyoko-san if Harry doesn't filch it and bury it in his stash drawer.

And here's what's currently on the spindle:

 

The lovely fluff is Corgi Hill merino/silk and the tulipwood/ebony spindle is from Spindlewoods. I have no idea what I will do with the finished yarn, but I am thinking it should be two-ply laceweight, which of course leads to wandering around my notebooks looking for an appropriate project.  Like I need another project...