Recently in Kiri Category

So how much yarn did I have left?

Aeron kindly volunteered to model.

Fuzzy Wuzzy, yes that's me!

Perfect symmetry.

Two ways I wear the shawl: around the neck,

or tied around my shoulders. Really, there isn't an *outfit* that goes with a shawl. You can wear it with anything, but I like it best with jeans and a solid-color top.

Pattern: Kiri from All Tangled Up's Polly
Yarn: Rowan Kidsilk Haze in #589 Majestic
Needles: US9; US10 for bind-off
Finished Size: 81" x 38"

For 2 balls of KSH, that's a large size. But then again, I'm a merciless blocker. I stretched it out as far as it could go without warping the top edge. Also, I completed only 5 rows of edging and bound off on the 6th row. There are still points on the shawl, however. I used the bind-off from the Flower Basket Shawl, since the given bind-off wasn't stretchy enough, even with using US10.5.

I made my only mistake on the shawl: I mistakenly knit twice into a yarn-over, and later when I discovered my mistake I just k2tog. You know KSH is a monster to frog, and I wasn't about to get spanked by a strand of mohair. This mistake would come back to haunt me day after day, until I finally remembered an interesting fact about Persian rugs:

"To the Moslem weaver perfection on Earth does not exist--only Allah is perfect, so trying to achieve perfection would be considered arrogant," [John] Gregorian [author of Oriental Rugs of the Sik Route] writes. "Many Middle Eastern people accept mistakes as part of life. If a family is weaving a rug and dyes wool as needed with the result being the colors do not match or age in the same way, ultimately, they do not consider this to be an error. The rug is simply the way it is," Gregorian writes.

With the divine being perfect, we can only strive to do our best. Seeing the extra imperfect stitch, knit together with another, makes me smile now.

Off to Nuremberg she goes!

Reading: Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard. The Snow Garden, Christopher Rice. Much better than his first effort. Gilgamesh, the latest English translation by Stephen Mitchell. The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century by James Howard Kunstler. BF jokingly sneaked Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose by Paris Hilton, et al into my stack of books. Mmm. I think I'll read it. Not.

Knitting. Ah, knitting. Sometimes I feel guilty about ignoring my knitting or alternately, my climbing. I haven't any new projects to write about, mainly because I'm trying to finish Kiri as quickly as possible. So hence, another picture of it here. Can I just say what a dork I've been for ignoring circular needles for more than a year? Anita and La first got me curious about them; La had these needle-and-cord thingies called Denise needles, and showed me how easy it was to change the needle. But I'm a little slow. It takes at least a year to process that kind of information! (grins)

But anyway, do you notice anything different between this and my first shawl?

No lifelines.

He he.

I thought, when I first started out, might as well tempt Fate for the third time and knit with Kidsilk Haze without lifelines. ...It's good for the head.

One of the pleasures of being a novice knitter is discovering designers, designs, and techniques. Everything is so new! I don't know how I arrived at Bea Ellis, probably through reading our Wendy's voluminous archives, but I got there and fell in love with Miss Ellis' original hat designs. And with a spectrum of beautiful colors to knit with! I was quite taken with (from left to right) Let It Snow, Ufserud, and Traditional. So help me decide which one to start off with. Tell me which one you'd knit for yourself (experience level not a condition) and why. Thanks girlies!

In its former life this pile of Kid Silk Haze aspired to be an elegant stole. It had been frogged a couple of times, and with frustration, so that the mohair started to bloom on its own. Said fuzzy pile was relegated to the bottom of the yarn bin for about 6 months, while I moved on to other things. Like designing with lace. Like learning to knit lace with something other than fuzz. Like learning to knit from charts. Like learning how patterns work.

So after some deliberation I decided to return to KSH. I had found a good project, you know what it is, Polly's Kiri, and it used the yarn. Polly was even considerate enough to specify how much shawl you'd end up with after each ball. Approximately 2 balls would yield a big enough shawl (you must know I'm petite by now). I liked that. But the KSH. Sooo fine! And sooo fuzzy! How was I going to make it behave?

Turns out, I didn't have to do anything! Having cut my teeth on the Flower Basket Shawl, working with fine yarn, learning how each pattern section worked with another, helped me when it came to figuring out Kiri. Now I know why Stephanie calls it Crack. It's good stuff, let me tell ya. And I know I'm using the correct needle size, because they're big and comfortable, but not clunky. (That's another thing, finding the correct needle size to go with fine yarn to achieve an open, airy, lacy effect.) If I was to offer any beginning lace knitter some advice on KSH, it would be this: find a fingering yarn and knit something lacy with that first, and if you don't know charts, learn to read them. Then try KSH. Trust me on that.

So Fuzzy Wuzzy here is pictured after its fourth pattern repeat. According to Polly, 2 balls of yarn should yield 8 pattern repeats. But the question begs, is there enough yarn to knit the edging? Or should I go with 7 pattern repeats and then the edging? I guess I'll know when I get to it. Lifelines, baby, lifelines.

PS: I just read Julia's entry on KSH. And mountain biking. You must know they're related, right?

PPS: Want to see some great flash work? Click here, and hold your mouse down to navigate once the picture comes up.

PPPS: Another great (design) link: The USA Smart Car website (gotta love those cars) has a nav similar to design company Evolution Bureau's. However, it was created by H20Media in Germany.