Oxymoron

I saw this beautiful design by Joëlle Meier Rioux in a Classic Elite booklet and said ‘Aha!’ What a combination, bulky and lacy, also delicate. I had to knit this oxymoron garment. Although the original is knitted with a DK weight cotton blend yarn, doubled, I had Vittadini Samantha in my stash. A bulky cotton yarn, just right for this design.



It took me less than a week to complete and the result is great. I've been wondering what I could knit with this bulky Samantha for a few years. Then, one day, the right design comes right at you. I am so glad to have my 'healthy' yarn stash. Here is the lovely lace pattern at the center front.

The Legends of the Shetland Seas Shawl

As you can see, Mother’s shawl is finally blocked and finished. This was my first time blocking any knitted items with wires. The method worked so beautifully. All the irregularities are gone and the shawl looks truly magnificent. The only difficulty was to find a large enough space to spread this thing out. It measures 72” long and 25” wide even though the pattern says the width is 18”. No wonder I used up more yarn than expected. No matter. Mother will be happy with more fuzzy warmth around her.

Here is the end panel.


And the center panel.


I had to use four large bath towels underneath the shawl when blocking. Even then, my comforter was kind of damp when all was finished. My DH says I should have used a plastic sheet under the towels. Looks like I need to go to a garden center when I knit this beauty next time.



Next is Father’s cardigan. Their gold anniversary is in March and I should have enough time for a cardigan.

Shawl, Twin Set, and Something New

The main panel of the shawl is done and I am working on the edging. One of my knitting friends at the Knitsmith Claire gave me the red crochet ball bag shown above. It is just the perfect thing for my lace yarn. Thanks Claire!

I could not resist pinning the lace fabric on my ironing board.



I've finished DD2's tank top to match with her cardigan sometime ago. Here is how they are put together.



The tank top is based on a Katia pattern from last summer, slightly modified.



Here is the beginning of my new project. I bought this gorgeous yarn, Schachenmayr Diva in grey, from my LYS on sale sometime ago. It is a blend of wool and polyamide and I have 7 balls.



I have been swatching this ribbon yarn quite some time, started with simple stockinet stitches which I thought was boring, and moved onto various lace stitches, most of which were way too elaborate. In the end, I settled for garter stitches. But, I need some fun stitches, like yarn over, ssk or k2tog. So, what you see in the top section of the swatch is what I will be using. It was adopted from my old project and I changed it slightly. We shall see how it turns out.

Lace Shawl by Hazel Carter

During my vacation in Japan, I knitted Hazel Carter's Legends of the Shetland Seas shawl with Lisa Souza hand dyed lace yarn in Sea Foam. Both the pattern and the yarn are just lovely. Actually, I saw the same shawl knit by my longtime internet knitting friend Laura one day this summer and I just fell in love with it. She brought with her many gorgeous afghans and lace shawls, but this Shetland shawl really caught my eyes. Her version was in darker color, called Wild Things, evoking dark stormy seas in northern Europe. I was going to knit it in the same color for myself initially. Then, I realized that my parents will be celebrating their gold anniversary soon. I thought the light sea foam color would be lovely on my mother whose hair is white. I still have a long way to go before I can start the edging as I am still on the center section.

Coming back home, I had to quickly seam up pieces to finish Belén’s cardigan. The pattern is from Phildar Enfants Printemps Été 2007 and the yarns used are Katia’s Sonrisa. We love narrow bands on the sleeves and cute flower buttons.



The back view.



And, Phildar version