Charlotte's Web: August 2003 Archives

Last night I finished the last touches on my Charlotte's Web Shawl. Putting all those tassles on took me a lot longer than I thought it would -- and used up a good portion of the yarn I had remaining from the project. I have some leftovers from the first three colors, but none of the last two.

When I first read the instructions I didn't think to hard about blocking this shawl. I figured my Spaceboard would do the job for me. Not quite. Charlotte has a wingspan of 76" and is 38" deep when blocked (or at least she is supposed to -- mine works out to those dimensions, but only if you include the tassles). The Spaceboard is deep enough but definitely not wide enough.

Good thing we have a queen sized bed in our guest room for Charlotte to stretch out on.

Pinning Charlotte down for blocking felt a lot like mounting a butterfly for a collection. Let me say that it is still remarkable to me what wool will do when exposed to a little strategic watering. When I came downstairs this morning to free Charlotte from her pinning, I half expected her to shrivel up into her pre-stretched state.

Here she is relaxing along my upstairs balcony rail. When I looked at this picture (taken in natural light, no flash) I was surprised at how much the red tones showed up in it.

And here she is basking in full Chicago morning sun. She's quite a large, dramatic girl, so it was difficult to find places in good light where I could show her off.

I hope this shot shows off the colorway to a little better advantage. I am so taken by how well all these colors went together. To me, they just seem to flow together. Thanks again to Matt of ThreadBear who spent the time with me to get this "Fall Comes to Northern Michigan" colorway put together.

Just one last picture before I run off to work... here's an up close look at the lace pattern.

As my first ever "serious" lace project, Charlotte was a lot of fun. I learned the importance of stitch markers, counting and how to think about the sort of texture that a yarn over creates. Because of all the color in the Koigu, it's also a very forgiving pattern. I made a lot of mistakes that I probably should have corrected, but didn't, early on in the pattern. If you look close you can see them, but most people don't get that close. I definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to try a big lacework pattern for the first time. The basic pattern is easy to memorize, it only takes 5 skeins of Koigu (making it a not-so-unreasonably priced project) and the result is quite spectacular. Even John, who normally doesn't pay too much attention kept coming over to admire Charlotte.

Of course, now that I have finshed a merino wool shawl, the mercury in Chicago is hovering around the 90 degree mark. It'll be a while before Charlotte sees too much action -- but I'll be ready when the cooler weather comes.

Thank you so much to everyone who left anniversary wishes. John and I both appreciate them. I'm fortunate to have a great husband and to be part of the wonderful Internet blogging community. I wish I could share these with everyone!

4 Dozen?!?

My mom and dad actually share our anniversary date with us. They came in from Ann Arbor to celebrate with us and to see the Cirque du Soleil show Varekai that is currently in Chicago. (This is a great show, and I would encourage anyone who has a chance to see it to go!)

Of course, Mom and I took a quick trip out to Knitting Workshop. They were having their end of the season sale and a number of summer yarns were discounted between 50% and 70%. I didn't find much of interest because I am pretty done with cotton and cotton-blend yarns for the year, but I did pick up a few things:

The Trendsetter Fizz was $3/skein and there were three skeins of the lovely Denim color that will be meeting their destiny as a fall scarf for me to wear with jeans. As to the Rowan Plaid book, all I can say is that there will be some Plaid in my future. KW had a whole treasure trove of it and it feels wonderful. I'm particularly taken by the Lavender Mist, but I think I need to do a littl stash decreasing before I order yarn for another project.

Along those lines, I did bring another project close to a close: Charlotte's Web. Here's a picture of my unblocked accomplishment:

I am so taken by the colors and how they blend together. Matt of ThreadBear fame helped me pick them out and I am even more convinced of his color genius now that I am mostly finished, than I was when I first got the yarn. I'm particularly amazed how you almost can't tell where I am changing colors -- the way these skeins mixed it almost looks like I had 10 skeins instead of 5.

4th and 5th colors

Here's what the colors look like on the skein, placed next to where they are in my shawl:

I only have one last thing to sort out with this shawl -- what color will the crochet edge be? I really don't have enough of either of the last two colors to do the edge and still have a little yarn for the tassles. Here's the options I'm left with:

Right now I'm leaning toward edging it with the color used for the very first "stripe" -- the green/rust/brown skein on the bottom of the picture above. I think it would be both subtle and tie the whole thing together. But then there is a part of me that says I should be more adventurous and use the bright red/orange/yellow skein (the top one in the picture above) -- that this would bring out the rusty colors in the 5th color and make the edge of the shawl look fiery and vivid. There are three crochet chains... I could do one in each color... so many things to think about!

Opinions and comments are welcome!

My slow work with the halter continues. I thought about getting wild and doing another cable interval yesterday, but then my wrists reminded me why that wouldn't be such a good idea. I'm quite enamoured of this simple cable pattern, however. If you want to take a look at a closeup, click here.

After the halter, I switched my attention back to Charlotte's Web for the first time in a long time. Probably because I had enough peace and quiet to do the repetitive counting that I need to do to maintain lace patterns. Those of you who are familiar with Charlotte know that the basic pattern is 18 repetitions of the primary lace panel, divided up into 2-repetition stripes, which alternate between a solid color (or as solid as Koigu gets) and alternating stripes of two colors. I'm halfway through the 4th solid color stripe, which means that I am actually starting to come down the home stretch. At this point there are ~220 stitches on my needles. By the time it's done there will be greater than 300 stitches. Fortunately, the lace pattern is fairly easy to memorize, and Koigu is a joy to knit with.

By around eleven or so, my brain isn't usually functioning well enough to cope with lace patterns so I decided to switch off onto another wooly project, Dad's LoTech Sweat. The perfect knitting to end the day with -- simple but satisfying. I love the way this wool is knitting up. My stitches are even, the fabric is soft and dense, and even the purl side looks great. Just makes me happy, even though it's simple stockinette.

When I was in the lab, I always liked to have several projects moving at once. That way, if I got stalled with one of them, there was always something to do. These three projects work well together, given their yarn and complexity levels.

I took the marquee tags off my works in progress list. Those tags don't seem to be equally compatible with all browsers, plus, I discovered that it was annoying to me to wait to see them come by. Of course, I was surprised to see how big the whole list has gotten.

It's a good thing a lot of the projects I have waiting in the wings are done on size 8 needles... means I have to wait to free up my AddiTurbos, which are fast becoming my only needles. Working with bamboo just seems to slow for me now that I have my Addis.