New Anna magazine and Lily of the Valley

While at the Lacis lace knitting group this weekend, I got to check out their wonderful books (including the Estonia book). On my way out, I spied w/ my eyes the new North American Anna Burda magazine. hmmm...

Yep, I came home w/ it. I also decided that this little doily needed to be knit with 100/2 linen thread. (I did mention that there's a gap in my small needles collection and I don't have 0000 circs). So, I pulled out my 000, and got started.


The start is on 16 stitches, and I just couldn't do it w/ dpns. So I modified the start by casting on 8 stitches, and the next round, increasing to 16. Pretty easy knit but I did curse the k5tog...okay, not so much except last night, when I was on row 81, only to realize that I missed one of those k5tog back in row 77! From row 77 to 81, it's just stockinette, but there was no way I could drop down and knit that 5 stitches together (oh shoot). I ended up tinking back to row 78 -- yes, that is over 1800 stitches (thank goodness it was all stockinette). Then as I was crochet casting off, I managed to yank ~50 stitches off the needle...yikes. Anyhow, here's the finished blocked item.




As for the 100/2 linen? It has a little wee bit of slub, but that was it (definitely not like thicker linens I've used). I don't think I'll be knitting our kitchen curtains with the 100/2...the thought of 000 needles for curtains (sigh). I think I'll stick w/ the huge thing of 40/2 linen. One thing of note is that the linen thread is much more unforgiving than Cordonnet. You see all that unevenness of the stockinette? Some of that came about in the blocking.

Right after I knit myself a pair of socks (shh...I'm going to knit these. They have DNA on the side).

Camel's Back and the straw

I've been plodding away on a rectangular shawl, based on a curtain design from an old Anna magazine.

I received the single ply lace weight camel yarn called gazelle (yes, it's camelhair named gazelle). The color is a little deceiving because it looks redder than it actually is. It turned out to be lovely dark brown yarn. Single ply. I was a little worried about, but I knit a swatch and blocked it and it looked lovely. Absolutely lovely.

I didn't want to do a flowery motif with this chocolaty goodness. I opted for a geometric (PITA) pattern that took me several repeats to finally understand (a 70 row repeat, seriously?!). AND I ended up knitting one end, then picking up and knitting the other end and feared that I knit the world's longest shawl...but it did block out nicely.

After blocking, I noticed that it does look a tad feather and fan, but it's not. And the end bits, man, that makes up for the boring middle part.

The pattern wasn't fraught with errors, but there is one line that did have errors and I pretty much reinvented that line (81) to get the others to work.


Specs:

Started September 14 2008
Completed October 8 2008
Yarn: 1/15 laceweight camelhair yarn from Colourmart in gazelle
amt: 990 yds.
needles: Addi lace turbos US3

Mods:
Cast on- 2 edges, 4 center repeats with 3 stitches on each side for edge (127 stitches total) and the pattern repeat? Well, that would seriously be a 70 stitch repeat. I did 3 on each side and then the edge. Modified row 81 because there were issues (extra stitches that didn't get used up in the edging) -- k,ssk,k9,kf&b,k9,k2tog,YO,k,YO,ssk,k9...

Anna Banana

Everyone knows about SABLE.

I have NABLE.

NABLE-def. Niebling acquisition beyond life expectancy. There is no way that I will be able to knit all these...but I'm going to try.

I was reading Soo's blog about her new obsession with Nieblings. I commented on her blog that at least she didn't have an Excel spreadsheet to track Anna Nieblings...er...well...like I do. Of course after I compiled the thing, I realized that I've successfully reinvented the wheel. There's a version on the lace knitter yahoo group. I guess the nice thing is that I compiled it based on information on the web (I did not previously own any Anna mags).

Here's a picture of my Anna's thus far.

I'm in search of larger square Nieblings for a shawl...know of any (besides Lyra)?

I did start another doily without finishing my last one. Will finish the blue one today at the knitting group.