Queen Anne's Lace

So I have cast on for the Queen Anne's Lace shawl. It is a circular knitted shawl that I fell in love with the moment I saw the picture. It is a free pattern available by joining the Yahoo group MMarioKKnits. Here is a picture provided as a sample.

 

I am using a yarn I got at a yarn swap held by our local weavers and spinners guild. It was originally on a cone, and the label on the inside of the cone had some numbers and the words "Made in Peru." It is a light fingering weight, and it is either llama or alpaca. It's a little scratchy, but not too bad, and should soften up when I wash it. Here is a pic of the yarn after I wound it off the cone. It is comparable in weight to KnitPicks Palette yarn. 

 

 

The pattern is fairly straightforward, but it took me like eight tries to cast on, as I wanted to use an invisible cast on. And really, the cast on wasn't that hard, it was getting the eight little stitches distributed to four long pointy needles and knitting the first few rounds without making a tangled mess. I tried and tried, and when I was just about to give in and cry, my knight in shining armor comes to the rescue. The double pointed needles I was trying to use were just too long and unwieldy for me to work with, so my wonderful husband spent hours over a grinder making these:

 

They are short double pointed knitting needles. To be exact, they are US Size 3, 4.5 inch stainless steel double pointed knitting needles.

Here's a comparison of the length of these vs. standard DPNs. Some of my really nice Skacel stainless DPNs are even longer than the Boyes. They were just too long for what I needed to do. So my wonderful husband got out his stash of stainless wire he keeps for making chainmail, and made me exactly what I needed.

I was able to cast on successfully on the first attempt with the shorties. Hallelujah! Here is a pic after round 6:

And after round 8:

After round 13

And my current progress, at round 32. I have slowly been working up from the size 3s, and now I am on a size 7 circular.

I am making good progress, but I haven't really had a whole lot of time to work on it. It doesn't look like much yet, but it will, eventually.

Rainy Day Sock No. 1

Well, I finished my first sock ever. It fits perfectly. I'm shocked. It looked like it would be too small, and I didn't quite make gauge, but the lace is really stretchy. And I have big ankles (but not cankles, thank God!), even. It was really pretty darn easy. The only difficult part was the picot edge hem, but it really makes the sock complete. The lace pattern was simple and easy to memorize. It took way longer than expected, but I did get married during the time it was on the needles. Hopefully the second sock will go faster, but I know it probably won't, mostly because the quilting bug has bitten me for now. I will work on it when I take the kids to choir class though. For those who don't know, I work in a special education classroom at the public high school here. The group I work with are the medically fragile and severely disabled children. One of the classes that I take the kids to is choir, where I am able to knit a little bit while the kids listen to the choir. It is the most enjoyable part of the day, as the regular ed. students are all good kids, and the choir director is great. He is a wonderful, funny man, who does his best to include our kids in the lessons. Anyway, here is a pic of the sock.

This is Only a Test

I made my first quilt block ever. It turned out okay. It is just a test block from scrap material, so I don't waste the good material. But it looks alright. It only took me one day to make it, which for me, is not too bad.