06-29-2019

Ok, I now remember why I don’t swatch. It isn’t fun, and the results are confusing. 34 stitches by 30 rows is supposed to be 10 cm. What I knit was in no way a square. This is not helped by the fact that even when I attempt to bind off very loosely, it is way too tight. I did both a garter “square” and knitted lace square, using the “Steek and Strawberry” chart. The knitted lace is larger than the garter, with the same needles. Even so, 00 and 1.5 both give me much smaller swatches than I want. Am currently swatching with a size 2. Tomorrow, I visit my knitting consultant to figure out WTF.

TL;DR: swatching sucks and confuses the Lydy.

06-30-2019

WE HAVE CAST-ON. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. WE HAVE CAST-ON.

I took my swatches, my pattern, and my vast ignorance to anthropomorphic this afternoon. She did not pat me on the head and say,
“Good swatching, Lydy,” but she did make me feel like the swatching provided information rather than showing that I can’t knit right. We muddled about with rulers and calculators, and determined that I want 15 feathers, and 101 points. This is… well, it’s a lot, my friends, it is a lot.

When I got home, I cast on, knit three rows, and tore out and started over. So The Process is in fine shape. anthropomorphic pointed out that once I get the points done, my rows are going to be better than 1000 stitches long, and my usual error correction technique of frogging back to a lifeline is probably not going to be particularly viable at that many stitches. Which is terrifying in its own way.

I like (?) knitting above my weight. Man, am I in over my head. However, having achieved cast-on, I’m stuck. It is vaguely possible that I might be able to intersperse an occasional crochet project, but that’s not entirely clear. Brains are weird, and I can usually only do one project at a time.

I have now knitted 4 rows of the first point. I like the yarn quite a bit, and hopefully will still like it a year from now.

Excelcior!

07-02-2019

And, I restarted three times last night, have gotten to row 15 of the first of 101 point, and put in lifeline at row 10, because damn. I have no idea how I’m going to deal with things when tearing back is no longer an option. But in the mean time, The Process is in fine form. Thank you, Process, she said, sarcastically.

07-06-2019

I now have 8.5 points. Each point is about 2 inches in length, which means it will be 202 inches, total, or about 16 feet? Is this too long? I am confused. I swatched, dammit!

They look pretty, though, don’t they.

07-17-2019

I now have 23 points. I also had a series of tangle disasters, and lost 23 grams (about 700 yards, I estimate) because I was clumsy, stupid, stubborn, and well, silk fucking tangles, man. I have done many cuts, many splices, but I still ended up with a huge, 23 gram wodge of silk. It’s really pretty, though.

07-24-2019

So, I just want to say that every step of the way, from being a dedicated crocheter who did afghans and doilies to this current insanity, every step seemed completely logical and normal and consistent. I’m not sure if that should stand as a warning or encouragement to those who follow this same path. Special shout-out to carbonel, who wanted that one afghan, which caused me to teach myself to knit for the third time. I am almost a third of the way through the edging, and then it gets real.

So, here’s the other thing. When on earth can I wear this? I mean, ok, science fiction conventions do mean never having to say, “But I have no place to wear this.” But, you know, other than that? Seriously. I don’t do church stuff. I am invited to very few weddings, and even if I did go to one, there’s a pretty firm rule about not upstaging the bride. If this gets finished at even 80% as good as I hope I can manage, it is still a very, very impressive honking piece of lace.

I dunno. Maybe I will have to throw the damn shawl its own damn party so that it can attend. Any gate, have now completed 30 points. I did not knit much the last five days, which is a good thing for my wrists, but I’m getting a bit antsy. Must not blow out my wrists and hands on this project.

Excelcior!

08-03-2019

I have 42 points. So, going pretty well. One brief fight with a tangle, but I won that one without having to cut and splice, so I’m feeling good about that.

08-16-2019

Ok, 60 points. I am reconsidering the 101 points. I think maybe, I should go with the pattern suggestion of 85? Need to go see my knitting consultant. Hmm. Why is this so complicated? Dammit, I swatched!

09-14-2019

I now have 85 points, which looks to be not only long enough, but very possibly too long. I consulted with anthropomorphic earlier this week, and she gave me necessary encouragement and praise. So, now I have to pick up 865 stitches, and can I just point out how utterly insane that is? Like, seriously nuts? Which, honestly, is this whole damn project, so why am I surprised?

Nevertheless, I persist.

09-18-2019

Points done, 4 rows plain knitting and one break row done. Am about to do another 4 rows of plain knitting, and find out if I did the break row correctly. And then, if I’m not mistaken, FEATHERS! The instructions confused me, something about mirroring, but I’ll tackle that when I get there. Mean while, a bunch of plain knitting. (Bad math. 865 x 4 = 3460. Which assumed that everything goes to plan, and all that. Wish me luck, oh Internets.)

09-18-2019

And, that didn’t go well. I misread the instructions for the break row. Nothing for it but to tear out two rows, some 1600 plus stitches. Ah, joy, rapture.

09-19-2019

I did not time it, but getting 865 stitches back on my needles took a long time, probably better than 2 hours. Thank god for life lines and stitch markers. (I leave the stitch markers in, hanging from the lifeline, so that if I have to pick them back up, I can keep track of where I am and it’s easier to see if I’ve missed a stitch. Working in this very small gauge yarn, that’s really helpful.) There was a moment of unusual interest, where the lifeline broke, and I lost some stitches and had to fix things with a crochet hook. That…was painful. But I now have the break row done, and one and a half rows of plain knitting. So, there ywe go. Progress. Two steps forward, one step back sorts of progress, but you know, you play the cards you’re dealt.

09-28-2019

Ok, so that’s 10 rows of the feather border. Which leaves…127 or some such? Dear gods. It’s still very pretty, but damn, that’s a long damn row.

10-15-2019

And, that’s row 30. I was optimistically wrong, of course. The total number of rows is 220, not 137 in the feather border. I, um, didn’t look at the next page. So, 190 rows to go. My estimate of a year is looking not too far wrong. So much knitting! Also, I made some mistakes that I have fudged. I do hope that doesn’t show too much. There’s one error that’s bugging the hell out of me, but it is too far back for me to fix. We’re gonna go with Mary Berry’s phrase, and refer to the whole thing as “rustic.” That is the plan.

10-22-2019

Sometimes, one makes mistakes so egregiously stupid that one is embarrassed to document them, or they are so completely stupid one can’t even figure out what one has done. Sometimes, they are both. In addition to all of that, there has been much tangling, at least one cut and splice to deal with a tangle, and more in the offing. Why, yarn, why? Is my own incompetence not enough for you?

I have just completed row 41 for the second time. I am glad I am putting in life lines every 5 rows, but I do wish that the lifeline I put in at row 43 had worked. Again, one of those egregiously stupid mistakes. So, back to row 40 I went. It takes almost two hours to get my stitches back on my needles. I really need to find a better error correcting technique, I tell you what.

11-04-2019

Like all right-thinking people, I prefer a center-pull skein. It has a greater likelihood of tangling, but the yarn pulls more smoothly and it’s less irritating to knit with…until there’s a tangle. I, um, vastly underestimated exactly how much this silk yarn wants to tangle. It yearns, deep in its soul, to be one great big fucking knot. Its one and only hope in life is to be Gordian, I tell you what.

So, not too long ago, I spent 10 hours (no, really, I counted) trying to resolve a tangle in my center-pull skein. This resulted in my having the entirety of my yarn wrapped around a short length of PVC pipe (part of a cheap, home-made niddy noddy), which was reasonably smart of me, comparatively speaking. In prior times, I’ve been known to end up with a mass of yarn on the floor, which then for some odd reason doesn’t just neatly rewind, but generates new tangles. So, experience is good for something?

So, I now have hundreds and hundreds of yards of silk all wrapped around a bit of pipe, essentially creating an outer-pull skein. 10 hours, and about four cut-and-splices, and here we are. So, um, no, I am not going to cut again, and rewind into a center-pull. Even I am not that quite stubborn and stupid. (It was close, though!)

I started to knit with the yarn on the spindle, and, well, it was doable. But it was irritating. I had to pull free a length to knit with every 30 - 50 stitches. Now, my boyfriend doesn’t knit and has no interest, but loves a bit of mechanical engineering. So, I was telling him I was thinking about just driving a thru’penny nail through a bit of wood, and using it to hold the spindle upright. He asked several questions, and then said, “Wouldn’t the yarn pull better if the spindle were horizontal?” Well, yes, yes it would, as it turns out.

So, $20 at the hardware store, about an hour for fabrication (including the terrifying circular saw that lurks in the basement and only my boyfriend uses because damn, I’m afraid of that thing), and I have a perfectly functional if not ideal in all ways spindle holder.

As expected, it is not magic. The yarn does, sometimes, get hung up round the shaft the spindle is on, and it adds a significant amount of weight to my knitting bag. But, it is SO MUCH BETTER than having the spindle just sit in the yarn bag. And the holder does fit (almost exactly) in the yarn bag that I use. (You can get one at Michael’s for not a lot of money, and man, are they so much nicer than just letting the skein rattle around loose in the bag and get into all sorts of mischief!)

I have just finished row 65 of the feathers, which leaves…roughly an infinite number of stitches to go, but that’s all fine. I’ve posted a picture of the progress, as well as pictures of my neat new knitting toy, both in and out of the bag. There may be refinements, but damn, it is such an improvement.

11-20-2019

So, I have reached row 103. At row 100, about a third of the way in, I found an error that I tried to correct. However, the point protector came off the left needle, and a dozen stitches got dropped, and while I can sometimes correct one or two stitches, that was just a bridge too far. So, I tore out four and a third rows (I’m putting in life-lines every 5 rows). That…took some time. Especially getting the work back on the needles. My god, that was irritating. The silver lining, such as it is, is that because I’m no longer using a center-pull skein, it was easy to wind the yarn back onto the spindle, and I didn’t lose a lot of time to pointless tangles.

12-01-2019

Well. I am at row 125. Again. I was at row 129, but that didn’t really work out. I had hoped that practice would improve the speed of my knitting; that does not seem to be happening. On the other hand, it now only takes me an hour and a quarter to get the work back on my needles, so I guess practice is good for something. If only I were better at this.

It’s really pretty. I’ll take another progress picture soon. I fret about gauge a lot, but the thing is, it’s much too late. Either it will be too big or too small once its blocked, or maybe just exactly right, but there is literally nothing to be done. And so, we go forward.

12-04-2019

ARGHHHHHH!!!!

BEWARE ROW 129, it has an error in the chart!

Ok, I’m calmer, now. But this is why row 129 went pear-shaped last time. I am not good with charts. I get that. I had to hand-count out the number of stitches necessary to complete the iteration to prove to myself that, yes, the chart was in error.

At the center of the iteration, there is a YO, K3, SSK, K, YO This should actually be YO, K5, YO.

Sigh. I mean, you look at it, it just looks wrong. But I trusted the pattern. I have been betrayed! And, you know, probably someone has published the errata and I just didn’t go look for it, so this is all my fault. But damn, that took a lot of time to fix.

01-01-2020

So, I just want to start with a complaint about this pattern. It is 35 fucking pages long. It is not so much a pattern as an attempt to create a Shetland lace knitter from the ether. Dear Sharon Miller, you are brilliant, but my goal is to knit this goddamn shawl, not to become a Shetland lace knitter. I mean, seriously, this pattern has charts for patterns which are never used in the shawl. It has long discursions! Charts and all, I expect it needs to be about 10 pages, maybe 15. So is it any wonder that I suspect that the errors in the charts are there ON PURPOSE!!!!

Look, I’m a simple girl. I like to make pretty things by doing what I’m told. That’s it. I will learn to read charts (which was a fucking struggle, I tell you what, see the notes on my Yggdrasil afghan to get a taste of that). I do not want to be clever and creative, dammit. I just want to do the thing! That I’m told! Just please tell me the CORRECT THINGS!

pant pant breathes deeply

Ok, so, more errata. Some of this I’ve found in groups, but not all. But I’m making notes in case I ever want to do this again (unlikely) and to save some person as yet unknown from the grief which I have encountered.

Row 141: Is missing decreases to match the YOs. I put a K2tog just before the first YO, an SSK just after the second YO, and did the same on the other side. To be clear, I didn’t do this the first time through, and hilarity ensued. If, by hilarity, you mean tangled yarn and cuss words. Should have learned another language to cuss in.

Row 145: Has a lie in it. It says 5 when it means 4. If you count the number of boxes, it’s totally 4, but yes, I tried knitting 5 stitches as I was told, and things did not go well. So very, very not well.

Row 143: is missing a K2tog at stitches 21 and 22. It’s pretty clear if you look at the chart that it’s missing. If you just do what it says, the numbers come out, but you’ll miss that pretty YO.

Row 148: There’s something profoundly
wrong with the way that starts, but I don’t remember what I did to fix it. So sorry, future me. You’ll have to figure it out on your own. Maybe document it, next time?

Row 155 and 157: The last iteration of the pattern needs to end with an SSK, not a plain knit. It’s just like Rows 147, 149, and 151. I did manage to catch the error before horrors ensued, so maybe Sharon Miller’s evil plan is working?

End errata, FOR NOW!

I have just completed row 172. If you, gentle reader, know of other errors, please tell me. My hair line would appreciate it.

01-28-2020

I am mighty! I have finished the feathered border, and four of the six rows of plain knitting. (Bad math. 5190 plain stitches. OMG, that’s boring.) And now it’s time for errata. Because, damn. (And, no, I have not magically become a Shetland lace knitter. Just a really pissed off knitter who’s doing a Shetland lace shawl.)

The left side rep is just inconsistently charted, and confusing.

Row 184, the printed number of stitches is 7 at the end of the row (working left to right) but that includes the plain stitch on the next repeat. If you use stitch markers, that can be ver confusing. On rows 190 and 192, the printed number of stitches includes the three border stitches of the left margin, which you don’t knit every time.

Row 190, the first set of plain stitches is 5, and on row 192, it is 7.

For rows 202, 204,206,208, 210, and 216, the left side has the wrong starting stitch for the regular repetitions. These are all rows where the stitch marker moves, and for the first iteration of the repeat, you use the half-chart on page 6, but for the remainder of the repetitions, you do something differently. So, the repeats start, respectively, as follows:

202: YO
204: SSK
206: YO
208: SSK
210: YO
216: Double decrease (sl 1, k2to, psso)

Still pretty, still frustrating.

Oh, and I spent another 10 hours untangling my yarn, which is now hand-wound onto two spindles, because my life is just like that. I have never had such trouble with yarn management, and I am sure I am doing something spectacularly stupid to get in such tangles, but there you are. And here I am. Thank you for watching.

02-16-2020

In between The Process and the fact that there’s yet another error, I have started the Laurel Leaf Insertion panel 3 times. The third time, I actually cut out a lot of yarn, because it was getting a bit shop-worn at that point. Dear god.

Errata: Shift the 213 repeats 4 stitches to the left, so that you have six margin stitches either side. If you do not, the repeats on rows 4, 6, and 8 will fuck you over. (Ask me how I know.) The repeats as marked on those rows use only three of the four stitches in the repeat below, and yes, numerically, you come out even at the end, but the YOs are all in the wrong places and, no, please don’t ask me how I know.

I am about to embark upon row 17. After this, some boring plain knitting, and then…the truly bonkers center tile.

Yay?

03-18-2020

I am well into the center tile, and I have lot of notes, but I’m too tired to write them up. I will however say that instead of putting the feathered border on a string, I put it on my interchangeable cable needles. It worked pretty slick. Knit to the center. Take right needle off cable, put end cap on the cable. Put needle on a different (long cable) with an end cap. Knit to end. Put needles on at the ends at the center of the border, put end caps on the ends of the cables. Knit back and forth and curse Sharon Miller’s name, because damn, there are a bunch of errors.

Discussion of problems to come.

08-10-2021

So, I thought I was almost done, but then read the pattern again and realized I had to knit around three sides creating about a million and one edging points. Which I am now doing. I figure another month or two before i have completed. So far, I’ve only found one dropped stitch. I do hope there aren’t more. It is enormous, larger than I expected, and dammit, I swatched! I still hope to collect all the errors and put them in one place to help other people. God knows, it’s really unlikely _I’ll_ do this again.

10-09-2021

Holy crap, I’m done. The ending graft is a trifle wonky, and then I found several dropped stitches that I tied into the body of the shawl in ways that I’m ashamed to admit, but at least they’re not busy unraveling the damn thing. I have no idea how long it will take me to block this puppy, but I’m betting a couple of hours. It is…very large. Larger than I expected. I swatched, dammit! Neverthelss, done!