Urchin Shawl

The Urchin Shawl pattern is finally ready! This was my big design project of 2006, the largest piece I've ever knit. I hope it gives you as much joy as it gives me every time I look at my finished shawl. This shawl was inspired by the beautiful delicate pattern on the shell of the Red Sea Urchin (Strongylocentrotus franciscanus), native to the northern Pacific coast of the United States and Canada. Covered with 3-inch-long spines while alive, and growing to a diameter of 6 inches, these animals hide their lacy inner beauty. The shawl is worked in the round from the center out and then a lace edging, reminiscent of gently waving seaweed, is knit on sideways. It requires ~3750 m (~4100 yds) of laceweight yarn, approximately 40 wraps per inch, and 3mm (US #2) needles. As with most shawls, gauge is not critical, but after blocking there are 7.5 stitches and 9 rows per inch, in stockinette. Techniques used include increasing, decreasing, reading a chart, working in the round from the center out, provisional cast-on, knit-on edging, and grafting lace in pattern. After blocking, the shawl is 84" in diameter, measured from point to point. This pattern, though not difficult in the execution, is quite a large piece of knitting. A healthy dose of patience is suggested, and enjoyment of the journey. The results are worth it!

11 pages (7 of them are charts), 973 KB Adobe PDF file, available for immediate download after payment. (Note: Ravelry membership not required for purchase.) $6.00

Urchin, Part 3

Is it possible that I love the Urchin Shawl more today than the first time I looked at it completely pinned out and blocking? I think so.



We finally got out to take some pictures of the Urchin "in the wild" today. Please excuse the dorky expression- it was very sunny. This was the first time I'd really worn the shawl, and I love the way it fits. That sounds like a silly thing to say about a shawl, where "fit" is not something that's usually considered, but it really does fit me perfectly. It snuggles around my shoulders, is just the right length, and the half-circle shape after it's folded puts enough fabric in the front and sides to keep it from sliding backwards like a triangular shawl can.

(What, you don't wear jeans and hiking boots with floaty lace shawls?)



I folded it not quite in half, so that both layers of the edging are visible when it's worn. The fabric is so very light that I had a hard time keeping it still enough to get the picture; it wanted to shiver and float on the breeze.



Blocking this was a transformation, not just with the pattern but also the yarn itself. It now displays a sheen, luster, drape, and silkiness that just wasn't apparent before when it was a matte lace blob.



Have I mentioned that I love this project?

Urchin, Part 2

Ta Da!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Click to see the detail.)



The dyeing turned out just as I had hoped (though these pictures were taken at 8:00pm and look a little muddy). The pattern turned out just as I had pictured when I first sat down to begin charting. The size is right on target for what I estimated when I decided how many rows to chart. It looks like a sea urchin, and the edging works with the body.

I can't believe I made this.



I love how the Print o' the Wave pattern in the edging looks like seaweed.



Resident three-year-old for scale:



The specs:

• 298 g /~10.5 oz (~3750 meters/~4125 yards) Ornaghi Filati Merino Oro yarn, 40+ wraps per inch
  
• 1 24" US 2 Addi Turbo circular for the body, a US 2 double point for the edging
• 84" diameter while blocking, I expect it to relax a bit when the pins are removed
  
• original pattern

Random trivia about this project:

• There are 314,004 stitches in this shawl.
  
• It took approximately 200 hours to knit, probably another 20 or so to chart.
• There are 2.34 miles of yarn in this shawl.
• The edging alone consumed a full skein of yarn plus a bit.

I may have to post more pictures of this after it's released from the pins, so be warned. You have my permission to ignore that post if you're sick of hearing about the shawl! I'm just so very proud of myself!



Happy happy joy joy, HAPPY happy JOY, happy happy joy joy, happy happy JOY!

Urchin, Part 1

I would like to show you this:



Do you KNOW what that means??!! The knitting on the urchin shawl is DONE!!!



I finished the knitting at 11:30 last night (The number of stitches worked out even! Not too few, not too many!), and grafted it this afternoon. Grafting lace, in pattern, requires concentration. There was no way I was going to tackle that last night at 11:30. I'm pleased with the way the graft turned out, though. I knit a little tab of waste yarn for the provisional cast on, and that made it easier to graft in pattern, since all I had to do was follow the path of the waste yarn. Still not something to do while watching TV, though.



I grafted the whole seam before taking out the waste yarn, and it was really cool to take it out and see that the stitches were all joined together. The finished graft is nearly invisible.



So then I had a finished lace blob!



It measured 60" across, unblocked. But I wasn't quite done yet. I still wanted to dye it. That, however, required some samples and practice.

When we were on our way back from Friday Harbor last week, I stopped at Weaving Works in Seattle to get some Jacquard acid dyes. With great trepidation, I filled up my big dye kettle (obtained yesterday at Safeway, since the thrift store here in town didn't have any large kettles) with water and some vinegar, and started dyeing. Shaun asked me "Do you know what you're doing?" and I replied "Sort of..."



Clockwise from the top, these are Vermillion, Purple/Vermillion, Sapphire, and the exhaust from the shawl bath. I didn't want to use up a lot of the shawl yarn for samples, so I used some of the Rambouillet x Cormo fleece I was working on ages ago. I still have a pillowcase full of scoured but not carded wool, so I mainly dyed that, with a mini-skein of the shawl yarn in the dyebath with it to see how the blue shawl yarn took up the color. I'll have great fun spinning wool I dyed myself, so multitasking seemed like a good idea. It also made the math easier.

I knew I wanted the shawl to be a light warm purple with a hint of red, so I tried the Vermillion dye first. I figured since the yarn was already blue, overdying it with red would make purple. The red was so strong, though, that it overpowered the light blue. Even if I had used a lower depth of shade, it would have been too red. So next I tried the Purple dye, with just a smidge of Vermillion. That gave me the color I wanted, but it was way too dark (I was working with about a 1% depth of shade). I figured that if I took the depth of shade down to 0.3%, it would be just right. (Then I dyed a pot of Sapphire wool, just to practice once more. Also to see what the Sapphire dye looks like. It is glorious.)

Next step, the shawl. Eek!



A swim in an Orvus bath to get out a year's worth of grimies and thoroughly wet the fibers while the dyepot heats, then......



I ended up pulling the shawl out of the bath before it was totally exhausted because it looked like it was getting too dark, so I threw in some more Ramb x Cormo to soak up the last bit of dye. I'm glad I did this, because the shawl turned out just the right color.

Stay tuned! More in "Urchin, Part 2".

We're back in La Grande, and I've gotten back to daily work on the urchin shawl. However, with 65.5 repeats of the edging done, I face this:



Yep, ran out of yarn. Luckily, I planned ahead two weeks ago, and have this waiting in the wings:



Too bad about this running into the beginning of another skein, but I can always use the leftover yarn for another project. There will be plenty for a stole. The new skein is a different dyelot, but it's pretty close and I planned from the start to overdye the whole thing anyway, so hopefully it won't be a problem. (We're leaving aside for now the whole issue of me being able to entrust this project, that I've worked on for so long and to which I am so attached, to a dyepot. Scary scary. I've never dyed anything before, except some roving at a Guild meeting three years ago. Oh, yes, there will be sampling with the leftover yarn.)

On the other hand, did you SEE how few stitches are left on the circular needle????!!! I only have 14.5 repeats left to do!

Continuing in the quest to visit all my favorite places on San Juan Island at least once in the space of a week, Emma and I went to British Camp and Lakedale yesterday. It was drizzly and windy, so we didn't see many birds on Garrison Bay (British Camp). Lakedale on the other hand, being more sheltered, was playing host to two families of Trumpeter Swans, about 30 Canada geese, and a mixed flock of about 200 American coots, hooded mergansers, and American wigeons.



We went over to a friend's house last night for dinner, and I managed to complete two repeats of the edging on the urchin shawl while the kids were playing and the other grownups were talking about triathlon training. Unfortunately, that's the first time I've worked on it in two days. I'll have to pick up the pace once we get back to La Grande!

I'm eager to get home and finish the shawl and continue on the huck weaving. I only got the reed partially sleyed (warping front to back this time) before we left, and am hoping that the cat is leaving the warp chain alone! I left everything securely tied, but forgot to close the loom room door, and last night I had a dream that the cat was playing with the warp and had completely snarled it up.

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, just been traveling again. Shaun finished up his teaching for the quarter last week, and the next day we went up to Friday Harbor to pack up the last bit of stuff from Shaun's lab and woodshop to take to La Grande. And I finally have my plants again! (But sadly, the three phalaenopsis orchids didn't survive the plantsitter.) Nothing like moving in dribs and drabs over the course of four months.....

I've made tremendous progress on the urchin shawl, though it's still not very photogenic. That's probably another reason I haven't been posting much. Singlemindedly working on one large project that doesn't change much day to day doesn't make for very interesting blog posts. I'm now 7/10 of the way around the edging, and only have 24 repeats left!! I've been trying to do two repeats per day, but haven't been able to keep up with that goal very well since we've been here in Friday Harbor.

Emma and I went to the Textile Guild's holiday party last Saturday (we didn't plan the trip around this, but it was good timing nonetheless!) and it was so great to see everyone again. I think my fiber friends are what I miss the most about Friday Harbor. We had the usual White Elephant gift exchange and lookie what I got:



I'm not quite sure how I ended up with this instead of the tacky little knickknacks most of the other people got. I'm working through it cover to cover, and it's stuffed with good information. It reads a lot like a textbook, but is written with Alden Amos' quirky style so it's not too terribly dry.

Emma and I went hiking at Jakle's Lagoon today, which as you may remember, is my favorite walk on the island. It was cloudy/sunny, breezy, and chilly. We had a little picnic on the beach (a very NARROW beach because the tide was so high) and looked at birds. We walked about two miles, all told, and Emma spent most of it running, so I'm hoping for an early and fuss-less bedtime tonight.



We came across this log during our walk that was covered with Witches Butter fungus (Tremella mesenterica). Very pretty.

I took yesterday off from the urchin shawl. Poor little Emma has been wearing socks on her hands when she plays outside in the snow, because she outgrew her old mittens and her neglectful mom hasn't gotten around to making her new ones. Poor girl. I almost bought her a pair at the store the other day, but couldn't bring myself to pay $10.00 for what were essentially the same as this:



-Brown Sheep Naturespun Worsted, color Blue Knight
-US #3 (3.25mm) needles (Addi circs); smaller that I would ordinarily use for this yarn, but I wanted them dense
-original pattern

I knit these in just under three hours, out of some of the leftovers from the sweater I made my dad three years ago. Three hours and 1.1 ounces of yarn, and I haven't done this before now why???!!! At least she finally has warm hands.

Bad Mommy.

I actually didn't completely take the day off from the shawl. After finishing the mittens (and redeeming my mom-conscience) I did one edging repeat, bringing the total so far to 35. Almost halfway!!

Getting there.....



As you can see, the edging is progressing. I have 24 repeats done, putting me 3/10 of the way around. This WILL be done by the end of the year!

From what I can tell in its unblocked state, I like how the edging is knitting up and how the design works in the body. However, I'm a little worried about (and I'll whisper this so as not to jinx it) running out of yarn.....

I must confess to being more than a bit nervous about finishing this. When I started designing this project last January, I had a picture in my mind of how it was going to look when finished. I just hope the real thing lives up to that image.

Oh. Oops.

Remember how I said there were going to be 40 repeats of the edging pattern around the urchin shawl? Well, it's really 80. I forgot that it takes TWO rows of edging to nibble up one stitch of the body. You only join the edging to the shawl on the right side rows.

Ah well. I have five repeats done already, I plan to do two more tonight. They're like candy after those long rounds of the body.

LOOK!!!!!!!!! It's a finished shawl body!!!!!



I finished at about 5:00 this afternoon, after doing three rounds last night (2.5 hours) and five today (4 hours). I now have 1440 stitches on the needle. Whew!

All that's left is to knit the edging, a total of forty repeats. I figure that each repeat will take about 50 minutes, based on the number of stitches. (Though it was totally unplanned, I love that the number of stitches in one edging repeat is 1440, exactly the same as the total stitches in the final round of the body. I don't know why this pleases me so, but it does.)

As far as finished size goes, I think I'm right on target (possibly slightly larger). By holding the center and edge of the shawl, I can easily stretch it to 35 inches, which was the target radius of the body. The edging should be about 5 inches, giving a finished diameter of 80 inches.

I can't wait to get a few edging repeats knit on so I can actually see how my pattern is turning out! I've been going on faith since round 100, (last February!), when I had it off the needles to do a test stretch.

I'm still going on the shawl, and am now up to round 282. This is very exciting, because it means that I'm now LESS THAN TEN ROUNDS from finishing the body of the shawl!!! I'm in single digits! I'm loving how each round now puts me nearly a full percentage point closer to completion (there are a LOT of stitches now- 1400 on the last round). I also finished the second skein of yarn a couple rounds ago, which means I've knit 2750 yards so far!

However, a slowly growing lace blob does not an interesting blog photo make. I didn't feel like spinning last night after finishing my two rounds, so I pulled out the little Loomette frame loom that came in with all the stuff for my big loom. I've never tried one of these types of looms before, though I made potholder after potholder out of jersey loops when I was a kid. (And incidentally, I noticed when I was at Dad's house last summer that several of those are still in use! Not bad for probably 25- to 30-year-old potholders!)

Anyway, the Loomette is pretty cool. You take one continuous strand of yarn, and by winding it around the pins a certain way into three layers, then needleweaving a fourth layer, you create a self contained little piece of fabric with selvedges on all four sides.



I just made plain weave squares last night, but you can also make lots of different patterns. There's a great website, eLoomaNation, that has pdf's of lots of old pattern books for this type loom. Each square takes about 10 minutes to make.

I used some coned yarn that I've had around for a while to make these. It's 100% wool, but kind of weird. It's a singles yarn, just one ply, with flecks of lighter fiber spun in. It's also somewhat scratchy and stiff, and it seems to be almost felted. Not a great yarn, but the three pound cone was free, and it's a pretty color. You can see in the picture above how the squares looked after coming off the loom (4" square) and after washing (3.5" square). I was amazed at how the yarn changed with a soapy wash and a bit of fulling. There must have been spinning oil in there, because it bloomed and softened considerably. It also lost a bit of excess dye.

I took two of the squares and pulled up one thread in each direction, from the center, to make this little gathered flower.



I think with some beading and a pin back, this would be a cute embellishment to go on a felted bag or hat.

-----------------
(edited to make the link work- thanks Leigh!)

Making great progress on the shawl- I'm up to round 274! This two-row-a-day thing is really working (though I've exceeded that goal recently, and have done ten rounds in three days!) Only 18 rounds left...

Other random thoughts: I love having a clothesline again. I had one in North Carolina, but the past five years in Washington, I didn't. There's really nothing that compares to line-dried sheets.



Haven't used a dryer since the last laundromat visit on Sept. 24, before the movers brought our washing machine, and am loving it.

Today I have a knitting update and a spinning question to answer.

First, the shawl. I have completed Round 261, which means I only have 30 more rounds to go!!! Oh, and the edging. Right. But it's getting there!



A question on spinning itty bitty yarn, from bibliotecaria in the comments from the last post: "Can you share some more details of how you drafted it? Set up the spinning wheel? Was it a special flyer or bobbin?" Gladly!!

This was spun on my Schacht Matchless wheel, with the standard bobbin and flyer that came with the wheel. I have the wheel set up for Scotch tension, and am using a thin cotton brake band (#50 crochet thread) and a soft spring. I used the smallest flyer whorl I have, which has a ratio of 13:1. This whorl is listed as giving a 15.5:1 ratio, but I use a stretchy polycord drive band, which has a slightly larger diameter than the Schacht cotton drive band, hence the lower ratio. They do make smaller whorls, up to 27.5:1, but I don't have that one.....yet.

To start, I pull off a piece of roving about five inches long. The silk roving I have is fairly thick, so I predraft extensively before I spin.



On the top is the roving as it comes out of the bag. In the middle, it's spread out so I can see the natural thin spots where it will be easy to split lengthwise. In this case, I would probably divide it into three strips. The piece on the bottom is what I spin from, after splitting the roving and attenuating each strip to about half the thickness of my little finger. I cannot emphasize enough the value of predrafting. It makes spinning fine MUCH easier. But don't do too much at once, because it wants to fly everywhere after it's predrafted.

After the fiber is ready, I just spin. I use a modified worsted technique, always keeping the twist under control- at no time is the twist allowed between my hands, into the drafting triangle. I say "modified" worsted because I have a relatively low ratio whorl for spinning laceweight yarn, so I do two treadles for each inch I draft out, giving about 26 twists per inch in the finished singles. If I had a higher ratio, I would just treadle once. Either way, it takes a lot of twist.



This is what the drafting triangle looks like. Obviously, I would normally be using two hands, but have you ever tried to take a picture of yourself while spinning? Not easy. My left hand would be the back hand, controlling the fiber mass, while my right hand is in front controlling the twist. My sequence of steps is this:

1) Draft one inch by pulling forward with the right hand, pinching off the twist, while treadling once.

2) Smooth in the twist with the right hand by sliding the fingers back toward the left hand. This requires a slight (and I do mean slight) lessening of pinching pressure, but not so much that the twist escapes into the area between my hands. While this slide occurs, treadle again.

It's pull/treadle, slide/treadle. Repeat ad infinitum.

For plying, the sequence is the same, but instead of drafting forward one inch of fiber at a time, I pull forward two inches of singles per two treadles, then smooth them together with the third treadle while sliding my right hand back. This gives slightly less plying twist than singles twist, which produces a balanced yarn. In plying, as in drafting, I don't let the twist between my hands. The reason is the same- to catch in any stray ends and make the yarn as smooth as possible.

Three more tips-

First, when spinning silk or other fine fibers, I don't use my regular lapcloth. I made mine out of duck cloth, and the surface is just too "grabby." I use a silky scarf (I think it's probably polyester, but as long as it's slippery, it'll work) on my lap, otherwise the silk fibers stick to me, the cloth, and everything in the vicinity. The smooth fabric keeps everything under control nicely. A solid color would be better, but Emma happened to have the one in the above pictures in her dressup box, so I borrowed it.

Second, I think plying from rewound bobbins is especially helpful in this situation, when a super-smooth yarn is the goal. That way, when you do the smoothing step during plying, you're going in the same direction that you smoothed the singles, and the fibers lay even flatter. If I didn't rewind the bobbins, I'd be raising the nap on the singles when I plyed, and it could be fuzzy.

Third, it can be helpful to slightly raise your forward hand during the sliding/smoothing steps of both spinning and plying. This helps keep the twist from running up in between your hands when you release the pinch slightly.

So there you go, probably more than you ever wanted to know about how I spin. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is. Truly, it becomes automatic and relaxing.

Well, I'm still whirling along on the urchin shawl (...you know, like whirling a pizza dough to stretch it out, only slower...yes, I have a strange mind...), and am now up to round 250! I think I'm actually getting there! For some reason, it seems like the recent rounds are going by faster then the earlier ones. (They aren't really, it just seems like it.) There was a bit in the middle where it felt like each round took f...o...r...e...v...e...r.

Perhaps it helped that we finally got the necessary wiring-connector-converter-adapter thingy to allow our DVD player to communicate with our TV, and I can now listen to my favorite movies while I knit. When you've seen Lord of the Rings That. Many. Times. the soundtrack alone is enough. The pictures just play along in my head as I happily count out my lace. We had the DVD player routed through our broken VCR when we were in Washington, but couldn't see the logic of bringing a piece of defunct electronics along on the move. Of course, when we got here and were connecting all the wires together, we realized why we had kept said defunct electronics; namely, that the 3 year old DVD player doesn't speak the same language as the 12 year old TV. Anyway, when my dad was here a couple weeks ago, he offered to send us the adapter he was no longer using since he recently bought a big huge giant over the top very nice new TV. The adapter works, and we can watch DVDs again.

I worked out something of a system for fiber work in the past week. I'm concentrating on the urchin shawl, but I have to have something else going as well, preferrably non-knitting, so different muscles are used. I find that spinning is a good complement to knitting. It rests my hands, eyes and brain, exercises my feet, and lets me sit in a different posture.

So my daily goal is to knit at least two rounds on the shawl, and spin if I'm still feeling crafty and awake. The spinning has been the almost-froghair silk that I posted about here and here. I started on a new bobbin after that last picture, the bobbin with eight hours on it. I weighed it to find out how much silk singles was on it, and portioned out an equal weight of roving. It was only 16.5 grams(0.56 oz)! I spent the next few days spinning that. It also took eight hours.

I then rewound both bobbins onto 6" weaving bobbins in preparation for plying. I wish I had remembered to take a picture of the weaving bobbins with the silk on them, they were beautiful, and sixteen hours of spinning only produced enough singles to fill one third of each bobbin.

I plyed last night and this morning, and ended up with this:



After skeining it off onto the niddy-noddy to measure the yardage,



a quick dip in a warm bath and a breezy drying outside,



and I have this!



That little handful is 33 grams (1.16 oz), and 680 yards of 70 wraps-per-inch two ply. It represents sixteen hours of spinning, five hours of plying, and 30 minutes of skeining. The grist works out to just under 10,000 yards per pound. (!)

While I was plying the two bobbins together, the second one only had this much left over when the first ran out.



There is a five yard length of yarn at the end of the skein that is plyed from both ends of the leftover bobbin. That means that one bobbin only had 10 yards more singles than the other. Fairly consistent, considering how long that thread was!



I'm not sure what this is going to become. Maybe knitted lace, maybe something woven. I may spin up a whole bunch more of this and knit a gigantic, diaphanous, floaty shawl. Or I may use it as warp and weave myself something beautiful and impractical. This yarn is very strong- Neither the singles nor the plied yarn broke during the whole process. Well, OK, the singles did break once during plying, but it was not the fault of the singles, it was because Emma ran by and got caught on one of the plies.

I'm still working on my fine-spinning skills, but this is getting there. I think patience is one of the biggest components of spinning fine. You spin and spin (and spin and spin and spin) and the bobbin still looks mostly empty. It's worth it, though.

I did six (SIX!!) rounds of the urchin shawl yesterday. How this happened, I don't know, because that means that I knit for approximately five hours and I have no idea where that time came from. But appparently the time was there, because my chart now shows I'm on round 241.

Instead of showing the lace blob yet again (just picture it looking slightly blobbier), I'll leave you with this...



This is taken from the flank of Mt. Harris, looking south over the Grande Ronde River valley along the edge of the Wallowa Mountains. I live in that valley, out of the picture to the right, and I can see that steep face of the Wallowas from my kitchen window.

If you drive on the Forest Service road up to the ridgeline of those hills and look east, you see this:



This is looking out over the Minam River valley and the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, to the next three layers of mountains in the Wallowa Range. They're sort of like a series of folds running northwest/southeast, with each successive fold getting higher. The highest peaks approach 10,000 feet.

So far, I'm pleased with Blogger beta.......EXCEPT that for some reason, I'm not getting all the comments emailed to me anymore! Waaa! Those of us who don't get hundreds of comments per post consider the ones we do get to be precious! So those of you who have commented on the past few posts, sorry I didn't see them right away, and thanks for commenting! Not sure why this is happening- I have the settings on the blog correct to get comments emailed, and I've written to Blogger, but of course haven't heard back yet. It also seems to be sending all the comments from noreply-comment@blogger.com, so I can't even write back to the ones that do get through (though I did find an email address on the person's blog in a couple cases).

Anyway. Fiber content. I did another round on the urchin shawl this morning in between loads of laundry. Tidied up the loom room a bit. Browsed through some weaving books.

To all the weavers out there- Does anyone have recommendations for good books for four to eight harness patterns? Several came with my loom: I have "Foot Treadle Loom Weaving" by Edward Worst (1976), "200 Patterns for Multiple Harness Looms" by Russell Groff (1979), and "A Handweaver's Pattern Book- Revised Edition" by Marguerite Davison (1944). I know the Davison book is one of the standards, but what else is good?

After a much too long break, I've picked up the urchin shawl again. I haven't really worked on this project much since the beginning of August, what with selling the house and the packing and moving and colds and the Fair, and then the vacation in which I planned to knit but never did. And, of course, the new loom.



I've done nine rounds in the past three days, and today I passed a very significant milestone. I've completed through Round 230 (of 291), and have now tipped over the 50% mark!!!! (This, according to my masochistic spreadsheet that I really should just delete off my computer.) I'm actually 62.4% done with the body of the shawl, but when you add in the edging, it's only 50.3% done.

I have 1140 stitches on the needle right now. Each round takes approximately 45 minutes to knit. This is definitely a project that's about enjoying the process and being patient.

From what I can tell, it has about a 28-29" radius right now, meaning that the finished diameter of the body will end up around 70", which is exactly what I was planning.

I have a ring marker separating each section around the shawl. Nine of them are green. One is red. Green means "Keep going, you're not at the end of the round yet, but you can do it! Go Sue Go!"



I adore the red ring.

Thought I'd pop in for a quick update on the chaos that is my life this week:

1. MOVING: Packing proceeds apace. Shaun is finally helping. We have three more days until closing, but only two until the furniture has to be out so the carpet can be cleaned.

2. HEALTH: I babysit for two boys, age 7 and 5. Here's how our last month looked.

• Four weeks ago, Kai (7-year-old) was sick with a fever and respiratory virus.
• Three and a half weeks ago, Nik (5-year-old) was diagnosed with mononucleosis after being cranky, low-grade-feverish, and out of sorts for a couple weeks. Emma comes down with a fever and respiratory virus.
  
• Three weeks ago, Nik was sick with a fever and respiratory virus (on top of the mono). Kai and Emma are recovered at this point.
• Two weeks ago, Nik is mostly over the virus and asymptomatic on the mono. Kai comes down with another fever and vomiting and respiratory virus.
• Last week, Kai is over the virus again. Emma comes down with a fever and respiratory virus.
• Last Sunday, Emma is well. Kai is well. Nik is well. I come down with a 104F fever and respiratory virus.
• Today, I think I am finally getting better. All kids are still well. Perhaps the cycle has run its course? One can only hope.
  

Needless to say, this has made packing less than fun. I was so tired on Sunday night that I went to bed at 8:00 pm and didn't get up until 8:00 am. I can't even remember the last time I slept that long.

3. KNITTING: Progress has been stalled on the urchin shawl since Sunday (see #2 above.) I am now 9 rows behind my schedule. I'm trying very hard not to be too disappointed in myself for probably not finishing this in time for the Fair.

4. CROCHETING: The daffodil filet piece needs to be re-blocked. When I unpinned it from the blocking board, I put it down on the ironing board. Unfortunately, the ironing board was still slightly damp from steam pressing another project. This caused the filet piece to unblock a bit and shrink unevenly as it drank up some moisture. I thought I could live with it, but it turns out I can't. Back to the pins I go.

I'll be so glad when this week is over and the packing and moving are done.

I'm up to Row 200 on the shawl! No picture, though, since it still looks like a lace blob. I did a test-stretch the other night, and I think it's about 45" in diameter so far. I finished the first skein of yarn two days ago, and have joined in the second. (That's 1375 yards of yarn knitted up so far!)

I'm still having serious doubts whether I will finish in time, though. I have 20 days to do 90 rows. Let's do a little math, shall we?

90 rows/20 days=4.5 rows per day.

I've been getting about three rows on a good day. Four to five rows really is doable in one day, though, if I didn't have all these other things going on. And if I could stay awake later. I actually fell asleep while knitting on Monday night. Mid stitch! (And it was only 11:00.)

My spreadsheet that I keep masochistically looking at tells me that I am 49.8% finished with the body of the shawl. I need to stop looking at that spreadsheet....