Girasole - finished!

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Here's the problem with secret knitting projects...

You have to keep them a secret. This means you definitely can't blog about them, especially if the intended recipient is a regular reader of your blog. This was the case with my Girasole by Jared Flood [Ravelry]. I was knitting it as a wedding present for a good friend, and I didn't want to ruin the surprise!

On March 8, 2009, my Girasole was only two skeins of Fountain Hill Brushed Mohair full of potential.



Over three months later, I ended up with this final product:



Well worth the effort! Look how pretty and sparkly the yarn is.



Now is the time to bow down in deep reverence for Mr. Jared Flood. That man knows how to write a damn good pattern. Girasole was a labor of love, for sure, but its dirty little secret is how easy the pattern is to knit! Jared's pattern breaks each section up into small, easy-to-follow charts. They're repetitive enough to keep track of, but small enough that you never get bored.

I do have to say that I was pretty anxious to get this sucker off the needles after a while.



Lace is so lumpy and unattractive before blocking, but I kept the faith that it would turn out beautiful in the end. A few hundred pins later...



...and you got yourself a pretty lace shawl! Shazam!

Here's some technical stuff for the other knitters out there. I used size 8 (5mm) needles, and all of two skeins of the Fountain Hill Brushed Mohair, which comes out to 1120 yards. I skipped one repeat of chart E because I was afraid I'd run out of yarn.

Turns out I ran out of yarn just at the end of the knit-on edging. I was really pissed off. So pissed off, in fact, that I swore I wouldn't go buy anther 600-yard skein just to use 10 yards of it. I was actually finishing the edging during the Lakers' championship game against the Magic, and my boyfriend's delight at his team winning the big prize inspired me to keep on trucking. I HAD to finish that damn shawl.

So, in an effort to save yarn and get the damn thing done, I proceeded to fudge the edging quite a bit. Basically, I was knitting 3 stitches together instead of 2, and I kinda smushed the ends together. Guess what? It's nearly impossible to see the difference... plus, what's that whole thing about needing imperfections in your work so you don't offend the gods? Yeah, that, too.

I gifted the shawl to my friend and now I have to say I'm kind of itching to knit another Girasole! This time, I want to make the blanket size. What do you think? Should I go for it?

(I'll buy extra yarn this time if I do.)

Warning signs?

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I've never really considered knitting a high-risk hobby. Sure, my wrists are often sore and I even gave myself tendonitis from knitting too much. As a naturally paranoid person, I have considered the unlikely chance of getting stabbed by a needle while driving or during plane turbulence. But as I had never heard a verifiable story of such a stabbing happening to anyone, I brushed the notion aside as urban legend.

But then I started to read The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood. (On my Kindle -- the original version, not the new spiffy Kindle 2, but oh well.)

The VERY first story of suvival was about Ellin Klor, titled "A Knitting Needle Through the Heart" (click link for excerpt). I had to do a double-take. A knitting needle where exactly? The heart you say? Egads!

The very next day, I was knitting and watching TV, and I stumbled upon Mystery Diagnosis on the Discovery Health channel. After a story about a boy who had breathing problems, they played a piece about a woman who stepped on a crochet hook and impaled her own foot! Yikes! And the scary thing is this injury triggered a slew of other health problems (hence the mystery diagnosis) and kept her essentially bedridden for weeks.

If the universe is trying to warn me against knitting, I'm not listening. Though I'm now being a bit more careful about where I keep my needles when I'm not knitting, lest I sit down on them and pierce my behind.

Whether it's the cosmos trying to put a damper on my knitting or just the result bad planning, I knit the ugliest bathmat in existence recently:



It was supposed to be Absorba (Ravelry), from Mason-Dixon Knitting, but since I don't actually own that book, I decided to ad-lib the pattern. This was not a good idea. Once I realized the color scheme was all messed up, I gave up and just made the edge striped. The good news is that it's comfy to stand on and it absorbs a lot of water, so it's not a complete loss. Since I accidentally bought twice as much yarn as needed, I'm making a new bathmat in a different stitch pattern to atone for the ugliness of my existing one.

Final question for my readers: have you ever injured yourself while crafting? I'm curious to find out if it's as dangerous as reported!

It will haunt your nightmares

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How does one get out of a knitting funk? By knitting joke patterns, of course!



This is the famed adult balaclava pattern that has made such a splash on ye olde interweb.

I made this out of some spare Cascade 220 I had in my stash on size 8 needles. It only took a few days, and the results are just fabulous. Check out my friend Panda modeling:



I actually made this for my friend Mr. N, who is also owner of the eyepatch mentioned in the earlier posts.

Molly thinks I'm crazy for making the mask:



But I've found it's good for brainstorming:



So, the official cure for the knitting blues: ridiculous vintage patterns! Take my word for it!