The swatch pattern for the Mystic Desire KAL has been posted. With only one week left until the first part of the pattern, you will now have the opportunity to try out your yarn and your needles.
Knitting a lace shawl is a little different from knitting a sweater in terms of gauge. No matter what your gauge is, you will still end up with a shawl. It may not be exactly the same size as mine, but it will be a nice, usable shawl. With a sweater you have to be more careful with gauge, since you want it to fit you well.
The thing to look for in a lace swatch is the difference between the yarn-overs and the stockinette portion. Do they look significantly different? And do you like the fabric of your swatch? If the answer is yes to both of those questions, you’re probably good to go.
The size of my swatch is 15 cm (width) x 12 cm (height). If yours is twice the size of mine, you might want to rethink your choices of yarn and needles, since your shawl will be really enormous. But if you’re reasonably close, you’re good to go.
Happy knitting!
There’s still time to join the KAL – for details and sign-up, see the KAL section.
You might have thought that since it’s the end of April, we would be done with this white, fluffy stuff…..
This morning when we looked out the bedroom window, it appeared that we had been transported to the inside of a snow-globe. There were huge white flakes floating around lazily in the sky. The lawn was covered in snow, and the spruces started to look like it was Christmas time.
If you look carefully on the left side of the picture though, you can tell that the birch has some leaves though. Definitely not December.
And that’s the backyard.
If we go to the front of the house, what do we see?
Daffodils!
I really wonder if they will recover. I guess it depends on how long the snow is planning on staying. 
Just yesterday it was 20C, warm and sunny. I was sitting on the back deck working on another lace shawl, and the kids were playing badminton on the lawn. We had popsicles and freezies and it was starting to feel like summer. I’m hoping for more of those days in the next little while, and fewer snowstorms.
The Topkapi Scarf is finished and the pattern is now available. The pattern includes detailed instructions on two different double-knitting techniques. The pattern itself is charted.
The pattern is a geometric designed based on the design found on some Turkish tiles. And the name, as I mentioned, is from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. I was lucky enough to visit the Topkapi Palace a few years ago, and I was simply amazed at the decor. So many of the rooms were completely covered in tiles – from the rooms in the sultan’s living quarters, to the baths, and some of the religious kiosks. The Turkish and Islamic tiles are a great source of inspiration, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I look in this direction again for future designs. It’s such a rich culture in colours and patterns and texture.
It’s been quick knitting on my part – double-knitting only gets faster and faster, I think. I ended up using about 200 g of fingering weight wool (100 g of each colour). Since Wollmeise 100% Sockenwolle comes in 150 g skeins, I still had quite a bit left-over, so I could have made the scarf significantly longer. The length is adjustable in the pattern, and the scarf is about 18 cm wide.
As promised, here are some shots of me and the lace cardigan.
It’s meant to be worn open and doesn’t close in the front at all. It works well with jeans and a black tank top, I think, but could certainly be worn with something a little more dressy.
I just loved knitting this cardigan with a hand-dyed semi-solid yarn. It’s quite pleasing to see the variation in colour in the stockinette portion of the cardigan, and yet it doesn’t in any way detract from the lace patterning. The variation between the two skeins I used was barely visible. However, this is not always the case, so even though I didn’t do it, it’s probably a good idea to alternate skeins. Out of the four skeins of Skinny Bugga! I had to play with, three were quite similar and the fourth was visibly darker, and had I used that one I definitely would have had to alternate skeins.
On a completely different note: can you tell spring is coming? I just LOVE this time of year, when the leaves are starting to open and everything is bright green. If you look really carefully on the top picture, you can also see last years’ bright red cranberries…. I guess it wasn’t a harsh winter, so the birds didn’t eat them all.
The Lace Cardigan is finished! Since I don’t have company at the moment, I can’t model it. So only have a picture of the cardigan on a hanger. But I’ll rectify that later – I promise.
This lace cardigan is my own design, and used only two skeins of Skinny Bugga! from the Sanguine Gryphon (for size 36″). I was surprised that I only needed two (I had FOUR to play with, so now I have to dream up another project with the other two skeins). But the yardage was very generous, and I even had a little bit left-over from the two skeins.
The body of the cardigan is knit in one piece up to the armholes. It is then separated and you knit the back first, and then each of the fronts. The small lace edging along the front wraps around the collar. The sleeves are set-in sleeves, and knit flat starting at the lace cuff. It’s basically an adult size version of the cardigan I knit for my daughter last fall, with a few modifications and improvements.
Double-knitting is really addictive. I really enjoyed knitting the StarLight shawl, and I’ve been planning a new double=knitting project ever since I finished that one. So this past weekend I cast on for this scarf on the left. The design is a stylized design, inspired by some of the patterns on Turkish tiles. And that of course reminds me of the fabulous Topkapi palace in Istanbul, which has more amazing tiles than just about anywhere else that I have visited. Topkapi palace was the home of the Ottoman Sultans for 400 years, and it’s clear that nothing but the best was good enough when decorating the palace.
So without further ado, let me introduce the Topkapi scarf. Once again, I’m using Wollmeise 100% Sockenwolle – mainly because if the strong colours. The blue is called Neptune, and the red is a Versuchskaninchen (i.e. a guinea pig colour, not one of the “official” ones).
It’s springtime and everything is new. After more than 3 years at blogspot, I have launched a new web-site here at Knit & Knag Designs. Blogspot has been wonderful in many ways, but at this point I need to reorganize the site in a way that blogspot doesn’t support at the moment. The new page should be much easier to navigate. Hope you’ll like it. At the moment, it’s a work in progress, and it will take a little while until it’s perfect. But it’s getting better every day.
Since this past weekend was a long weekend here in Canada, I had a chance to get a lot of knitting done. As an added bonus, the weekend was unseasonably warm and sunny, so I could sit outside on the deck and enjoy the 25C+ temperatures while I was knitting.
An amazing shipment of Skinny Bugga! arrived here in Ottawa on Wednesday. As always, the Sanguine Gryphon yarn is rich in colours and this yarn has multiple shades of purple.
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