Stash Wars

I’m currently sick and fed up with socks, so I was looking for something different to knit when I remembered the Lotus Blossom Shawl which I started last November only to put it into hibernation directly after finishing (and loving) the gauge swatch. I’ve been working on it (this time for real) for the last few days and this is how the whole thing looked on Tuesday night:

As usual with lace, it looks like a blob of knitting, nothing to write home about…:-)

I was cruising along nicely and had finished all three stem chards and started the first row of lotus blossoms when I realised that there’s a problem with this project. I thought I had ample yarn, considering the pattern calls for 800m and I had ten skeins of Zitron Ecco in col. 209, each running at 110m length. Unfortunately, despite all skeins sporting the same dye lot number, four of the ten have a completely different tint than the other six - the colours are distinctly colder. I don’t know whether that’s to be expected with this yarn or whether the skeins were mislabeled at the factory, however, I am so not pleased.

If I am lucky, I will be able to squeeze the shawl out of the six similar skeins - at least my calculations say that the first three skeins made almost exactly half of the shawl, and part of the first skein was used for the swatch. But what am I going to do if it doesn’t work out? Perhaps look for a matching solid and do the last rows in that? I’m certainly not using the four remaining skeins, as the colours stand out like a sore thumb.

This was a birthday gift from my sister - she said it was “just me” because of the camouflage colours. I wonder what may have planted that thought in her head. I also wonder what the bottle of Irish Mist that accompanied the sock yarn will do to my sock knitting…;-)

… the only thing that gets finished around here currently is socks.

This is a pair of Fawkes socks I knit for May sockdown. The pattern was written by the late Gigi Silva and at the moment is available as a download on Ravelry.

I have another finished pair of socks to report:

The pattern is Twinkleberry, designed by Beth LaPensee for Knitzi.com. I substituted a stockinette heel and flat toe for the short row versions in the original pattern. The yarn is Lana Grossa Meilenweit 100 Cotton Stretch in colour 8006. It was the first time I knit with stretch yarn and it took me some getting used to it. I was continually worried I might overstretch the yarn and end up with tiny, bulletproof socks, but in the end I’m quite happy with the results.

Part of these socks was knitted in the back of various Jordanian taxis during my vacation. If you plan to ride a taxi in Jordan I can only recommend to bring some knitting to distract you from the style of driving cultivated there as well as from the fact that seat belts are only mandatory for the driver and because of that often non-existent in the back seat…