Progress on Wedding Shawl & Banana Yarn Scarf

As tempted as I am, I won't show another plot of my shawl progress until next weekend. I don't want to go too crazy with it (although I am plotting it every day now). I'm happy that my status line is above the goal line now as it has been since 2/20. However, I haven't shown a picture of my progress in a week so I thought I would show that. There's a picture of the whole thing so far (I'm using interchangeable needles so I just unscrewed one of the needles and added on a length of cable in the middle to take the picture).









And then there's a close-up of the new exciting medium-sized peacock feathers I'm starting in on now. You can see in the image in Wednesday's post that I'm a bit farther out than I was then, just starting on the medium-sized feathers, which I'll be doing for quite a while...


Also, when I'm too tired to knit lace (and in the car last night on the way too/from dinner) I've been knitting my banana yarn scarf. I really love this yarn, even though it changes from super bulky to lace weight in thickness very quickly all the time. It's crazy. But it's shiny and I love it. I'm glad I'm only making a scarf out of it. It's going super quickly.

Since I'm such an Enginerd

I decided I'd plot my progress, at Randall's suggesion (he's Enginerdier...). Here it is! I'm not exactly certain all the numbers are correct as I just went by how the pen markings on the (photocopied) chart appeared to differ for the days between the first day (I know I did 13 rows that day) and 2 days ago. However, I can't be far off and from now on the progress will be calculated per day. Sorry it came out so blurry. I'll have to figure that one out next time...

500 stitches per day!!!

Since Randall was so lovely as to roughly calculate how many stitches there are in the Peacock Shawl (based on the area of a triangle) while I was knitting last night, I had to do the exact calculation today. I think there are 62,491 stitches in the shawl. I might be off by a few stitches, because I thought it increased 4 stitches every other row, but that puts you at 498 stitches for the last row while it says there are 495 stitches in that row. This is very minor. At most I think I'm off by 4 stitches.

Anyway, since I just finished row 70 (of 250, that sounds so great! 28% of the rows done!), I've completed 4,897 stitches to date (I marked on the image where I think I am, a la Cookie during the Knitting Olympics). I'm getting married on July 15th, which is 142 days away (crap! that's soon!). That means that I have to average 406 stitches per day to finish the day before my wedding. Now, I'd like to finish a little before that so I don't get too stressed out about it right before the wedding, because I'm sure I'll be stressed out about other things. That means I should aim for an average of 500 stitches per day, which would allow me to finish 26 days before the wedding.

Since I cast on last Monday 2/13, my current average is 490 stitches per day. If I knit 2 more rows tonight before bed, I'll be on track... However, I will be receiving 2 take-home midterms tomorrow... but, I plan on knitting at least 1,000 stitches per day over Spring Break. I also can't help but work on other projects! Particularly the FLAK! Maybe I must cease all other knitting. But Sandra's birthday was 11/1 and her scarf is getting awefully late... (although she picked the yarn and she waited until mid-December to pick it). Hmm... what to do? (Quit my job, drop out of school, and knit all day long??)

Stitches Haul!

Here's what I got at Stitches West on Saturday!

First we have the softest yarn ever, malabrigo merino worsted (looks bulky to me) in Indigo. I can't wait to make a sweater out of this! I got it from the Webs booth.





Next we have STR! (Socks that Rock from Blue Moon Fiber Arts) By the time I got there, first thing on Saturday, they didn't have any lightweight sock yarn left, so I got medium weight in Blarney Stone (on the left) and Moss Agate (on the right). Last night I broke down and wound up the Blarney Stone and started a pair of toe-up socks (my second pair of socks, first toe-up pair). Because the yarn is medium weight, the sock started out way too big and I frogged it back to fewer stitches and continued on... (2/22 note: I didn't like the toe seam and they were still too big, so I frogged it all, and put it aside until the honeymoon... did I mention I'm bringing a whole suitcase full of yarn on my honeymoon? =D)


Then we have recycled sari silk yarn, which Alyssa and I are going to make shawls out of. If there's enough yarn left over, we want to make purses too.... this was from the Yarn Place booth (new knitting store in Sunnyvale!).




Lastly, I bought banana yarn. Yes, made out of banana plants! I LOVE IT! It's not soft, but it's sooooo shiny! I love the way it drapes. I had to start a scarf with it... it's quite a big longer than in this picture now, even though I took the picture yesterday.... (no homework because of midterms = more knitting! ...at least for a few days)

Wedding shawl begins

I have started my peacock wedding shawl in Jaggerspun Zephyr (merino & silk) on size 4 needles. This is the top center of the shawl. I'm on row 55 of 250, but you increase 4 stitches per row, so while I have just over 100 stitches per row now, you end with 495 stitches in the last row! I decided to count how many stitches I've done on this shawl, and now I'm up to 2,913 stitches! I'm afraid to calculate how many there are in total just yet. I have until July... =)

Here you can see what it will look like when it's done (except in white)! I also went to Stitches yesterday and got some very yummy yarn! I'll have to take pictures and post them some other day (along with the rest of my stash!).

Ready for FLAK Part 6!

I finished the front of my cardigan to the sleeve depth. I didn't take out any stitches because I'm going to use a zipper closure. You can see in the close-up how the 2 halves of the circle cable in the middle will come together with the zipper in between.

FLAK progress

Someone suggested trying out the Donegal tweed double-stranded, so I did. I didn't like the super firm fabric it created in my mini-swatch. You can see the comparison to my single-stranded swatch here.

















Here's my FLAK back so far. I have about 1 more inch to go, and then on to the front! I haven't been able to knit as much as I'd like to recently because being a full-time grad student and a half-time engineering employee at the same time is possibly even more stressful than it sounds! I'm using farrow rib for the filler stitch on the sides. I decided to put only one purl stitch in between the cables because I didn't like how stretched out my cable swatch was. You can see the comparison between my sweater and my cable swatch. I like the sweater better. Also, for the middle horseshoe cable, I made a circle cable instead.