more sunlight please

Sadly the place where I applied for a PhD position doesn't want me. Ah well. If at first you don't succeed, etc. etc.

It's actually been cold enough here for knitting. I've finished knitting the most beautiful shawl for a dear friend of mine - as usual, I just need to weave in the ends and block it. I hope she likes it. It went surprisingly quickly, compared to the first time I knit that pattern. It's Ene's shawl, my own being pictured above. The first time felt like it was taking forever, those endless rows, but this time around, the pattern flowed better.

As a pattern, I've enjoyed Ene's Shawl very, very much, which is why I knit it a second time. But it's also a bit risky - what if your yarn runs out? Still, I had enough yarn for the second shawl, a beautiful green Lonco Solid from Araucania that my brother brought me from Wisconsin.

But if you want pictures ... there are none yet. While it has been cool enough to knit, it has also been too dark, on the whole, to take good pictures. Otherwise I'd show you the beautiful striped dress I made for a little girl and the cute light blue legwarmers, but noooo ... not enough sunlight.

On the other hand, I recently discovered that sewing isn't as much of a pain as I remember (crazy!) and I'm starting to think of either knitting or sewing a garrison hat, after I saw that one of the shops close to my house is selling them for 80 Euros. Maybe the cold is getting to my brain.

Japanophile

Sakura in Bonn - you already saw those

That's me. Not an entirely uncritical one (#not a weeabo), but there are many things I like about Japan and Japanese culture. And what do you get when you mix pink cotton yarn, summer weather and a Japanophile knitter? Something called Sakura - after the cherry blossoms that are revered and celebrated every spring in Japan.

See, Austria is currently experiencing a draught and the weather is too warm to knit with wool. 250 and Quittez are languishing. The Rose-Colored Edge shawl is waiting for a different yarn for its edging. I also have about a bazillion summer scarves, but no summer shawl. And when it gets drafty, a scarf protects the neck, but not the upper back.

What to do? A stash crawl revealed some pink cotton lace yarn (Lang yarns Marisa, to be exact). Five balls of it, a little more than 1000 meters. Great! Its color is quite reminiscent of cherry blossoms, so why not design a lace shawl that looks like cherry blossoms?

Most common depiction of sakura petals

But that's easier said than done. The first obstacle is the fact that cherry blossoms and their stylized appearance are difficult to translate into knitting.

Cherries belong to the genus of Prunus and their blossoms have five petals like almond, apricot, peach and plum blossoms. While the blossom as a whole is still symmetrical and an image of the outline can definitely be expressed in knits and purls as in this washcloth, in lace it's much harder.

To get an accurate sakura blossom in the easiest way, you'd either need to start at the center or from the outside in, that way, the five petals can be expressed accurately. But even then, the shape of the petals is tricky, since the most common depiction of the petals shows them as having a dent at the top.

Unblocked Hanami

Crochet actually manages to replicate flowers of all kinds much better than knitting (see crocheted sakura here and here), but I didn't want to crochet a shawl.

There are quite a few sakura-themed knitting patterns out there. There's the beautiful Hanami Stole by Melanie Gibbons, the first knitting pattern I ever bought. I had to wait for years before I could lay my hands on proper lace yarn for this (got it from KarlaA).

Some more patterns: Grace Mcewen designed a Sakura scarf by focusing on the twigs, rather than the blossoms. And then there's always the possibility of knitting something, making little blossoms and attaching them like in this pattern by Sara Parelhoff. But I wanted lace sakura blossoms!

 

So far, I've tried two different approaches. The first one was inspired by the Vinca shawl by Miriam Felton. Starting the shawl at the center with a sakura blossom - why not? I used the wrong needles (4mm is too large) but it turned out pretty well, I thought.

The finished shawl was supposed to look something like the incredibly crappy drawing on the left. But the blossom at the center of my shawl isn't that large.

To make the blossom larger, I'd need to figure out the increases, but all the math in my brain has been replaced by anime history. How to fill in the rest? More petals? The petals and their increase and decrease ratio are also tricky and I haven't found a pleasing solution for further petals yet. You can see that I tried, but it just didn't work out that well.

So I started a second try. Conventional shawl architecture, triangle shawl, top down, garter stitch. And I discovered that the violet pattern (at right) that I put to good use in my Tegami Bachi cowl looks quite nice when it's done in garter stitch. By virtue of the shawl construction, it becomes tilted and so more like sakura blossoms than violets (see below).

Well, *I* think they kinda look like sakura ...

Ultimately, I think a combination of these two patterns might do the trick. Starting out at the center with my sakura blossom, I could then do garter stitch or actually stockinette and use the violet pattern and random lace-overs to add random blossoms and petals.

Once the shawl is done (I'm already afraid of the decrease count for those two triangle bits), I'd add a garter stitch border on the top and a lacy border on the bottom (leaves, I think). That way I'll get the Sakura Shawl I wanted, unless the part of me that is thinking "pink ... lace ... flowers = frill overload" wins and I chuck the whole thing.

and so there were socks

I jumped headfirst into my yarn stash, looked at my box of sock yarn and my pile of patterns and finally came up with these. The pattern is Nutkin and I call them Suncream socks because ... don't the colors remind you of sunscreen bottles? I remember, in our old bathroom on the top of the wooden shelf that held all my dad's toiletries, there was a collection of sunscreen bottles. Like these (only older):

 The socks look like these bottles. Very 70s. Very nostalgic. What - no fashionable mood board with ... I don't know, oranges and pictures of the ocean and ... coconut palm tree trunks? Or ... who knows, an old coffee ad? Nope, the dust-covered sunscreen bottles that I saw almost every morning and every evening for about 20 years or so, those made me want to knit with this yarn.


I modified the pattern a little, because the cuff had all sorts of instructions (stockinette, purl line, fold over, knit together with provisional cast-on ... too much work) and I decided to do Japanese shortrows for the heel (a waste of time for sock heels, sadly), but on the whole, the pattern is simple and easy, just what I wanted. The second sock is done already, too (well, it *has* been two weeks since my last post).

It's getting far too hot to knit with wool in Vienna, though. I'm thinking about starting a cotton shawl (because I don't have enough stuff on the needles, nooooo), but I don't know which pattern I should use. The yarn is pink and I'd love to do something cherry blossom-themed (since I'm such a Japanophile), but it is dang hard to replicate sakura in knitting.

I'd also like to finish my Rose-colored Edges Shawl (the grey blob on the right), but recently I decided that the pink yarn for the edges was too good to be just an edge. Now what? Well ... Lana Grossa supposedly is bringing out a lace yarn, so I'll have to visit my favorite yarnstore very soon.

Meanwhile, it's back to the country with me for the weekend ... more cleaning.
 

how about some socks?

Having three big projects on the needles is sometimes a little boring. I want to knit socks ...

Project 250 is going slow, but ok so far. After figuring out the armscye problem (and I finally remembered that the "skirt" is called a "peplum"), I wondered whether a diamond shape wouldn't solve the problem, giving me space and yet smaller armholes. So I completely unraveled the top and went to work. As you can see below, instead of a giant v, there's a somewhat diamond- or leaf-shaped section now. But!

But when I tried it on after knitting a good bit, I noticed that there was another problem. Instead of right below my armpit, the diamonds were placed further to the front. No wonder, since I don't have boobs on my back! But undoing all that knitting again? Instead, I chose to drop down the diamond section and reknit it 10 stitches further back.

The herringbone pattern is a bit complicated to knit back up, though, because the increases are unusual. Every row needs undivided attention, the only thing I could do was listen to a little music while reknitting. Still, the second section is almost done.

 To the right, you can see how far back I put the diamond section now - it's well into the back of the garment. I'm curious to see how it will all work out. But once the reknitting is done, I'll have to figure out a new problem: the new neckline. In accordance with the new look, my 250 cardi needs a new neckline to make it more Jane Austen than Jane Eyre. So I'll have to look at different patterns with the sort of neckline that I want and incorporate that into the cardi.

 
Sounds like a lot of work, no? Well, when I'm not working on 250, I'm working on my entrelac stole, called Quittez vos habits roses. When I can't think of a good enough name for a project (Why do they have to have such great names, anyway? Maybe I should start numbering them all.) I use snippets from folk songs (because I'm crazy about folk) and since I recently discovered a good channel for French folk songs, the titles of my projects are getting more and more incomprehensible. Quittez vos habits roses is from the song below, called "Marlborough s'en va t'en Guerre" from the beginning of the 18th century. 

If that song reminds you of "For he's a jolly good fellow", that's because the Brits stole the melody of this song and added their own text, a common and fun occurrence in folk. Most tunes for folksongs were actually dance tunes before they became song tunes. It's rare for melodies to cross borders, though, so this was a great find for me.

Anyway, back to knitting. On the left you can see my Quittez, it's made of Lana Grossa Qui and is soft and gorgeous, but due to my tendency to tighten my gauge once I'm comfortable with a pattern, the beginning of the stole is much looser than the section I'm currently knitting. Maybe in the future I should switch needles when this happens. But I'm hoping that it will even out in the blocking. Sadly, I've always found that the great texture of entrelac gets lost in the blocking, but maybe scrunching it up a little will help.

The other thing about Quittez is that I need daylight to knit it. Once one row of squares is done, I need to go back to every square and adjust the stitches. I still haven't managed to neaten up my edge stitches, not even with tugging and knitting some stitches tighter and some looser and whatever else - they remain uneven. So adjusting is required and for that I need daylight or at least good light in my room and ... anyway.


 
Third project on the needles is the Malagash Square Shawl that I'm calling Rose-colored Edges (because I didn't want to name it after yet another French folk song, frickin' a). It starts in the middle and is knit in the round and the pattern wants it to be garter stitch. But no way am I purling so much in a shawl that is knit in the round! And I also only have 600 meters of the main color, so I have to make it last.

So the main section has garter ridges every third row and three garter ridges every 7th ridge. I also wanted to do something with twisted stitches but decided against it. Maybe in a future project. But as this shawl gets bigger, it needs needles with a longer cable. Unfortunately, my best 3,5mm needles are occupied with the 250 cardigan, so I need to finish 250 first before I knit much more on this.

I want to knit socks ... I only have about 74 sock patterns in my queue ...

all my moon base are belong to me

That's how it is. When I finished my thesis, it was something of a race to turn it in on time for it to reach the professor,  because he had to have it on a certain day or else my final exam would have to take place in May, meaning tuition for another term.

However, everything worked out, the thesis arrived on time, I was able to fix the date for the final exam and now I'm preparing myself for that exam, because noone told me that I would actually be tested on two separate topics. I thought one separate topic, but no, two. Eh, nothing big, because I know one topic already, so ...

Wanna know what I did until it was clear that my final exam would be on March 10th? I watched West Wing and knitted. One of my friends owns the complete box set and she said that I would get it once I had finished my thesis. So I did. So I got it. And now I'm on the first disc of season four, I knit beautiful fingerless gloves for my brother's girlfriend (it's her birthday soon) and I'm still knitting on a beautiful confection of a shawl called Gweneira, meaning snow white in Welsh. I'm calling it Rose Red, because my yarn is pink and not at all as thick as the original yarn - brushed alpaca isn't very available here.

Once I'm a little more clear on what I'm supposed to be studying for the final exam (I know what to do for one topic, but the other needs a little more research), I can start taking pictures of knitted stuff. I already took pictures of two finished projects, but I haven't put them up yet because ... West Wing. Well, I think I gotta stop watching West Wing anyway, because studying should come first, cleaning my room second (expecting guests) and finally taking pictures of my knitting projects third.

stars and flowers

I'm at 39 pages and need to convince myself to get to 40 today. It's the last week before I start an internship at a library, which I'm looking forward to, but there are lots of things that I have to do this week, because next week I'll be on standard work time for the first time in a few years (2006 actually) and there are some things that can only be done in the mornings in Vienna, such as visits to the university offices to straighten out all the red tape hoops - or would that be red tape skipping ropes? - that I need to jump through to get my thesis on the official tracks. I hate red tape. Thank goodness my mental directions finally reached the history department and they put together something of a checklist, which looks fierce and dreary. So tomorrow I shall gather alllllllll my university papers and on Wednesday I'll go visit the hopefully nice people at the student service office to ask them what papers, signatures and whatnots I'll still need.

Gee, that was a lot of text! Would that my thesis would grow whilst I blog. But let's talk about flowers. I love flowers. I love taking pictures of flowers. And if my dinky little camera from 2004 was a little better at taking pictures of particularly vibrant flowers, I'd be overjoyed. It still takes pretty good pictures of roses, though. To wit:

That's my favorite rose in the whole garden. New Dawn. A climbing rose with a wonderful, not too overpowering smell and it blooms from May to September. Then there's Constance (Constance Spry), who after a few years of growing without any blossoms is now always full of them:

It's no wonder that roses would also inspire my knitting. I made up this Rose Mitten pattern on the go with a chart I found somewhere, the curlicues are part of a fairisle design. The yarn is Lana Grossa Mood Print, which is soft and squishy with a little silk to make it extra-nice. I finished these in September 2009 and haven't even woven in the ends yet ... tsk. Maybe in September 2010 so I can wear them.

Here's the palm ...

The thumbs are a bit of a weak point, design-wise, but overall, I'm pleased. Apart from the roses there are plenty of other flowers in that garden. Like peonies, which I also love very, very much. The light pink ones actually have a bit of a minty smell.

And an intriguing visitor ...

Here's the darker variety of peonies. Funnily, when I was searching for project pictures, I came across pictures of these same peonies and roses that I had taken in May 2008. I'm really glad these flowers decide to delight us again every spring. To be honest, I'd love to plant even more roses and peonies and all kinds of beautiful flowers, since they mostly take care of themselves, unlike vegetables.

Strangely, even though I love flowers so much, I don't actually have many knitted items that use an explicit flower design. I have a few with leaf lace, but flowers, not so much. This is one of the few items, the Plum Blossom mittens - frogged, sadly, because the yarn needs smaller needles. But I have the yarn still and will remake them at some point. I love the design of these so much and there are so many things you can do with the idea. The yarn is Lana Grossa Baby Alpaca, soft and lovely, but not very stretchy, hence the need for smaller needles.

In that garden, there's also a tree that my mother calls Japanese Lilac. I have no idea. It's from the botanical garden in Frankfurt, planted probably a hundred or so years ago, since it's rather large. This year the spring was so cold that it's blooming only now and the bees are all over it and making a lot of noise.

Funnily, the bees entirely avoided the following plant, I have no idea what it's called in English, we call it jasmine, but it isn't jasmine (I know, I have real jasmine here in Vienna).

I made a yellow spot on the kitty's forehead with that pollen. I like doing that, since all cats are yogis and he looks cute like that. Too bad I didn't take his picture. Overall, this blog really does lack cat pictures, I must say. Like the bees, I have avoided the following project. It's crocheted and actually very simple to make. I only made it because it looks like a flower. And I made it in those colors, because they were available, I have no excuse, really. Never wore it. Still love it. Just don't know what to do with it. The Chrysanthemum Tea Shawl by Doris Chan has been redesigned by her into a skirt as well, so maybe I'll try my hand at that at some point in a different color.

Now I'm definitely more in the mood to write. The star that I mentioned in the title is the evening star. I've been watching it every evening since the weather has cleared up. I know it's actually a planet, Venus to be correct, but it's still my favorite.

Operation Sonnenstrahl

Sounds ominous, doesn't it? A friend told me that a friend of hers had christened her thesis "Project Sunshine" instead of calling it "the damn thesis". But my thesis needs a much more nefarious name. After all, it is a laser that will be directed at the moon ...

Right now it is at 25.5% of its operational power, i.e., some of the structures needed have been built. At 50% I think we can start warming up the generators which power the laser. At 75%, the laser will be programmed and adjusted with the correct coordinates. At 100% the laser will write something pretentious in Latin, Greek or Japanese on the moon. Yes. *evil cackling*

So right now it's a little like this weather below, since I received so much praise from my professor that my insecurities have been dampened down quite a bit.

I guess I need to produce more pages (and sleep more, lack of sleep is really not helping). That's why I'm once again repairing to the country to cut myself off from the internet for a little while.

Meanwhile, as I may have already mentioned, Herzblut is my only allowed knitting project. Funnily enough, its original name Lehtivihreä means chlorophyll in Finnish, but mine is blood red.

I'm using the Schoppel Zauberball Laceweight in Cranberry for this. My favorite yarn store got in a shipping of lace Zauberbälle in winter and I snagged up two, thinking they'd be sold out in a rush. No such thing! Even though I posted about their availability on Ravelry. Maybe there is a secret source for laceweight yarn in Austria that I haven't discovered yet.

Speaking of my favorite yarn store and yarn - I already got to see some of the winter yarn and it's gorgeous! Another reason to finish the thesis - unlimited knitting time! And the time and qualifications to look for a paid dissertation post or a proper job, which lead to more yarn money. The colors were simply incredible. And there is no on the other hand here. I might have a large stash (by non-knitter standards), but there are some yarn opportunities that just won't come again.

We'll see at what operational evel the laser is when I get back from the country.

uphill slog

Since the last post, my thesis has grown to a grand total of 20 pages. 20% or 1/5th done, not bad! I'm counting and celebrating every new page as a victory, keeps me from despairing. It isn't easy being completely insecure *and* a perfectionist. Right now, the weather is back to what it was a month ago, no light, no pictures possible, so in lieu of showing you pictures of my Herzblut shawl, which is on its second chart and growing slowly, I thought I'd show you some pictures of past shawls.

I actually love shawls, but don't get to wear them often. It's because in continental Europe you can't buy shawl pins for love or money and I'm not good enough at working with metal to make my own. I'm going to skip the shawls that I made for other people and just show you my personal favorites here. The one that I use most often - as the more fashionable substitute for my Lifesaver, which should have been a genius invention, but the execution was too flawed and I haven't wanted it since - is my Winged Black Sheep, which I can wrap around my hips, or around my back and front or around anything I want, really. Since it's dark grey, it hides dirt well (not that I get dirty a lot, I'm a nerd after all) and is most important for keeping my kidneys warm.

Right now it's waiting to be washed, reblocked and put away for the summer. The yarn for it is a handspun  then dyed black yarn that I got on a trip to Hamburg ... in 2008! Time is starting to pass too quickly for my peace of mind.

As I said, the Black Winged Sheep is the shawl that probably gets the most use. Another shawl that sometimes gets taken out of its little plastic bag is my beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Anna's Scarf (officially Ene's Scarf). Knit with vintage Swiss yarn that my father gave me, it's the perfect accessory for a visit to the Vienna Film Museum and the walk back home when it's a coolish night. Also perfect for over a nice coat or a nice dress.

Anna's Scarf is knit from the bottom up, so you start with those pointy bits. And what an endless slog it was until I finally reached the top. Maybe a better pattern for my thesis shawl, but I suspect Herzblut will be something of a slog as well.

Next up is my first foray into entrelac. I had had this yarn in my stash for the longest time, it's Lana Grossa Dasolo Stripes, and I just didn't know what to do with it. Then at some point the idea presented itself - entrelac! It's extremely easy and just a teeny bit tedious as well (is there any shawl that doesn't get tedious at some point?) and is actually a very good technique for striped yarn, whether the color changes are long or short. I think I might have worn this one ... twice? so far. I really need a shawl pin.

In my stash there is some beautiful, beautiful Lana Grossa Qui just waiting to be made into a similar shawl. It's been waiting there since 2008 as well.

Back to lace. One beautiful triangle scarflet - completely in fashion in 2009 - is the following Orkney Triangle. The pattern is called Shetland Triangle, but since I bought the yarn on Orkney in 2007 and it is exactly the color of the sea around Orkney, I think that name is more appropriate. I haven't worn it at all. It is a little scratchy, but the main thing is that I just haven't had the peace of mind to pick the outfit to go with it.

So ethereal. Just like the Ethereal Lace Lattice Wrap, which hasn't even been blocked yet. Blocking takes a lot of space! And you need lots of pins and sometimes even blocking wires or if you don't have such things (and I don't), constructions with pins and bits of string and all that. Tsk. The yarn is a mohair mix, fluffy and delicate and really hard to unravel if you have to. But soooo pretty!

I'll close here. There are plenty of other shawls that I made and haven't worn or blocked yet, some are in construction right now and some are sitting in the stash waiting patiently for me to finish the thesis and get on with life and knitting. I shall now print out over a hundred pages of citations that need to be sorted into my big binder of citations so that I can write five more pages tomorrow to make it 25.

To brighten your day, here's a video I found on Jezebel today:

playing around

So, new design.

Today I went to the World Wide Knit in Public Day Pickknit in the Stadtpark and it was a lot of fun, even though it was so hot that knitting or crocheting was nearly impossible. I puzzled around, trying to find a good pattern for the yarn I had, but am still kind of lost on it. I think multicolored yarn just isn't me. And it's really hard to find a pattern that will make it look good. I just can't think of anything else to do with it and I like it so much. Frustrating.

I did pick up a beautiful skein of merino lace yarn in one of my favorite colors (dusky rose) from Karlaa - it will become a beautiful scarf of some sort. Right now I'm not supposed to work on it, though. I'm not supposed to work on anything besides my thesis. There's only one piece of knitting that is allowed - my Herzblut shawl, using the lace Zauberball yarn. My first attempt with it looked like this:

That's Spanish Armada, but it just didn't feel right. Right now I'm still kind of torn between Lehtivihreä and L'Aux Anges. We'll see. I have two red lace Zauberbälle and I'm a little more tempted to do a rectangular shawl, but on the other hand, that ring effect is just too cool. It must be square or rectangular. Just not sure on the design ...

The best part about the picknick - apart from seeing so many knitters and their projects and their yarns and their techniques - was seeing my friend R., who usually lives in Budapest. Seeing her is always fun :D Sadly, the evening has been ruined about 10 minutes ago by a spider that first crawled over my naked leg (AAAAHHH) and then vanished. I really would like to know where it is so I can kill it. I mean, it's bad enough that I brought in a spider in my backpack two weeks ago, but I thought I was safe from spiders on the third floor, here! No fair! Brrrrrr.

there's no end in sight

I have amazing projects in my (Ravelry) queue.

There's these, this, this one, this, and finally, this. I have the yarn and needles and pattern for every project. I have had the yarn for some of those projects for a long time. I've even swatched for some of those projects. But am I making any of these? No.

My main projects (those I'm supposed to be working on ... besides the thesis) are all for other people. There's the Tachikoma for my brother that requires undivided attention (as crochet always does)((Rav link), there's the headband for my mother (now finished), because the other one I knit got stolen - also needs almost undivided attention or at least a movie I know by heart and then there's the second one of the Aviatrix baby hats, just in case the first one doesn't fit. There are fifteen more baby things on my queue. Some of those won't be knit, others will be knit multiple times.

But I just want to knit this one again:

This is the Little Luxury Kimono, Rav link here. I love it. It can be made completely seamlessly, if you don't count kitchenering the shoulder seams (and I don't). You start at the bottom and oh, how many patterns I want to try out to make the bottom look all obi-like. For this one, I used one of my favorites, double moss stich aka broken rib stitch. Then you could use a cable or other cast-on for the ties, but I didn't because ... well, next time. Don't forget to make a hole for one tie to go through. Then separate the whole thing for the armholes, finish it, kitchener the shoulders and pick up stitches for the sleeves. Reverse the sleeve directions and ta-daa! Seamless kimono!

The yarn for this sweater is Lana Grossa Bingo, 100% merino and my favorite bulky workhorse yarn. This yarn has also been in my possession for ages. When I bought it, I had just come across Knitty, so it was 2005 and in Knitty's 2005 spring edition there was this pattern: Cleaves. I wanted it. I coveted it. But I didn't knit it, because I was busy knitting other things. I still wanted it. Then Ravelry came around and convinced me not to knit it. So what to do with the lovely yarn? I made a Springtime Bandit, which looked like nice enough, but ... I didn't like it all that much (Rav link). So, I decided to frog it and reuse the yarn for my vicarious my friend's baby. And am I ever glad I did.