Monthly Archives: October 2019

Whakairo Shawl

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This was a particularly satisfying pattern to knit. It starts out so small and that first chart seemed daunting. It’s well written, but there was just So Much Going On that I needed to concentrate and I despaired of ever finishing with a toddler around.

But once I made it through the first chart, and there wasn’t some new thing appearing at the edge ask the time, I started to find my rhythm.

Rhythm, breast pump… I amuse myself.

And it just felt so natural that it seemed weird that I’d been thinking of this as a terribly technical pattern. Surely it was just obvious?

The pattern is Aroha Knits’ Whakairo Cowl done with the shawl variant. It’s really worth reading the pattern description about how it’s meant to minic Maori wood carving.

I can’t remember how many repeats I did of that 3rd chart, but it was enough that I had it memorized and didn’t even look at it by the end. Kind of amazing.

The yarn is Kupenda in colour “free range” by Fierce Fibers. It’s a super soft alpaca/silk/cashmere blend that is slippery and a little fluffy and oh so soft. I was worried about the stitch definition because of the halo but I really didn’t need to be. Even if it wasn’t a luxury yarn, this is the most luxurious gradient I’ve ever used. The colours are so saturated, the colour change is so perfect, and the yarn has been re-straightened so unlike most gradients it’s not in that “just unknit from the blank” stage.

I already bought more. (And got a personal delivery to my desk at work, but that’s another story!)

It very much needed blocking. It was a toddler-sized shawl when it came off the needles! I liked the tight lace with all those twisted stitches, but you could tell it would open up.

Even blocked, it’s not quite the right shape for the way I like to wear a triangle shawl: it’s really designed as a buttoned cowl. But that was easily solved with a shawl pin.

I’m super happy with the way this one turned out. It’s a very technical shawl but mathematically predictable and just feels satisfying to me. Plus, that yarn! This will see a lot of wear… As soon as I’m not worried about getting hair dye on it if it rains, anyhow! (Not pictured here, but my hair is dark blue/purple/pink now.)

Maybe unicorn dreams pretty darned quick?

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My final socks on vacay socks were started on the way back from Ottawa in August and finally finished after my hand recovered!

Yarn: “maybe unicorn dreams?” From Knitted Wit. It didn’t have a colour written on the tag and I thought the guess sounded like a hugo nominated short story so that’s what I’m calling the yarn.

I’ve come up with a few ideas for the title, but the most ridiculous is the sci fi jaunt where little girls are given robot unicorns as educational toys that grow with the kid up to becoming self driving car alternatives that can have software secretly marketed to parents as a virgin-detecting chastity belt for teens. Inevitably, the teens find out about this horrific invasion of privacy because of course the company is machine learning on the girls’ potential sexual behaviours and being generally gross in that way of tech companies. And then, the/ unicorn hacking society is born.

… I have a lot of time to think about parenting ethics and infosec while my kid’s falling asleep, ok?

Pattern: Pee Dee Queue by Shannon Squire. I wanted to do this with the cute pattern on the back, but it proved too tight so I followed the alternate instructions to do the stretchier back instead.

The first photo was with a tiny stuffed dog, so the last one is with a giant one!

Incidentally, my dog obsessed toddler is really benefitting from the fact that Tiny Terri also loved dogs, so every time we visit my family we bring a few more mor home with us. Woof!

Spring embroidery break

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I strained my hand/wrist/arm at the end of socks on vacay (it wasn’t *just* knitting but the short needle setup I was trying didn’t help), so I took a two week break and tried some different crafts while I waited for my body to recover.

Embroidery has been popular in knitting circles. (even punch embroidery, which I haven’t done since I was… 11 maybe?) When my local knitting store was closing down their bricks and mortar location I picked up a couple of Kiriki sampler kits on sale. This one is spring and I also got winter. (And I might have to go order Summer now…)

It’s definitely a hello world style kit, meaning it’s clearly got training wheels intended to help you get started. The kit itself doesn’t have printed instructions, but they’re all on the website.

I’ve done a bit of embroidery for amigurumi and the odd Christmas ornament so it’s not a completely new skill for me, but this was definitely way outside of my skill set. I’m pretty pleased with the results, though! I expect I could get pretty comfortable with this if I practiced.

I wondered early on what I would even do with embroidery skills, but this is actually cute enough that I might try to find a way to display it. It’s clearly meant for a 6inch display hoop, but I kind of like it on a smaller one that doesn’t show the how-to parts. This 3inch is still a bit too big, but I might find something eventually.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this! I’ve got a few more free-form kits from Fireside Textiles‘ Patreon but I’m going to at least tackle the other sampler I have first.

And speaking of amigurumi and Christmas ornaments… I also did exactly that as my second project:

As the photo says, this was part of last year’s Little Box of Crochet advent calendar. I didn’t get very far in it, but that was expected because eh, life. Hoping to get a bit further this year!

Both of those served as a nice break where I used different muscles. I spent a few days on calls to Japan and needed something to keep myself awake while listening in, but with knitting out I needed to try to branch out. Although I was not exactly thrilled when it took two weeks to recover, it’s better than that time in high school where I didn’t rest enough and had sore wrists on and off for 9 months!

But even if I’m not on a knitting break any more, you can expect me to do some more embroidery and crochet coming up this fall. It was fun!

And yes, in case you were wondering, I do realize the title of this post is a bit punny.