Basking in the pretty
Dec. 20th, 2009 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
settecorviThe print o' the wave stole for my mother has actually been done for a month now - I blocked it over Thanksgiving - but I'm only now getting around to photographing it. It turns out that taking flattering photos of large objects? Is surprisingly difficult. I have a new sympathy for photographers.
Ravelry link
The color isn't quite accurate in any of these. The actual stole is turquoise rather than this green-blue-y teal.
My mother is nearly half a foot taller than me, so it'll be just about the perfect size for her.
From this:
To this:
My bed was too short for the full length, so I juryrigged an extension with a chair and a cardboard box. During blocking I found that one of the stitches along the center graft had somehow slipped, and I ended up looking on in sheer horror at a giant blinking hole in one of the middle waves. I went in with a tapestry needle and performed lace surgery as best I could. The result is noticeable if you look for it but not too obvious to a casual glance, I hope.
The stole took two months of knitting, two days of weaving in ends, and probably an hour to pin it out to block after soaking. I got it off the needles the day after my first medical school interview.
This was my first time working with silk, and it was actually the point when I realized that you couldn't knit directly off a skein of yarn. Yes, any knitter reading this is currently shaking their heads and laughing at me, but these things are considered so obvious that nobody thinks to tell them to beginners. So I lost maybe twenty yards of silk to a snarl that I had to solve in the good old Gordian fashion. It also resulted in a number of places where I had to just cut the yarn and retie, and being the rank amateur that I was I didn't know you should really leave six inches of tail on any ends to make weaving them in easier and... well. I certainly paid for that when I had to weave at least twenty two inch ends into lace. Most of them I could hide in the knitted on edge between the border and the center panel.
On the plus side, those are two mistakes I will never make again in my life.
Ravelry link
The color isn't quite accurate in any of these. The actual stole is turquoise rather than this green-blue-y teal.
My mother is nearly half a foot taller than me, so it'll be just about the perfect size for her.
From this:
To this:
My bed was too short for the full length, so I juryrigged an extension with a chair and a cardboard box. During blocking I found that one of the stitches along the center graft had somehow slipped, and I ended up looking on in sheer horror at a giant blinking hole in one of the middle waves. I went in with a tapestry needle and performed lace surgery as best I could. The result is noticeable if you look for it but not too obvious to a casual glance, I hope.
The stole took two months of knitting, two days of weaving in ends, and probably an hour to pin it out to block after soaking. I got it off the needles the day after my first medical school interview.
This was my first time working with silk, and it was actually the point when I realized that you couldn't knit directly off a skein of yarn. Yes, any knitter reading this is currently shaking their heads and laughing at me, but these things are considered so obvious that nobody thinks to tell them to beginners. So I lost maybe twenty yards of silk to a snarl that I had to solve in the good old Gordian fashion. It also resulted in a number of places where I had to just cut the yarn and retie, and being the rank amateur that I was I didn't know you should really leave six inches of tail on any ends to make weaving them in easier and... well. I certainly paid for that when I had to weave at least twenty two inch ends into lace. Most of them I could hide in the knitted on edge between the border and the center panel.
On the plus side, those are two mistakes I will never make again in my life.
