Snowdrop cloth

Recipient: DH's aunt and her fiancé
Designer: Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, with adaptation into square shape by me
Pattern: Snowdrop
Source: Yarn Harlot blog
Completed: May 11, 2005
Colours: Cream
Yarn: 63% silk noil, 37% cotton, laceweight?
Completed status: Given May 13, 2005
Notes: Wedding gift
Pictures:

The whole thing

Decoratively draped over my living room futon

Proof that it would probably, as tradition dictates, fit through a wedding band.

2005-May-11

I sacrificed sleep last night. I was up until about 1am blocking. But I really think it was worth it. I cursed momentarily about halfway through the blocking because I realised I had laid it out upside down. But moments later I blessed this mistake because it revealed two ends that I had missed weaving in. I sewed them in this morning - DD watched me, heard me tell her that I was sewing, and then got her foam '1' from her alphanumeric bathtoy collection, and a golf ball, and started poking the 1 into the ball saying that she was sewing. Gosh she's priceless. But anyhoo...I also discovered another glorious thing about lace knitting: after blocking, it dries super damn fast. I did the full soak with this piece, and it was completely dry six hours after I finished blocking it. So there you go, it's totally done two days ahead of schedule. Glory be. I think the bride is totally gonna plotz. :)

2005-May-10

I wove in all the ends and tightened up the gaping maw bee-yew-tifully. All that remains is to block it. This is such a daunting task that I'm procrastinating - but I'm hoping to suck it up, pull it together and do it tonight. Yes, I know what time it is already.

2005-May-9

The knitting is done. Didja hear that? I'll say it louder - THE KNITTING IS DONE!!! Finished the last point on the edging last night while we were at my parents' place for Mother's Day. We spread it all out on their dining room table, and even unblocked, it looks fabulous. I wallowed in compliments for some time. I then sewed the two ends of the edging together and wove in a few ends at the back. There are some more ends to weave in, and the huge gaping maw is still a problem that will need to be tightened up. But it is very, very close to the blocking stage. I expect to be able to finish all the fixes tonight and block tomorrow.

2005-May-5

This is update-worthy today, partly because I have rounded corner #3, and partly because I got off my duff and uploaded the picture I took over the weekend which shows lots and lots of pretty edging:

2005-May-3

I spreead the cloth out as much as I could on my parents' dining room table last night to show them how it was coming along. My mother's expression upon seeing it was extremely gratifying. She thinks it looks great. I have to agree with her. The pattern really is absolutely gorgeous. I remember when I had finished the main square and had it laid out all nicely on our floor, that DH and I were commenting about how I could probably just give it like that, it was so nice that it didn't need the edging. But now that a lot of the edging is finished, we have totally changed our tune. The edging really brings the piece into a higher realm of awesomeness. :) That Stephanie girl really knew what she was about when she designed it! Anyway, I remain ahead of schedule - after my lunch break I had finished 48 points.

2005-May-2

By the close of the weekend, I was a whole day ahead of myself, quota-wise. The new target date for completion of all points is May 9, which will give me four days (including the day of the wedding) to tuck all the ends in, block it, dry it and giftwrap it. I may actually make it. (Yes yes, I know actually typing that out was the crack of doom. But it had to be said.) By the end of my commute this morning, I'd done over 41 points, which means I'm over half done, and have rounded two corners. Amazingly, my brain has not imploded from boredom yet. I think I can credit the deadline-induced panic for that. That, and the fact that it is looking fantastic. I even took a picture this weekend, but unfortunately, did not get a chance to download it into my computer for today's blog entry. Sorry. Watch this space for more scintillating updates (yeah, whatever) and maybe even photos (if I ever get my act together) of edging progress.

2005-Apr-29

In desperation, I set myself daily quotas for this project from now until the wedding. If I am to complete this in time, I must finish 5 points along the edging every day. Unfortunately, due to DD's hellish Tuesday night - which left me too dazed on Wednesday to do much of anything - I fell behind in the middle of the week. However, yesterday I more than caught up and surged ahead of my quota. I now have 24 points around the edging, which means that I have completed one side. There may yet be a light at the end of the tunnel. Here is a visual of some of the edging:

2005-Apr-26

I think I am completely screwed. 18 days to go until the wedding, including today and the day of the actual event, and I have just six - count 'em, six - zig-zags done on the edging so far. Out of eighty. Screwed, I tell you, screwed. I haven't had a chance yet to take a shot of the edging (it looks very nice), but I can show you what the whole thing looked like, pre-edging, all laid out nicely on our living room floor this weekend, pseudo-blocked:

My apologies for the fact that the pattern of our living room rug is peeking through the knitting and messing with the view of the lace pattern on the cloth. However, you can probably still get a very good idea of how nice it looks anyway. Note also that the huge gaping maw is gone - I did some fixing-up of that. There's still more fixing to do because you can still sorta see it close-up, but it looks scads better than it did.

2005-Apr-22

I'm measuring my progress by commuting milestones again...today I not only finished one snowdrop before I even got to the subway, I almost got two snowdrops done by the time I got to work. There are now just five snowdrops running horizontally across the row. I am so close to finishing the main body. So close. Whee!

2005-Apr-21

You know you're a commuter when...you measure your knitting progress by what station you're at when you hit certain progress points in your knitting. Yesterday morning I noted that it took me until Eglinton station to complete one vertical snowdrop. This morning, it took me only until York Mills. I love all this decreasing! I now have just eleven snowdrops running horizontally across the row. Very soon I will have few enough stitches to be able to stretch the whole thing out on one needle. Sometimes it does get tedious, but I remind myself sternly that the tediousness I am currently experiencing is nothing to how tedious the lace edging is going to be, so I had better suck it up and get to it. :)

2005-Apr-20

Despite taking a break from this last night, I'm still forging ahead really well - the centre panel is DONE! I'm now back down to fifteen snowdrops running horizontally across the row. Here's what it looked like this morning before I left for work:

My apologies for not being able to show the whole thing - I spread it out on a bed to photograph, and then stood on the bed to take the picture, and, well, I'm just too damn short to 'zoom out' enough to get the whole thing in the shot. :) The huge gaping maw of laddering is unfortunately still there, as you can see, but if you ignore it, I think the whole thing looks really good. It's currently a diamond shape as opposed to a square, but I intend to fix that during the blocking process.

2005-Apr-19

Wow! It seems like every time I turn around, I'm finishing another vertical snowdrop. This is great. I'm now working on the row which will shrink the work down to just one broken-out snowdrop (horizontally) in the centre panel. I can't wait till I get to the point where all the stitches fit on one needle again without scrunching, so that I can lay the whole thing out smoothly and get a really good look at it. No pictures again today, though, sorry - it took me a while to wake up this morning and I had to leave early because I was catching a bus instead of getting driven into the city. And I'd rather not take pictures at night because I've discovered that my camcorder takes way superior shots in natural sunlight. Stay tuned. Pictures are coming, honest.

2005-Apr-18

Many more decreasing rows have been made. I'm very enthusiastic about the stage I'm in now. As my husband said, with a happy gasp, "You're going downhill!!!" That's exactly right. Downhill, smooth sailing, and lookin' fine. I'm now down to just five broken-out snowdrops in the centre panel. I wanted to take a picture of it all for the blog today, but DD had a nightmare of a morning and there was no time.

2005-Apr-15

What with one thing and another, I didn't get a whole lot of time to work on this yesterday. However, that almost doesn't matter because I discovered this morning on the train that I'd screwed up. I had failed to take into account all the implications of the planned decreasing on the pattern. As a result, I overshot the point where I was supposed to start decreasing by one vertical snowdrop. Sigh. So...on my lunch break I took the needle out of the work, spread the whole thing out on a conference table and ripped it back to where I should have stopped increasing. Then, very carefully and painstakingly, I put the needle back into every single stitch. After that was all done, I still had some time left on my break (allowing for time to eat, of course) and so I did my first decrease row. Oh, the triumph. I feel much better now.

2005-Apr-14

Got going on this again today. I am now fewer than 11 rows away from the mid-point, after which I can start decreasing. Woohoo! And I forgot to mention in my last blog entry that I spent some time with some spare yarn and needles working out how best to do the decreases. I think I have come up with something that looks very nice:

2005-Apr-13

Okay, you know how yesterday I claimed I would work on this exclusively until it was done? I guess I lied. Impressing other knitters takes precedence. This is sitting at home today. However, shock and awe (and disgust) settled over me yesterday during my lunch break as I realised I had made some errors about ten rows back. Firstly, I had managed somehow to drop a stitch in the middle of the centre panel. And secondly, I had managed somehow to pick up an extra two stitches at the point where I last broke out a snowdrop on the right side of the centre panel. There was no freaking way I was going to rip out all those hard-won rows, so I held my nose, unravelled the stitches in question and then knit them back up again the right way. (And, of course, I also picked up the dropped stitch all the way up to the top). I was tremendously impressed with myself at this success. However, the result, predictably, was the worst case of (what is essentially) laddering that I have ever seen:

The huge gaping maw of loose stitches in this photograph is the problem. But I still refuse to rip the rows back and correct it. I shall instead either do some strategic pulling so that the looseness is evenly divided over each row, or I will tighten just this section and secure the extra ends at the back of the work somehow. Stay tuned.

2005-Apr-12

It occurred to me yesterday that I should be going into full-on panic mode. There are 31 days until the wedding. Today is the 24th day since starting this project. And yet, I am not yet half done the knitting, not to mention that there are yards of lace edging to work around the thing when I do finish, plus blocking and drying...I may be screwed. I shall have to focus on this exclusively from now on, I think, to have an outside shot of completing it on time. So, it came to work with me this morning and it shall get worked on tonight as well. I'm now on the third-last vertical snowdrop until the halfway point. Seven snowdrops knocked out horizontally in the centre panel. Panic knitting continues.

2005-Apr-11

Fewer than five more snowdrops to work vertically before I hit the mid-point and can start decreasing. Woo! There are now five snowdrops broken out horizontally in the centre panel.

2005-Apr-8

I now have three knocked-out snowdrops, horizontally, in the centre panel. This makes it much easier to notice that there is a centre panel. I think it looks great. Hopefully you agree:

2005-Apr-7

I am annoyed. Last night as I was working on this, I received a phone call. It was from a lovely woman calling for a legitimate reason (as opposed to, say, a telemarketing purpose) and I enjoyed talking to her. However, if she hadn't called, I would not have jumped up and not noticed that I'd gotten my foot caught in the strand of yarn between the cone and the knitting. SNAP. Sigh. I'm guessing that knotting strands at the back is not a good option for lace knitting, eh? Grumble grumble. Oh, well. I started the breaking-out of the centre panel last night, and continued this morning on my commute. It looks good.

2005-Apr-6

I didn't get a whole lot of time to work on this last night, but I can say that I am just one measly little row away from starting to break out the centre panel. Woo!

2005-Apr-4

I hauled ass on this project this weekend, I gotta say. I now have fifteen snowdrops running horizontally, and I'm just five rows away from when I get to start knocking out the centre panel. No major errors were committed. In fact, no errors at all that I can remember, except for that one that I noticed about 10 stitches after I'd made it - a quick tink back and all was well once again. Anyone want to put money down that I will start majorly screwing up now that I have gloated about not screwing up? :) I think the odds are good - Murphy does not like to be mocked.

2005-Apr-1

The part of my brain I use for knitting has apparently hit a bad patch of Stupid. I had to stop knitting this last night because I'd made a mistake. I tinked back to the source of the problem before going to bed. This morning I thought I fixed the problem and kept going...only to find that the problem was not fixed after all, and I had to tink back all over again. Then I discovered the problem: I'd dropped a stitch. Always a fun thing to do when knitting lace (not). After fixing that, I continued the Row of Hell only to screw up the pattern further down the row. Finally, as my morning commute was nearing completion, I finally finished the Row of Hell...and a mere two rows later, I made another error. And I can't figure out where. Le sigh.

2005-Mar-31

Got a few more rows done last night, nothing huge.

2005-Mar-30

I think I've done enough so far to merit another photograph:

Note that it is now too huge to fit across the whole of the needle. There are eleven snowdrops running horizontally (although you can't really see the eleventh in the picture because I only just started it). Once I get to fifteen snowdrops, I can start the centre panel. This pattern is really growing on me. You would think that it just gets more and more tedious as the number of snowdrops increase, but my enthusiasm is actually increasing with the number of snowdrops. Don't get me wrong, it's still fiddly and it is a bit frustrating that it takes longer and longer to do a row as I go on, but it's still a very enjoyable pattern. I'm into it.

2005-Mar-28

I wanted very much to take this to my MIL's yesterday, but I was nervous that maybe the bride herself might drop in for a visit, so I resisted. Naturally, DH's aunt was not there. (Murphy's Law always wins.) However, I still had the picture I took of it sitting in my camcorder, so I showed that to my MIL and she thought it was beautiful. She also doesn't think DH and I will be alone in ignoring the no-gifts rule for this wedding. :) Anyway, to make it up to myself, I worked on this project yesterday evening instead, after we got home and I'd done most of my chores. It's really going well. I've now got nine snowdrops running horizontally.

2005-Mar-24

Work proceeds. No screwups last night. I now have seven snowdrops running horizontally across the work, and I'm starting to pick up some speed with the lace knitting, I think. I'm feeling pretty good about this now.

2005-Mar-23

Last night I sat down in front of the TV, enormously happy. All my evening chores had been done and I was looking forward to an early night. I was comfy on my futon, American Idol was coming up, and I was going to make some excellent headway on my lace knitting. I looked over the knitting to see where I was and started up with gusto. About three-quarters into the first row, I realised I'd done something wrong. I appeared to have one too many stitches. Hm. Must've messed up somewhere. I looked back, counting carefully, and thought I'd discovered the problem. Tink. Re-knit. At the same point as before, I notice the problem again...only this time I seem to have two too many stitches. Tink. What with being engrossed in the show, it took pretty much the whole evening before I realised the problem: where I thought I was in the pattern was two rows behind where I actually was in the pattern. All that enthusiasm and I got two measly rows done last night. Phooey. And just to rub it in, I discovered on my way to work today that I had forgotten a chore: making my lunch. Sob. Heaven only knows what I'm going to eat today. Maybe I have enough Subway tokens for a free sub when I buy a drink.

2005-Mar-21

It's my guess that normal people use the weekend to catch up on things. For me, however, the weekend is apparently the ideal time to increase my workload. Yes, it's another new project. We recently received an invitation to DH's aunt's wedding (after years and years of living together, her guy finally popped the question this past Christmas). The invitation reads "No presents - just your presence!" Yeah, okay, whatever. :) You can't be my husband's coolest aunt, and put something like that on a wedding invitation and expect me not to knit something, can you? No way. I completely get why they don't want people to worry about getting them gifts - they're past middle age and apparently quite nicely off. They have everything they need. So actually buying them something is kind of pointless. But my reasoning is, surely they would enjoy something beautiful and handmade with love to celebrate this special occasion? Thus I started on Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Snowdrop Shawl pattern. The wrinkle (you knew there had to be one) is that I am not making a triangular shawl. I want to make a square. I figure this could be put to lots of purposes, whatever floats their boat - piano seat cover, tablecloth for an end table or nightstand, really big centrepiece doily for a dining room table, whatever. So when I finish the triangle, I'm then going to do the whole pattern over again in reverse, decreasing back down to a point. I haven't worked out the best place to put the decreases yet, but I've got plenty of time to mull it over. The yarn is a fine 2-ply, 63% silk noil and 37% cotton, 6000ypp. Cream colour with some dark grey slubs here and there. Here's where I am so far:

This is my first time doing lace, but I don't think it looks too bad. Besides, I understand that lace knitting looks much better after blocking. I certainly hope very strongly that this is true!