Persian Tiles shawl

Recipient: Grandma
Designer: Jade Starmore
Pattern: Persian Tiles
Source: A Collector's Item
Completed: January 14, 2006
Colours: Steel blue and silvery grey
Yarn: 100% alpaca, fingering weight, maybe doubled
Completed status: Given January 14, 2006
Pictures:

shawl


pattern detail


reverse (yes, yes, I know, my long floats suck...I'm hoping that'll improve with practice)


steek the first (a piss-poor sewing job if ever I saw one)


steek #2 (vastly improved - although with more frayed edges)

2006-Jan-15

It should be obvious from the pictures, but everything went bee-yew-tifully. I did have to stick the shawl in the dryer on fluff for about a half hour to get rid of the last bit of dampness, but otherwise it dried very well. My grandma was super delighted with it, I got a great reaction (considering it was grandma - she's pretty undemonstrative normally, so seeing her as pleased and happy as she was when she opened it meant that the gift was really, really appreciated). The rest of my family seemed quite blown away by the piece, and I'm really happy about the whole thing. Except that five minutes before we started opening gifts, my grandma and one of my aunts were talking about how my grandma is never cold, always hot. Sigh. So I guess she'll be using it as a table runner or something. :)

2006-Jan-14

Once the edging was all done, the pattern instructions told me to trim the steeks to a two-stitch width and then sew it down.

A two-stitch width, eh?

Well, I thought about that...and looked at the cut steek, with all the little unravelling-prone fringey bits...and thought...and looked...and thought...

And I didn't think I could do it.

What I preferred to do was to keep my bigger four-stitch width and sew that down. Very, very, securely. And I was still concerned about the long-term prospects for this thing not coming apart.

What actually happened was that by the time I got to actually sewing down the steek, it had unravelled to a two-stitch width all by itself. It was pretty hairy going. The bad news is that my sewing on the first half of the steek sucked rocks. The good news is that it improved vastly on the second half. I may take pictures tomorrow of the steek sewing - but given how embarrassed I am about the sewing on the first half, maybe not.

The point is that here I am at two o'clock in the morning with a completed, washed and blocked shawl:


So, my stress must be gone, eh? Heck, no! Why? Because the shawl only has nine hours to dry. Given that my BIL's Stornaway sweater was made out of the same yarn and it took a few days to dry, I am pretty worried right now. The only two things I have going for me are that a) the shawl, unlike the sweater, does not have cables, which, due to the twists, probably added to the sweater drying time; and b) the shawl lying flat on towels will be just one layer of fabric, as opposed to the sweater, which was two (front and back), and this should again speed up the drying time. Oh, also I squeezed out the water way more thoroughly on the shawl. But I may still be screwed. I suppose I could always pop it in the dryer on fluff, but that would totally defeat the purpose of blocking, so...

Yeah, it's all tension and suspense here at Insanity Headquarters. Sigh.

2006-Jan-13

Slightly before the commute ended last night, all the knitting of the main shawl got completed:

(this was actually taken after all the crochet bind-off, but you can't tell)

I was indeed able to cut down the number of rows I had to do by 50 and still get the length measurement called for in the pattern. For the first time I am actually grateful for my screwy row gauge. And BTW Aven, you are completely right, I meant earlier that my row gauge was 32/10cm, not 36/10cm. I screw that logic up all the time, I'm constantly having to think hard about whether fewer stitches or rows per inch means a bigger piece or a smaller piece. Pretty sad, considering that in many other ways I'm fairly smart, but there you go. That's where my brain falls down.

And then came the somewhat scary part.

This is the steek:


This is the steek on crochet:


Any questions?

(The 2.75mm crochet hook you see is my own - we stopped off at an evil mass retailer which shall remain nameless so I could buy one. Ordinarily we never shop there, but in rare times of great need or if we can't get something elsewhere without ridiculous effort - more on that elsewhere in today's blog entry - we cave. This was a time of great need because I had to start the steeking process ASAP and because we didn't want to delay DD's bedtime by 20 minutes going somewhere less evil and more Canadian. If I had any intelligence or foresight I would have bought one last night at Lettuce, but I do not, so I did not. Megan, my apologies. I am sure I can rationalise something else to buy from your gorgeous shop in the future.)



Geez, those edges are nervous-making. But there is a payoff:


Glorious. Even with all the curling edges. But I'm taking care of that:


That's one edge, about half done. And that's when I decided to be an intelligent person and go the hell to bed...or at least to start the download of all the pictures to my blog as a prelude to going to bed.

Will I finish in time for tomorrow? Remembering that I need time to block it and have it completely dry? Will I have to abandon sleep entirely tonight? Only time will tell...

2006-Jan-12

The steeking component of my Persian Tiles shawl project is looming ever closer. I'm fewer than two rows away from completing the knitting on the main shawl. While highly exciting given that the deadline is looming, this does mean I'm going to have to do something steek-related before the end of the day. I've read through the steeking instructions in the pattern, as well as the steeking instructions in Alice Starmore's Fisherman's Sweaters book, and have looked through various webpages detailing the steeking process. I think I have the theory down. I know what I'm supposed to do. The thing is to actually do it.

The problem is that this project uses thin alpaca on 3.25mm needles, not gansey-weight Shetland wool on 2.75mms. My Hillhead slipover project uses gansey-weight Shetland wool, so my instincts do have a sense of what they're talking about when they tell me that steeked Shetland wool will hold together very well. However, those same instincts are also telling me (screaming, actually) that the alpaca will not, unless I do some kind of 'anchoring' technique first. The alpaca, while clingy, is really giving me some 'I'm going to unravel on you the second you cut me' vibes. I am extremely inclined to trust my instincts implicitly in this situation.

I am therefore faced with having to do something sewing-like on each side of the steek to prevent unravelling. The Fisherman's Sweaters book recommends backstitching up the steek along the first and last steek stitches. But last night at the SnB, Academic Stephanie gave me some additional insights into steeking (thank you!) and it really hit me how freakin' long the backstitching would take...not to mention that the shawl is so long that there is no way I will be able to do all the backstitching with a single strand of yarn. Need I add that it will also be tremendously boring? Stephanie instead recommended the crochet technique. I've looked at this and am pretty sure I'm grasping the concept properly. It looks like the ideal solution - except that I don't have a crochet hook. AUGH!

So. I have some options.

• Screw the idea of the crochet bind-off and do backstitch instead. Not an option. I shudder just thinking about it.
• Acquire a crochet hook. I tried to do this on my lunch break today, with no success. There are no craft stores in the immediate vicinity of my office building, leaving the local dollar store as my only faint hope of possibility. Sadly, they do not carry crochet hooks. I never thought I would be annoyed with a shop for not carrying crochet hooks, but there you go. (However, it was hard to stay angry at the proprieters because I discovered that they do, at least, carry 4mm knitting needles - both DPNs and straights. I shall remember this in case I ever have a 4mm emergency in the future...which, knowing me, could totally happen.) Aside from buying a hook myself, I could send my husband out to a store to buy one, or send my husband over to my mom's to borrow one. Either of these two options kind of suck because a) I will reach the point in the project where I need the crochet hook before I see my husband again, and b) my husband ain't going any-damn-where. He spent most of the day being held hostage at our home by UPS. For the last two days they abjectly failed to deliver a book he really really needs NOW (while at the same time promising to extract an odiously high COD charge), and today promised to try and find out where it was but took their own sweet time showing up to deliver it. (The poor man couldn't even take a friggin' shower in case they came while he was doing that.) He now has the book but is absolutely exhausted so I told him to forget the crochet hook idea and just nap.
• Use my knitting needles to do the crochet anchoring. This will be more awkward than using a crochet needle, but I'm sure it'll work, and - bonus - I will be fooling myself into thinking I'm knitting, which is good.

The knitting-needles-subbing-for-crochet-hook option is looking like the winner right now. Hopefully I'll be able to get a seat on the subway tonight to make it easier.

I'm hoping to be able to take a few pictures of the steeking process once I get home. But I may become so preoccupied with the doing that I forget to document it. Stay tuned.

2006-Jan-11

I think I must be getting faster at this, because I'm now able to get thirty rows done per day on a regular basis without having to stay up until ungodly hours (just slightly blasphemous hours). I have 42 rows to go on the knitting before I can cast off the steek. Whew...sorry, I had a moment there...'cast off the steek'...:::shudder::: Repeat to self: You'll be fine. You'll be fine. You'll be fine.

(Okay, honestly, it isn't freaking me out all that much, but I suspect that's because I'm trying not to think about it.)

Anyway, as of yesterday morning, the shawl looked like this. Sorry for the low contrast, I did attempt to fiddle with it a bit for better visibility, but there's a lot of intricate pattern-ness in a small space, so there are limits to what I can do. Still, it should give you an idea of how freaking incredible this pattern is:


Needless to say, it's even bigger now.

2006-Jan-9

This is the be-all-and-end-all of my existence at the moment. If I'm not doing something important, like working, eating, doing vital mom things, or going to the can, I'm pretty much always working on this. (You'll notice I did not include 'sleeping' on the list of important things - this is a deliberate omission. My New Year's resolution to catch up on my sleep can damn well wait until a mere two weeks into the new calendar.)

The problem is that I keep falling behind schedule, despite my best efforts. Last weekend I determined that I needed to accomplish 30 rows a day. It took me four days of not meeting 'quota' before I got up to snuff...and then yesterday I fell behind again. To top it all off, I realised that there is going to be way more work involved in finishing this thing than I originally thought. It's not just steeking and fringing, it's steeking and knitting an edging along each long side and fringing. This means I have one less day than I thought to accomplish the knitting on the main body of the shawl.

But there is good news. Firstly, I am not even remotely accomplishing the correct row gauge...in a good way. I'm supposed to be getting 32 rows per 10cm, which would give me a 130cm long shawl after 468 rows (9.5 pattern repeats). However, I'm actually getting 36 rows per 10cm, which will give me a 130cm long shawl after 418 rows (8.5 pattern repeats). This cuts 50 whole rows off my workload and makes it remotely possible that I might finish this thing by the party on Saturday afternoon without having to give up all sleep between now and then.

The other good news is that I have only recently started to notice that the cone of blue yarn is getting smaller. Since I'm about three-quarters through the knitting, I think I can safely say that there is no way I am going to run out of the blue...barring, of course, any horrible accident or natural disaster which results in the destruction of the cone of blue yarn (this is the part where I frantically knock on wood).

Still...it's very dodgy as to whether I'll be able to get it all done, especially when you take into account the fact that I HAVE NEVER STEEKED BEFORE AND IT'S REALLY STARTING TO FREAK ME OUT. I was thinking of solving this problem by taking a vacation day this week, but then I realised we have a big product launch on Monday, which means I will need to be at work every day this week in order to have everything ready by close of business on Friday. Crap.

2006-Jan-3

On Sunday I timed myself through several rows. Almost every time I completed a row in slightly under seven minutes. So I once again got myself a pencil and paper and did some math. At seven minutes a row, with 330 rows remaining, I would be finished all the knitting in about 38.5 hours. With eleven days remaining, that meant that I needed to devote three and a half hours a day to this project in order to get it done in time.

Whew. That's a lot.

Typically, the very next day this schedule broke down. I was only able to swing about an hour and a half. And today I fell behind another seven rows. Sigh.

The good news is that it is still looking gorgeous.

2005-Dec-28

Last night I did the math. I had completed 93 rows of the shawl. This meant there were 375 rows left to complete. Plus steeking, sewing, blocking and fringing. Not including yesterday or the day of the party, I had 17 days to accomplish everything. Subtract two days for steeking, sewing, blocking and fringing, and that left 15 days to do 375 rows. That's 25 rows per day.

Aieeee.

So, today's quota is to complete 118 rows. As of now, I have completed 102 rows.

Screwed, screwed, screwed.

2005-Dec-27

This is moving along fairly well. Unfortunately, I calculated that I need to accomplish about 20 rows a day between now and my grandma's birthday in order to finish...and that doesn't even take into account fringing and blocking. I may be totally screwed. However, as of this moment, I am on track. Yesterday's quota has been met and I'm working on today's.

2005-Dec-26

This is the project I worked on over the weekend, and it's coming along really nicely:


To be completely honest, it's what I should be working on instead of my new socks, but, well...oh, come on, I've never had self-patterning sock yarn before. Cut me some slack.

My husband, however, is not buying this argument. "Don't you have a shawl to do?" he asked. "A shawl that you were panicking about because you didn't know how you'd have it ready for January 14th for your grandmother's birthday?" I stared at him menacingly. "All I'm saying," he continued unwisely, "is that every stitch you do on that sock means..."

I cut him off. I don't need a spouse who's not into enabling me. Humph.

2005-Dec-11

I brought this project to my mom's yesterday to show her how it was coming along, and managed to get another row or two done while I was there. She was impressed. I am still loving the project like crazy.

2005-Dec-2

I ran out of patience while doing the swatch - I never made it through the entire test pattern. Gauge was more or less being achieved, so there was really no point in resisting the lure of the pattern anymore. (Rationalization: it's a shawl, so precision is not vital. Plus, I've washed this yarn before, and I'm pretty confident I can achieve the sizing specifications during blocking if I end up being a little off with the gauge.) Since I need all the yardage of the blue that I can eke out, I frogged the swatch and started the shawl.


at first glance, a curling pile of crap

forcibly unfurled, the beautiful reality

Loving.
It.

There is one problem: I did a more thorough skimming of the instructions, and realised that they do not, after all, call for using the secondary colour in the fringe. So it is possible that I could run out of the blue before I finish all 9.5 repeats of the pattern. (Crap.)

Unfortunately, there is no way that getting more yarn is an option if this happens. Firstly, I don't really have the money to buy more...although this is my grandmother we're talking about here, so I'm sure if push comes to shove, I could rationalize the overspending somehow. Secondly, there is no way I'd be lucky enough that the additional blue would be a similar enough dyelot to the original blue. And lastly, the target date for the completion of this project is January 14 (my grandma's birthday), which is terrifyingly close enough that by the time I (hypothetically) run out of blue, there is no way I'd be able to order more wool in time.

But I think I'm managing to be pretty positive about it all. There is, after all, no guarantee that I will actually run out of blue, it's just a possibility. The math says I have enough. (Stop laughing.) Secondly, I have two very legitimate options (other than weeping and cursing) if the worst does come to pass:

1. I will rely heavily on my grandmother's extremely small size to make the shawl useful as a shawl anyway, even though it will be a shorter length.
   or...
2. I will try to market the gift to my grandmother as a runner for a small table instead of a shawl.

See? No reason to panic. Just keep knitting, just keep knitting, just keep knitting and knitting and knitting...

2005-Nov-23

I snuck in a few more rows last night after doing my blog entry. I can't wait to get back to it. You know that 'itchy' feeling when you've got a project you can't wait to keep going on? Yeah. That.

2005-Nov-22

The yarn is here! The yarn is here! (I know, I say that every time yarn arrives. But the sentiment is always heartfelt.) It's beautiful:


Unfortunately the photograph cannot possibly convey how soft and lovely this stuff is in person. And how about next to the blue alpaca, which it will be paired with for this shawl:


Isn't it purty?

After that, it was only a matter of time until...


Schedule? What 'Schedule'?

2005-Nov-15

Got an email this morning from the vendor - the yarn has been shipped! I expect it sometime in the next two weeks. Ohboyohboyohboy, a package is coming, a package is coming!

2005-Nov-10

At last, AT LAST!!! Triumph is mine, for I have won an auction on eBay for 500g of soft grey alpaca. (And yesterday I paid for it. I can't wait for it to arrive.) This is a very big deal because I have been totally unsuccessful at buying this particular yarn for the last three weeks - auctions kept coming and going and I either lost to another bidder or remembered six minutes after the auction finished that I had to bid. It's been very frustrating. But no, this time that baby was all mine, and for the low starting bid of $24US to boot - no one else wanted it. Yay! I'm also getting a combined deal on shipping because I bought some more wool from the same vendor as my SIL's Christmas present. It's all good.

The only question is, will I have enough of the blue alpaca left over from my BIL's Stornaway sweater for the shawl? I think so. For the geeks among you, here is how I arrived at this conclusion.

- Our small-weights scale says that there are 395g left on the cone of blue alpaca.
- The cone probably weighs about 100g (I weighed an empty cone in my possession which is of a similar height and thickness).
- There is therefore about 295g of blue alpaca yarn left.
- The auction for 500g of grey alpaca (which is exactly the same kind of yarn as the blue alpaca, just in a different colour) says the lot contains approximately 1800 yards of yarn.
- The alpaca therefore gets about 180 yards per 50g.
- There are therefore about 1062 yards (295 divided by 50 times 180) of blue alpaca yarn left.
- The pattern calls for Alice Starmore's (now discontinued, of course) Dunedin yarn - 7 skeins of one colour and 6 skeins of another colour.
- According to the Internet (on pages such as this one), Dunedin comes in 50g skeins which contain about 170 yards of yarn.
- I therefore need 1190 yards (7 x 170) of one colour - the grey, which is no problem - and 1020 yards of the other colour - the blue.
- If I need 1020 yards of blue and I have 1062 yards of blue, I probably have enough blue.
- Yes, this is cutting it very finely, but the pattern also calls for a fringe made out of both colours. I can make the fringe out of just the grey to save yardage on the blue.

I think I'm okay. I realise this is the height of arrogance and the knitting gods will probably exact fierce, desperate revenge upon me, but I've got logic and math behind me on this one. Yes.

2005-Sep-20

One downside to my dad's seventieth birthday party was that my grandmother never ended up coming. This sucked on a number levels, not the least of which was that I was really looking forward to seeing her. Also, the reason she couldn't come is that she has some kind of cold, which includes a sore throat. This really concerned me, because she is almost ninety, is underweight thanks to the stresses of the last year, and is (of course) still grieving for my grandpa. It's possible that even a simple cold could do a serious number on her health. However, I called her last night to give her get-well wishes, and she sounded really strong and upbeat, so I'm feeling much more confident about her ability to lick this thing fairly quickly.

That makes the following news all the sweeter: the alpaca vendor got back to me today and said that they will soon be having more auctions for the 100% alpaca wool. This is great. I will be snapping that stuff up at the first available opportunity so I can get started on the shawl. Heaven only knows where this will fit into The Schedule...

2005-Sep-15

I am getting the sick, sad feeling that this is going to be my grandfather's slipover all over again, in that I will not get the shawl done in time for the intended recipient to enjoy it. My grandmother does not seem to be doing very well following my grandfather's death. Okay, admittedly, after almost 67 years together, how could you not do poorly following your partner's death? But I'm talking 'not doing very well' as in 'seems to be getting ready to cross to the other side' as opposed to 'really really sad'. So I don't know how much time I have to make this for her. Moreover, I suspect - from a comment which made its way to me 'through the grapevine' (numerous members of my mom's family don't communicate directly, it's very frustrating) - that my grandmother is secretly hankering to have something knitted by me.

I want to make this for her before it is too late. I just don't know how to do that...without axing one or more deadline-driven projects for other people (all of which are important to me). Sigh. When did knitting get so complicated?

(Probably when all my friends started having babies willy-nilly...or when I realised that sweaters made great Christmas gifts.)

I am desperately hoping that my 'knitting vacation' week in October is so damn productive that I am able to carve out enough time to get an excellent head-start on this shawl. I may also 'turbo boost' the knitting by doubling the yarn to get bigger gauge. This would reduce the number of stitches needed to complete the project, thereby reducing the amount of time it would take to knit it. My only concern is that the bigger 'grid' would make the fair isle pattern look dumbass. But we shall see. I'll definitely be doing a swatch.

In anticipation of all this, I'm going to buy the grey alpaca for the project as soon as possible instead of sometime next year.

If only the sellers on eBay would cooperate! The yarn I want in the colour I want is, for the first time that I've seen, not up for auction (okay, there is one auction, but the grey looks a bit too beige for my purposes). I could get a half-and-half alpaca/wool blend, but I want the pure stuff for my grandma. I'll wait for the real thing. My fingers are crossed. Really, really tightly.

2004-Dec-22

I'm thinking maybe I should use different yarn for this project. The two colours in the heathered cashmere/silk/cotton blend I'm currently separating are cream and dun brown. Lovely colours, but I have to be honest, they wouldn't really suit my grandma. She would look much better in a blue-based colourway. This is possibly an excellent excuse to buy more alpaca. Hmmm. Perhaps I shall save the cashmere/silk/cotton blend for my MIL, who (as a redhead) would look very nice indeed in cream and dun brown. Perhaps this will be her Christmas 2006 gift? Stay tuned.

As of 2004-Nov-08

Unfortunately the yarn is a heather, so I'm unplying the whole thing and replying it so that I separate out the two colours. This may never get done. Stay tuned.