How much knitting have you torn out today?

Sometimes I think my brand of crazy would traumatize me if I stopped and considered it too closely.

Instead of being content with my new project(s) or better yet being all enthusiastic about finishing my Firefly Cardi which is seriously a sleeve and a seam from being done, or finding a pattern for the Black Magic yarn or even working on finishing some of my other spinning projects I am having a weird kind of creative freakout/geekout.

I have somehow managed to restrain myself from any major geek knitting meltdowns since I finished the Deadpool mitts (half-finished and stalled out N7 gloves notwithstanding - I anticipate they will be back in progress either this winter when I start wishing for fingerless mitts again or when ME3 approaches depending on my relative flakiness and the availability of a good gunmetal gray sock yarn which I never did locate).

Anyway. I've been good dammit.

I have however had it in my head since sometime during watching season 2 or 3 of Supernatural that the Devil's Trap Heptagram would make a really really sweet circular shawl.

Seeing as a) Circular shawls are a pretty big time and yarn investment and b) I have never actually knit a circular shawl before I managed to stuff this into the back of my head for later.

Seriously.

I held out like a whole two months.

Anyway, the design that was used in the show appears to be based on a pentacle from the Key of Solomon (which - real book and everything) taken with some artistic licence and a scorpion thrown in. It features a Heptragram inscribed inside a Heptagon inscribed inside a circle. The original pentacle its likely based on actually has a second heptagram inside the larger one inscribed in its own circle.

For the sake of my sanity I decided straight off to ignore the additional details of the design (mostly writing) and for the sake of not having a huge block of nothing in the middle I decided to use a second heptagram in the interior of the design.

This is what I'm trying to acheive (roughly)

There actually end up being 3 Heptagons and 3 Heptagrams in the design. I considered having the interior second Heptagram inscribed in a circle instead but I'm struggling enough with how I'm going to handle rounding the outside edges. Its just easier to either have all flat planes or all round edges. I may yet wind up with a Heptagon shawl rather than a circular one simply because my only possible solution so far is a buttload of short rows.

The nice thing about this overall is that, even though I'm going to be making it because I am a huge geek it doesn't scream "Huge Nerd" the way the DP mitts do (or the N7 mitts will). The design ends up being just attractively geometric.

And face it - if I'm going to bother to knit this giant thing its going to be something I can wear around without it being too obviously dorky.

Rough design sorted I have charted, knit, torn out, re-charted, re-knit and torn out the interior rows working out how the increases should fit. The upside to this is that I am fairly confident now that the rate of increase I have worked out is going to work fine. The downside is that I'm pretty sure this is all getting pulled out and restarted again.

I started out with some of my Arucania Lonco and its giving me gauge problems. If I try to tighten up the stitches I'm fairly confident that this shawl will end up weighing about 10lbs, but its not going to bloom enough to look right at the gauge its being knit. Also I am considering that I may have waited too long to start the interior Heptagon and if I continue on I will be knitting less of a shawl and more of a blanket. A really big not attractive 10lb blanket.

Unfortunately my yarn alternatives are a little slim. I have some Malabrigo lace in a sufficient amount but that means the shawl will be purple... which... purple doesn't feel very badass-demon-hunter ya know? and I have some Wollmeise in Red... but its this really cheerful candy apple red so... again not exactly what I was going for. There is some laceweight merino in light teal which I am tempted to over-dye into a more sinister blue (expect that I actually really like the teal) and some white sock yarn that I could dye into a dark red or navy. I've also considered possibly going with Knit Picks because I can get the needed quantity of Shadow for around 12$ (It even comes in a suitably sinister color called "Nocturne") and that might just save me enough angst to be worth breaking my yarn diet.

What all this amounts to?

I have probably clocked around 15 hrs of knitting time in the past day and a half and all of it has been or will be torn out.

I think I'm going to go work on my Aeolian for awhile and not think about that.

Onward and well... onward

I have been hunting like mad for the perfect shawl to make from my Black Magic yarn. I want to do something like Panache because IMO the long repeats look their best with something that has a strong repeating wave or chevron. I've done Revontuli before and while I loved it, I'm not in a hurry to be repeating patterns right now. Unfortunately I'm short on yardage for the smaller Panache and its not looking like a particularly easy pattern to resize.

So rather than cast on OMG RIGHT NOW with the Black Magic (which I really want to do) I went stash diving to see what I had that could work for another shawl in my freakishly long queue.

I have a lot of yarn.

Unfortunately, a lot of the lace yarn I have is single hanks that all total about 450yds - which is just shy of what I need for pretty much everything I want to knit right now. Also unfortunately, after having finished the Haruni Shawl I only want to knit lace with handspun. Because its extra awesome that way.

I think this probably makes me some kind of uber-yarn-snob.

Like worse of one than I was before.

Anyway, I pulled out some of the yarn I have set aside for a Swallowtail (soysilk) but I don't really want to knit that right now and I keep looking at it and thinking - this would weave so much nicer than it would knit - so I put it back and then I pulled out the Zephyr and the beads I got for the Aeolian shawl back in... er... October? November? (The Zephyr's from the yarn crawl so awhile ago) but I'm just not feeling the navy lace right now and then I pulled out all my handspun (of which there is not actually that much because I seem to always either give it away or use it fairly quickly) and remembered I had this gray-blue BFL/Seacell/Silk blend and even though there's not enough of it for the Aeolian NOW I have 2oz left that can be spun up with relatively little angst and also it looks decent with the beads I already have.

So yay, I have a new shawl cast on!

I don't actually anticipate this with be a fast knit (because of the beads) or a particularly portable knit (also because of the beads) but hopefully it will hold me until I can either a) find the perfect project for the black magic or b) spin something else or c) get off my shawl kick.

Also I may have cast on some socks tonight. I'm not sure. It was a weird night.

Black Magic

OMG LOVE.

Finished yarn is 610yds & 4 oz, Chain-plied to keep the color transitions and in the range of heavy lace~light fingering. I know its gonna be a shawl, but haven't decided which one yet.

I loooooove this yarn. The fiber is outstanding. Its from Fiber Optic Yarns (on etsy though she also has her own website now) and its the Superwash Merino roving in the Black Magic Colorway. I am rarely so impressed with a indie dyer's work but this fiber was really above & beyond. For one thing the depth of shade is so strong - the color was even and rich and there was ZERO bleed out when I did the finishing which seriously... I always expect bleeding on colors this dark. Even commercial yarns often bleed when they're this dark. The fiber was soft and not compacted and a real joy to spin. I'm really hoping to get a chance to try out some of her other rovings soon.

So yay! I haz yarns. =)

The End

So I watched the Season Finale of Supernatural last night and then I came home and cried about it for awhile and then I decided at 2am that what I really needed to fix everything was to block my Haruni shawl (because that's the logical progression from crying over the aborted fictional apocalypse) and so I did. *

I really love this shawl. I really loved spinning the yarn for this shawl and I really loved knitting this shawl and I really love the way this shawl looks and the way it feels and I just really, really love it.

I think I am going to miss working on it almost as much as I'm going to love having it finished.

I need to find another lace something now because I need comfort knitting.

Especially since this morning youtube had this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebtoO5rxs-Q (total massive spoilers to anyone reads this and also watches supernatural and completely nonsensical to anyone else) and it made me cry again.

Also I started plying the purple SWMerino and its going to be awesome and also take forever because chain-plying 4oz of laceweight is just awesome like that but maybe soon I will have fresh handspun and comfort knitting and All Will Be Well Again (there is a cheesy way I could geek this out about things that never really end but my brain is operating at about 50% right now so I'll spare myself the later embarrassment - especially since I've already admitted to bawling over a TV show this post).

*There will be better shawl photos when it is not raining and I have extra hands available because its so much prettier in person.

Singles, singles everywhere but not a skein to knit

I continue this month with my inability to complete things. I didn't realize just how bad it had gotten until I went to retrieve and empty spool to wind some BFL onto and found that I was on my last two. Normally I only get down to the last one or two if there is a very large project involved. I have 12 of them. And at least 6 bobbins for the sonata (possibly more, I'm not good at keeping track) all but one of which are partially or completely full - I make a point of having one reserved for plying but that's probably the only reason I have even that. And a number of half-filled drop spindles. And one half full bobbin on the CPW.

What I do not have is any finished handspun.

I would sort of like that to change sometimes soon.

I finished the lb of teal merino about 2 weeks ago. In happy land this should mean that all that's left is to ply it up and then pick something pretty to make with it.

In practice what it means is that I have to decide if I'm going to settle for a smaller project or if I'm going to spin up another 1/2 to 1 lb of something to ply it with (which was the original plan... but ugh, want finished yarn already). Its very pretty. And made me feel accomplished for a few days at least. Still, I'm waffling on the finishing.

I started up on 4oz of Fiber Optic Superwash Merino in "Black Magic" - which is awesome and has been in my stash way too long for something so pretty.

Ironically its probably got the best chance of being finished yarn sometime soon despite only having been in progress a week or so. I have around 3/4 of it spun and the plan is to chain ply to keep the color gradients intact. In hindsight it would have been pretty to leave it as a single but a) there is too much twist in it for that now and b) its superwash which I have trouble with as a soft spun single anyway.

Regardless... really nice fiber and I love the colors.

The rest of my singles have just sort of appeared. Like magic. Or bad organization maybe.

I have a bunch of carbonized bamboo that just sort of stalled out (there is more of it on a spindle somewhere). I have some (badly & by me) handcarded SWMerino/Bamboo/Firestar (the rest of which needs to be carded &/or re-appropriated and the ounce or so spun up relegated to scrap).

I have most of an ounce of leftover tussah, 1.5oz or so of some merino-tencel that I never finished spinning and ~3.5 oz of superfine merino (of which there is another bobbin of around here somewhere + 3-4oz of fiber and of which I have no idea what I will ever do with).

I have a spool of organic cotton that seems to have taken up permanent residence on my mantle along with all the little balls of scrap singles that seem to be breeding nearby. The little green one is one of my oldest. I keep telling him he'll grow up to be some interesting art yarn one day but I don't think he believes me anymore.

There are also 2 bobbins (1 finished and 1 maybe half finished) of SWBFL singles that I was too lazy to pull out of my wheel bag to photograph and all the spindle spun singles that I don't want to know about. And the CPW bobbin which is just full of sample bits and experiments right now and probably doomed to be another scrap ball someday soon. I vaguely recall some ramie and linen singles being around here as well.

So yeah. I have been spinning a lot and finishing... well nothing so far.

And my knitting is still the same. Lot of WIPS. No FOs.

I did block the body of my Firefly Cardi today:

So maybe that's something at least.