Knitting in the Time of Taxes

The Baltic Sea Stole is chugging right along. Er, it was, when I had time to work on it. Progress is slow lately because most of my waking hours are spent calculating how much money Big Daddy Plantation System the government is stealing taking from its sharecroppers my clients*, and trying to mitigate the damage as much as legally possible.

This means I don't get a whole lot of sleep; I work long, long shifts; knitting is therefore squeezed into remainder time, and there isn't a lot of that until mid-April. Anyway, here's what I've been up to:

not exactly 3 feet long.

Lisa Souza Petal, 50/50 silk/merino, colorway "Sapphire." Gorgeous, isn't it? It feels as beautiful as it looks. Can't wait to block it out.

Oh, and that carpet on which it is resting? Yeah, that's in the latest annex to Knit Goddingdom, a province known as The New House. More on that later.


*Note from the editor: the "Taxation = Slavery" rhetoric has been deleted from this post.

Shalimar Yarns Zoe Superwash Merino Sock Yarn

Shalimar Yarns has come out with a new 100% Superwash Australian Merino sock yarn, called Zoe Sock (ravelry link). It's 450 yards per skein and available at Eleganza Yarns. Kristi has dyed it up in some gorgeous colorways, and sent me a skein to take for a test drive. I'm going to knit it up into something awesome!

Shalimar Yarns Zoe Sock (ravelry link), colorway, "Acadia,"
100% Superwash Australian Merino
Sock/Fingering Weight, 450 yards
handpainted, available at Eleganza Yarns.

wound into a cake.

LOOKS: Visually, I can't say enough good things about the colorway. The colors are vivid and in great combinations. I saw some of Kristi's other colorways and they are equally beautiful.

TOUCH: So far, I've swatched it. While it is not the absolute softest merino yarn I've worked with, it is pleasing to handle and plenty soft. It strikes the right balance between softness and durability, especially for a sock yarn. I have no problems with having it next to my skin. It has a great squoosh factor. From a purely tactile perspective, it would make a pair of socks that are pleasing to knit and a pleasure to wear.

The thing is, I don't knit socks. I like wearing hand-knitted socks, but not so much making them. I've tried, and I much prefer knitting lace. So... what can we do with this sock yarn?

Ideas for knitting this yarn:

Diamond Fantasy Shawl by Sivia Harding (sivia)

The Crocus Pocus by Susan Pandorf (pandosu)

Rivolo scarf by Anne Hanson (knitspot)

Tiger Eyes Lace Scarf by Toni M. Maddox (bockstarkknits)

Firmaments Lace Shawl

This is the shawl that never ends --
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends.
Some people started knitting it,
Not knowing what it was
And they'll continue knitting it forever just because
This is the shawl that never ends--


At least, that's what I tell people when they ask what I'm knitting.

Firmaments Shawl, Day 532

I cut the Fountain Lace section a few repeats short today. I fear the shawl is now growing beyond my control. I'm hoping today's action will help to at least curb its growth once it is in the blocking stage.

Firmaments Shawl, Day 540

Partway through the edging. I am beginning to have doubts about curtailing the Fountain Lace section. Perhaps it would have been better to do five more repeats of the chart. But, dear God, I could not have done five more repeats of Chart C! I fear that I will never have a restful night's sleep -- one without the page full of the same chart, over and over again, always trying to highlight a finished row -- and the highlighter ink never sticking! Would I have been haunted, night after night, by the Fountain Lace chart's taunting rows?

No, I had to stop at six repeats. It was for the shawl's own good. Too many more and I would have put it down altogether. I needed to start the edging, to know that there was -- there truly was -- an end in sight.

The double-pointed needle recommendation for the edging is a dangerous choice. I put a point protector on one end. That cut the risk of losing all the stitches when the shawl was in transit by half. It does nothing, however, for ensuring that the shawl does not escape while in transit. I'm currently using my "Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Could KNIT Like Me?" knitting tote, and that seems to provide enough protection. I still keep an eye on it, though. I can't risk it springing out and engulfing an innocent bystander. Something about the alpaca part of the yarn that I don't trust...

Firmaments Shawl, Day 542

The shawl has been surprisingly quiet lately, as I slowly work my way through the edging. It makes me nervous, that this has been going a little too smoothly. I know that there is a graft up ahead, to join the beginning and end of the edging into one continuous piece.

And then -- I almost don't want to mention it -- the blocking. I know it will resist that. I suspect that the shawl may be in secret negotiations with my camera, which turned up recently after having been put in a drawer and forgotten for several weeks. Perhaps the camera was out doing reconnaissance, and used its advanced mind-wiping technology to make me forget about it, and think that I had simply forgotten where I put it. I will have to keep a closer watch on that camera. I'm not too worried, though, as long as I can keep it in sight; I know where its batteries are.

Oops, I Did It Again.

I was perusing Ravelry this morning and saw this lace shawl. Keep in mind that I am at a weak point right now for lace. I was, as Jane Austen (?) so wonderfully put it, "seized by a freak at breakfast" and was tempted to run down to the basement and rifle through my lace knitting patterns and cast on right then and there. Then I remembered that I didn't have any laceweight wound up into cakes or balls. Pfffft.

Firmaments Shawl by Bonnie Sennott.
Image swiped from Ravelry to show you
how freakin AWESOME this thing is.
Image property of aedes.

Ah, back to my story. So I was perusing Ravelry when I came across the Firmaments shawl. It's inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem. Ravelry link. Webs link.

So, I, uh... clicked on the link to Webs. I looked at all the lovely colors of Valley Yarns 2/14 Alpaca Silk (Webs link. Ravelry link). And then I must have blacked out -- because next thing I knew, my AmEx was out of my wallet and I confirmed an order for one cone of black, one cone of french blue and one emailed pattern (ok, technically, my AmEx didn't even make it out of my wallet, but it must have ventured forth, because I'm one of those people with a freakish memory for strings of numbers... and somebody typed that number and its expiration date in while I wasn't looking).

Did I mention the yarn comes on half-pound cones? Cones = No Winding. Cones = Instant Cast-On Gratification. Cones = FULL OF WIN.

*sigh* I need to get some sleep. If I get some sleep, I might actually do my work instead of browse Ravelry patterns and buy impulse yarn. Beautiful, soft, silky impulse yarn...