The latest charity hat and a Lavori 07/30 progress report

Another charity hat is finished and ready to donate.  I'll have to look at the dwindling acrylic stash to see what color the next hat will be.  This one is a nice dark blue.

Lavori 07/30 doily progress -- I'm almost DONE!!!!!!  So exciting!  I have two more rounds of knitting to go (a pattern round and an intermediate round) and then it'll be time to do the crochet cast-off.  After that will come the challenge of finding a place (and the time) to block the doily, but I'll worry about that when I get there.

There are no further chart errors.  I'll give a full run-down of chart errors along with a re-post and re-discussion of my hex-mesh charting fix as part of the final report once everything is blocked and beautiful.

I have approximately 2400-2500 stitches left to knit.  That'll take a few hours, and the crochet cast-off will also take a few hours, and ditto for the blocking.  I believe there's enough thread in the current ball of thread to get me to the end, and if not, then I'll unravel the filet crochet project that I cut off the previous ball of thread, and use that to finish the crochet cast-off.  Dunno how long this will all take, but hopefully I'll be done before December, and if not, then before January.

It's been a big project for me -- nearly 7 months since I cast on, so far.  There was about a 4-6 week period where little knitting got done because I hadn't yet committed to any specific rechart of the problematic hex mesh area, but other than that, I've made slow but steady progress.

So.  That means I do have the stamina for large doily projects and no longer need to feel intimidated by the time commitment involved.  There's at least one >300-round doily (or tablecloth) I've been eyeing as well as many that are in the 150-250 round range.  Dunno what I'll do next.  I'm still very focused on finishing this doily now that I'm so close to the end.  I don't want to get too distracted.

There's not much else to report.  The Miami Vice shawl is growing.  The Appledore gansey is still sitting there, waiting for me to stop dithering about whether to do short-rows on the back or to contour the front neckline or both.  I also need to figure out many inches I'll need to knit to get to the shoulders.  Luckily, the intended recipient is around so I can take a few measurements and also try on the sweater when I get close.

I need more knitting projects, not counting the doilies.  Maybe another cabled hat?  Or toe-up socks with a self-patterning yarn?  Or another cat bed?

I haven't done much spinning lately, nor warped up a new rigid heddle weaving project.  There's a batch of Jacob/llama in my stash that's been tempting me lately.  I've already spun a different batch of Jacob/llama that I bought at the same time from the same person (but different sheep and llamas, probably, given that the roving color is different).  It made some very nice yarn.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this stuff spins compared to that.  But maybe I'll spin something else first.

And that's it for this post.

Lavori 07/30 progress report (converging back to the chart)

I've gotten through all of the re-charted hex mesh area and have re-converged with the Lavori 07/30 chart as written, yay!!!

It's also the point where the chart numbering jumps from 191 to 201 for no obvious reason.  Indeed, there is absolutely no obvious reason at all, so I guess this counts as another chart typo!

I have roughly 10 rounds of knitting left to go, almost certainly less than 20,000 stitches.  The rounds are steadily getting longer, of course.  They're currently hovering at around 1200 stitches per round.  Also, I'm done with the hex mesh area completely.  The only double yarnovers left are the ones between the outer fan segments.  The leaf garlands are on their final leaf.  And the outer fans are growing.

It's kind of fun to watch what happens to the leaf motifs as there are increases on one side and decreases on the other.  Yup, they start leaning rather quickly.  I hope it all blocks out the way it's supposed to.

There is a chart error/typo in round 201!  Well, two, actually, if you count the mislabeling of the chart (round 193 is instead labeled as 201, and that discrepancy will continue for the rest of the doily).  In Round 201:  There is a missing yarnover at the end of the pattern repeat.

Here's my handwritten chart of what I ended up doing in the problematic hex mesh area of the outer rounds.  You can see eraser marks from some of my previous charts.  It's not like there's only one way of handling the issue, after all!  Probably any of my charts would have worked, and even with this one, there are a couple of variations I could have done on particular rows.

Lavori 07/30 partial rechart variation

I started this chart at round 171, when the Lavori chart transitions to 12 pattern repeats per round.  Everything up through round 181 is the same as the published chart except that there is one extra hex mesh motif per round.  Everything after round 191 is the same as the published chart.  So my rechart mostly applies to rounds 183 through 191.

This only shows the hex mesh area, not the rest of the doily.  Also, for some rounds, the hex mesh area is partly at the beginning of the pattern repeat and partly at the end, and I didn't bother to indicate that since I could use my own judgment pretty easily.  There will be 1Mv moves (move the stuff at the end of the pattern repeat to the beginning) every now and then, which again, I didn't indicate, and ditto for the places where the pattern repeat begins and ends with a yarnover.

The rounds I've marked with stars are where leaf tips (which are double decreases) get incorporated into the hex mesh.

The little vertical lines below the center motif, below round 171, are to delineate the central motif so I could keep things relatively symmetric and lined up all the way up the chart.

I tended to do directional double decreases where it made sense, but didn't chart them out specifically.

Dunno if this'll help anyone, but I thought I'd share it anyway.  It might go into my final post on this doily where I also list all the chart errors and typos.

I've already started thinking about future doilies.

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I finished the charity hat I started a few weeks ago.  It's already been donated.  On to the next one!

The above pic shows it with the brim down.  The brim can be turned up to cover the ears, or the hat can be worn as a slouch hat.  Since it's all k1p1 ribbing, the brim can be turned up as much or as little as the recipient wants.

I'm still working on the Miami Vice shawl.  Tomorrow should offer some good travel-knitting opportunities.  I'll have the shawl with me and also supplies to start the next charity hat.  Plus other non-knitting things to do, though I'm pretty sure I won't bring a spinning project.

The sweater is still sitting as I dither over how I want to handle the neck opening (so that the back is higher than the front).

And that's it for me today!

A bit of spinning and the first progress report of the month

I had written that the Navajo-Churro/Icelandic roving that I bought at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival a few weeks ago was calling to me.

So I spun it.

It's not the world's softest yarn, but that's OK!  I had some trouble spinning it -- a bit of VM in the roving, areas that were clumpy vs areas that drafted smoothly, and so on.  But even though I was pessimistic after spinning the singles, plying took care of the irregularities.  It looks and feels fairly even.  I have about 200 yards of 2-ply from about 4 ounces of fiber.

Here's a pic of the roving blob.

The color is a nice medium to dark brown, with some of the fibers being a bit lighter or darker brown.

I'm not sure what I'll spin next.  But hopefully something soon.

Here's the roll-call progress report on other projects, complete with pics for a few of them:

Lavori 07/30 doily -- I have decided how to approach the next few rounds and am making slow progress.  I got sidetracked by other things so haven't worked on this for a few days.  It's exciting to be so close to done but daunting that these last rounds still have a few tens of thousands of stitches left to do.

Miami Vice travel shawl -- I've finished the first set of eyelets and am about to increase stitches again.  The variegation isn't doing anything annoying, yay.  I don't know how far I am in the pattern or how much yarn I've used, but that's OK.  I like this pattern/yarn combo enough to keep knitting.  I'm not sure what I'll do when I reach the end -- add a sideways knit edging?  It'll depend a bit on how much yarn is left and how tired I am of the project by then.  There are hundreds of yards of yarn between now and then.

Appledore gansey -- I've done the underarm gussets and am ready to split the front and back.  I'm dithering about whether to do a shaped neckline in the front, short rows in the back, or both.

Charity ribbed hat -- making progress whenever I need some mindless knitting.  I don't have a pic of this to share.  It's pretty basic, just a k1p1 ribbed hat in a dark green worsted-weight Red Heart acrylic yarn.

Hmm, I don't have enough projects going.

That's about it for the knitting/spinning progress!  I've been doing other things so it's not like I'm only sitting around and twiddling my thumbs.  But they are things that I don't tend to write about in this blog.