DK the Nautical Knitter

Last week I spent an enormous amount of time in various hospital waiting rooms, as you can imagine. Never one to leave my knitting behind, I took along a project that I knew would not take too much concentration and would show some sort of progress quickly to keep my mind and hands occupied. My Civil War Shawl grew, day by day, and at the end of the week looked like this.

I am currently on row 100+ of this shawl. It only has 160 rows in the circular pattern then there is an apparently never ending edging that is quite wide.

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Here are the first 29 rows of my Civil War Shawl KAL and behind me you can see where I work on it the most.  College basketball provides  a great block of 3+ hours of knitting time for me.  The shawl is growing slowly, stay tuned…

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It seems during this time of year the knitters who blog get very quiet. I am sure this is due to a coup staged by the various Christmas knitting projects we have all lined up to cast on and a sudden realization that it is November already. Our blogging time has given way to time scrounged to busily knit up all the end of the year projects and holiday gifts.

This knitter is not immune to the holiday (end of the year) knitting. Although I only have one present to knit this year, I have many projects quickly approaching completion status. In the spirit of sharing projects in progress and giving you all a sense of what I do with my knitting (non-day job) time here is a short, although no where near complete, list of my current WIPs.

Secret of the Stole (*********): 100%

Oops, I can’t show you that. My stole is complete, of course and photos will be posted in just a few weeks. However, running the group, posting the hints, and keeping everything on an even keel occupies quite a bit of my time. I am almost finished with the complete pattern which will be available as a PDF for download from the patterns page when the KAL is over.

Secret of the Stole KAL for January: 35%

Oops, I can’t show you that. The stole is in the charting, swatching, and test knitting stage at the moment. It is going to be very different from (*********) the one we are working on right now. I have made it much more lacy, a little larger, and with a totally different theme.

William’s Hershey Kiss Hat: 50%

There is a photo of me knitting this hat at the Auburn basketball game last week in the previous post. Mr. K and I attend pretty much every home game and I take my knitting, cool. This hat should be done soon and when I have it finished I will post a photo of the hat with free instructions.

Christmas Around the World Knitter’s Swap Present: 20%

Oops, I can’t show you that either. I am working on a scarf for my partner and would you believe this is the first scarf I have ever knit. Sounds crazy, I know, but I really love lace and other types of knitting and never had a “reason” to knit a scarf. There will be photos of this later, however, when it is more than a blanket for a snail. In addition to knitting for my swap partner, I thought she might like a little sparkly, so I will be doing some beading as well.

Costumes for the National Polka Festival 2008: 15%

I have finally received the shirt and slacks from my father for his part of the costume. I will be embellishing these to make them look more like this. You can expect to read about this adventure over the next few months and see progress photos as the festival gets closer in May 2008. My dad and I will be competing at the festival this year for the polka king and queen contest. I am so excited because my father is the one who taught me to dance when I was five and that was — years ago. I hope we win the contest, but even if we don’t we will be the best dressed couple on the floor, I will make sure of that. There will be embroidery, sewing, and loads of embellishing. I even have to make a headpiece for me to wear with ribbons and flowers. Stay tuned on this one…

Frost Flowers and Leaves Shawl: 50%

This is an older photo of this shawl. It is so large now that I can use it to stay warm while I work on it. It doesn’t sound like much, but I am sticking to a row a day on this thing. A row takes me about an hour. Yesterday, Mr K and I went to the craft shop and I purchased some clear beads to put around the edges of this monster. I have been a member of the Yahoo group for this stole for quite some time now and there is a handy little excel chart in the files section that tells you row by row what percentage of the stole you have finished. As of this coming Friday, I will be at 50%. This shawl will be finished, slowly and methodically, but it is not top priority.

Whew, well, there you have it. That is just a small portion of the projects I have going, but these are the most important ones right now. Check back next week, or even tomorrow, who knows what will come up…..

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Hi there, this is DK’s DH (Scott) and I thought while she was fast asleep thinking up new pattern designs I would post a sort of behind the scenes photo I took of DK hard at work. She has been really looking forward to getting started on the Secret of the Stole KAL (as I am sure all of you are as well), just a few more days to go now.

So, here you go… as long as she doesn’t delete the post once she finds out it is here

Yes, this is actually her desk! That little gray square thing she is looking at is actually a laptop she uses to correspond with all of you (probably doing so right now), the one in the background is where she does her “work”. You see which one she is using. “Did you read that book I left for you the other day sweetie”?

Good luck to everyone doing the Secret of the Stole KAL, it will be loads of fun, and may even have some great surprises along the way. Scott (hopefully still the DH)

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While perusing the various blogs that I subscribe to I came across a photo of some beautiful yarn the author had just received in the mail. It took a little enlarging of the photo on my part, but I finally figured out what label the yarn was and visited their website. The yarn is called Tess and the colors are beautiful!

Since I already have two Secret of the Stoles in the works I am thinking of ordering some of this beautiful stuff for the Civil War Shawl that is in my queue. I hope to start this shawl at the beginning of the year 2008. I have just recently taken ownership of the Yahoo Group - Civil War Shawl KAL where I will be starting the KAL up again at that time. If you would like to join me in making this beautiful shawl next year feel free to join the group and knit along with me.

The pattern is available here or alternately it was printed in Cast On Magazine, Winter/Spring 2001. I purchased the magazine for my pattern and I think I got it on eBay. There are no charts for this pattern. However, since I like to knit from charts, I am considering charting it for my own sanity.

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Well, I think I have finally done it. I have figuratively gone off the deep end of the boat. Just when I was clocking along at a pretty good clip on my current lace (and other) projects a theme for a stole hit me like a brick. I began feverishly designing and charting this stole pattern and the theme just flowed onto the graph. So, one thing led to another last night and around midnight central time I realized that this would be a great KAL stole.

Since the Mystery Stole #3 is winding down I realized there needed to be a little time for a breather, but this stole would be a great one to be worn on New Year’s Eve. With those things in mind we should be able to begin on time and complete the stole in time for those NYE parties. So, without further ado, I present to you:

Secret of the Stole
First Clue - October 5, 2007

I have created a Yahoo group by the same name if you would like to join. For those of you on Ravelry, I created a group there by the same name as well but will be distributing the clues hints only on the Yahoo group. Button coming soon…

UPDATE: To view more information about the Secret of the Stole I and the new Secret of the Stole II, please go to the new Secret of the Stole site http://www.knitwith.us/kal/secret-of-the-stole and you can now purchase the finished pattern in full from that site at http://www.knitwith.us/patterns/ or you can purchase the pattern directly from here as a digital download in .pdf for $7.00.

We started this new knitting site KnitWith.Us to provide a single location for the most up to date information, enjoy.

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The fabric arrived last week that I ordered for the vests for the Czech costumes that I am going to make for next year’s National Polka Festival. It is a black brocade with pink, blue and lavender flowers throughout on a brass colored vine. This fabric will be used for the men’s and woman’s vests, the stripe around the bottom of the skirt, and as ribbon embellishment throughout the costumes as needed. I am hoping to have enough fabric to make vests for myself, my husband, dad, and grandson William. To get an idea of what the costumes will look like you can go here. Throughout this process I would love to have comments and suggestions. Progress photos will be posted as the costumes develop.

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My Mystery Stole #3 will now be known to me and mine as Dragon Wings.  In my opinion this is a much better name for my completed stole.  Let me explain.

I have decided not to do the “wing” section of the Mystery Stole #3. The theme of this stole is Swan Lake, because the designer developed an asymmetrical design with a pointed shaped end and a feathery wing shape to the other end. I had every intention of completing this stole as designed, but after seeing other’s finished stoles I realized that if I did complete the stole as designed I would probably never wear it.

Sometimes it pays to be behind others working on a project like this because you can see what the finished product will look like before you get there. Having said that, I am not fond of the feathery wing portion of the stole and have decided to follow (somewhat) the designer’s instructions for a symmetrical version.

Once I decided to knit the symmetrical version I wanted to knit this stole all in one piece (no grafting). I have the directions for completing the symmetrical version in all one piece, but as best I can tell the central swirl design is not there and I can’t get my head around charting the decreases to come to the point at the other end. SOOOOO, I am just going to do the two sections separately and graft them together. Stay tuned…..

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Mystery Stole, Clue 4, Chart E is complete and as I was nearing row 302 on chart F (the row at which one must decide whether to lengthen the stole or not) I found an error I had made two rows back as I was nearing the end of row 297. I started tinking only to figure out that I had to fix the second row back, not the row I was tinking down to. The error was fixed by taking another needle and (carefully) tinking that lower row, knitting that row back correctly and then re-knitting the top, tinked row. If this is marginally confusing to you that is ok because it was ridiculously difficult to perform this task too. The stole is now back on track and I have decided to lengthen it as per the instructions. Here is the stole through row 299.

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Whoo Hoo, Look what I learned to do last night. Thanks, Reba.  I will be back for the heel tutorial soon.  Too cool!

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