Midnight September Madness

I've not been online for a good long while because of a huge bout of knitting I had been doing since my last post. I've finished two larger projects: Midnight Heather Aeolian and Gray/Red Cowichan Cardigan. To the left is my gray and red cowichan being blocked. Everything is all sewn up and ready to wear except for I wasn't able to knit up the red belt. I forgot that I stashed a large amount of projects and yarn into a giant plastic bin and shipped it off with Greg to Florida when he moved so I would have less stuff here prior to the move and so I would be pressured to finish older projects. Strangely enough, my DROPS Bolero is down there too.

The only yarn I've kept are the junky acrylic in case I want to work on my crochet granny square blanket (which I haven't) and a few spare wool skeins here and there for instant gratification scarfs, hats, and mittens (again, I've not been tempted to knit). I still have the yarn for Greg's socks sitting in a paper bag somewhere in my room.

Most of my time was eaten up for finishing this giant Midnight Heather Aeolian Shawl from Knitty's Aeolian Shawl pattern. How huge is it? It's huge. It is by all definitions HUGE. I thought I would be clever and knit it on US size 5 needles like how the pattern uses for the shouderette but instead for the giant shawl. I wanted something a little more open and allowed for the merino in the wool more room to bloom after blocking in between stitches. The Aeolian is a nice pattern because you can adjust for different sizes pretty easily with the chart repeats itself if the shawl sizes provided are not quite what you are looking for.

In any case, I realized that going to Las Vegas with Greg for his brother's wedding needed an extra kick to my outfit so I thought about knitting something really memorable for the trip and thus the Aeolian knit in Midnight Heather in Knitpicks Shadow would be the best bet to pair with my awesomely flirty black and white dress. The shawl itself I wanted to be epic thus the large size knit in US 5 needles and indeed, it turned out so much larger than I had anticipated that it ate up every inch of the 1320 yards of Shadow I had. The process to knit it was also epic given I started it at the beginning of September/end of August that I wanted to finish it by the 23rd all blocked and ready to go for the trip on the 30th so I could rest my fingers for a while the last week. I literally was knitting somewhere around 10-15 rows a day to do this, mind you, these rows varied from being 500-almost 1000 stitches depending on the section. I did manage to finish the shawl in time with the last week being so hectic that I actually developed a callous on one of my fingers and a sore spot in my right forearm that lasted a day. Here is the following pictur of the Midnight Heather Aeolian aka the Time Devourer. My Red Aeolian is also included along just to show a size comparison in the blocking and how different Shadow lace is from Jade Sapphire's Lacey Lamb (which the JSLL I personally believe is finer than regular 2-ply laces out there).

One thing to make note of the difference in size in the two shawls is that the towels underneath because it's hard to make out how big the two shawls are based on the distances I took the photos for both. The Midnight Heather Aeolian is blocked over four towels, two spread out length wise and then another two forming a triangle downwards. The dimensions are Midnight Heather 7 ft length-wise versus the Red's paltry 5 ft 3in wide. The depth is about the same for both.
VS














Please make note that I did not block the Midnight Heather Aeolian to its full expanse. Normally I stretch them as far as I can but for the great Time Devourer of Shawls, I decided to sacrifice extreme size for the neatest possible block imaginable for the wedding (that and I didn't really want to push my luck with grabbing more towels to block the edges out all over again once I had finished pinning out each flower edge). You can tell I blocked the tail slightly differently in both as well. I misinterpreted the tail's blocking the first time I knit the Red Aeolian, believing it spiked out like the flower edges when in fact it's just a straight edge--my bad.

My favorite part with this shawl was how neat the 7-stitch nupps turned out. I cheated and on the even rows, I slipped 3 stitches knit-wise then p4tog then passed the 3 stitches over the p4tog stitch. This made incredibly neat looking and less hassle (note--still not hassle-free) nupps that really pop out on the shawl.