Wedding Shawl

Here are a few pictures from my wedding of my wearing my Hanami. There's also a shot of Manda wearing her Something Lacey. It had to be pinned in the back to make it stay put. I'm glad I made it. It wound up being quite chilly on our wedding day and it was absolutely freezing during pictures! It was so nice to wear and I got loads of compliments on it so it made all those hours of knitting lace well worth it. :)

Hanami Photos

So here's the infamous Hanami. Overall I have to say I'm pretty damn happy with it. I can see a few spots where I fudged it up a bit, but you gotta be looking for them to notice the mistakes. I LOVE the color. It's such a beautiful shade of purple. It should probably be longer but that's my fault for running out of yarn but it still works ok. I did get it finished before my fitting for my dress so I can take it with me to see how they'll look together. Yay!

Now on to the pictures. There will be a few of them.

My favorite part of the entire shawl is where the basket weave transitions into the cherry blossoms.

My modified cherry blossom ending with just a few rows of garter.

I love it. I'm so proud of myself for tackling this for my first shawl ever.

Hanami Fin.

I decided to finish up the hanami with a few rows of garter stitch. I didn't want to take the chance of ordering new yarn and it not matching the way it should (plus it was $36! Jeez!). I'm a little sad I didn't get to finish it out the way the pattern calls for since it's just so pretty but I've got it blocking out right now and it seems to still look pretty good. It did bleed quite a bit when I put it in water to soak. When I poured the water out it looked like purple koolaid. Hopefully it won't bleed more after that.

The good news is I really enjoyed knitting Hanami. The pattern was interesting but not difficult once I got the hang of it and it changed often enough to keep it interesting even though it was such a long pattern to knit. I'll probably do another one, maybe not quite as wide as a scarf? I like that idea.

Hanami Part Uh Oh

I've hit a hiccup with my Hanami. I'm out of yarn. And I'm not out of pattern. I didn't think that was possible with 1000 frigging yards of yarn. The pattern doesn't even call for 1000 yards of yarn! I thought I was safe! (And no, of course I didn't check my gauge. When have I ever had that much sense?)

This big pile of purple is my Hanami. Please ignore the terrible photo, I was lazy and took it with my phone.



This is how much yarn I have left.


And I've got most of chart F, all of chart G plus the ruffle boarder to finish. What do I do? Do I order more $36 yarn that may or may not match perfectly? Do I just say screw it and knit a few rows of garter and bind off? Do I rip it out? Is there absolutely anyway that I can manage to reknit this whole damn thing in the time I have left? I seriously doubt it.

The one  thing that is in my favor is that it's the cherry blossom end so other than being shorter there is no real noticeable difference of where the pattern ends so I could skip the rest of chart F but I probably still need chart G and the wavy border if I want it to look anything like the real thing. But if I just do garter and bind off it'll probably still look fine. It's not like the beginning of the shawl is perfect anyway.

So...what to do? What to do? I have no idea.

Hanami Progress Part 2

Finally made it through all 7 repeats of the basket weave chart. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick that was long. But it went by quicker than expected expect during each repeat I'd get stuck on one row (always a different row) and have to knit and tink and knit and tink when I kept coming up off by one stitch. That's annoying. But I've made it through. It doesn't seem very long yet. I hope blocking fixes that. But aside from getting annoyed by tinking so far I haven't had the urge to put it down yet. I'm not bored with the pattern and so far haven't suffered any major disasters. *knocks on wood*

Hanami Progress

So I'm making progress on the Hanami. I'd say about 6-7 inches into it so far and I've finally hit my stride. I'm not sure what happened but those 2 extra stitches that kept coming up stopped coming up. I must have been missing a decrease here or there without really realizing it because the last repeat I did was spot on for every row and looks super.



The bottom is messy for sure. A more dedicated knitter than myself would probably rip it all out and redo it perfectly but I don't think I could do it perfectly if I wanted it. It'd just be an awful cycle of ripping and redoing until it was right and y'all know how much I hate redoing my work. If I got stuck in that cycle then it'd just never get knit. So I think I'm ok with the first 2-3 inches being messy if the last 67 inches are good. I can't really think of a time where this thing will be all spread out  with every stitch visible other than during blocking anyway so noone will be the wiser. It bothers me a little that the bottom won't be perfect but I don't think I've ever knit anything that is perfect and I'd rather get through this thing and feel accomplished when it's done rather than feel accomplished with a half knit perfect stole. I'm familiar enough with the basket weave now that I can tell if I get off on my stitch count so it shouldn't be an issue anymore.

The yarn is still lovely to work with. So soft and it seems to work up quickly considering it's lace. I love the color (good thing too since my fingers turn purple for hours after knitting with it).  I think this will be my only project for awhile until I'm certain that I'm able to finished it on time. I think if I can get in about an hour of knitting a day on Hanami I can get it finished up in 2 months which is plenty of time before the wedding.

Finished Breeze Socks

I finished my breeze socks on Tuesday. They were a wicked quick knit and the pattern was interesting enough not to get boring (not knitting a leg at all probably helped a lot with that as well).

I probably should have knit them out of a less warm yarn. It's knit picks pallet which is wool I think and therefore they're too warm for summer. Maybe they'll be ok spring/fall socks. But still, the yarn is soft and the socks are comfortable to wear.

I love the heel on them too. So much more fun to knit than the usual boring heel flap. I like that the cable pattern carried through.

Hanami is going well. I'm enjoying knitting it quite a bit. I'm a little iffy on if I'm doing it right. I keep coming up with 2 extra stitches every few rows and I'm not exactly sure where they keep coming from. The first repeat is a little messy, probably from my off counting somewhere, but the second repeat is looking nice so far and since I'm not a perfectionist I'm gonna let it roll until I get a few more inches in and can get a better idea of how it's going to turn out. It's getting easier to read the pattern as I knit it and I can kind of tell how it's supposed to look now. I'm surprised I'm enjoying this as much as I am. I didn't really think I was going to be a lace knitter but so far so good. Then again, I'm only about 5 inches into the thing so I may be singing a different tune by the time I get to charge G.

Hanami Cast On

Cast on for the Hanami tonight. I skipped the beaded cast on because I'm lazy and didn't want to wait on buying beads. I've got my first inch knit and so far it's been relatively painless. I think this pattern won't be so terrible to knit. It's relatively simple, mostly just yos and decreases. No knitting acrobatics to speak of so far. The Dream in Color Natural yarn is really soft and will be lovely to wear but it's bleeding on my hands as I knit so I'm a little concerned about that seein' as how I'm going to be wearing it with a white dress and all.

In other news, I finished up my first breeze sock on Friday (cast on for it on Sunday) so I knocked it out in less than a week. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the second one and hope to finish it up maybe this weekend. I'll take it with me to Connecticut to have as my mindless knitting for when I don't want to focus on Hanami.

Well enough alone

I just can't leave well enough alone. I kept browsing through Ravelry patterns for wedding shawls and found one that I had fallen in love with before but forgot about. The Hanami is beautiful and delicate and I think it's the one! Naturally I didn't order enough yarn for that pattern so back off to the Loopy Ewe I went to get yarn for Hanami. It took awhile for me to pick out a yarn. I browsed Loopy and Knit Picks and kept waffling between getting purple, a neutral or a wacky color. That stole is so pretty in any color it made it difficult to decide. In the end I decided on Dream In Color It's Natural Purple Rain. It better be worth the price. Now I have to wait even longer to get my yarn to start my shawl. I hope I can actually knit this thing in 4 months. It looks kinda big.