jodi's weblog :: flurries

flurries

January 26, 2010

Allow me to introduce, after having sat out a full season between bindoff and blocking, the Flurries shawl:

I started it at the end of August in order to have something simple to knit on my flights from Windsor to North Bay and back when I had my interview for the teaching position at Nipissing. Upon returning home I knit away at it distractedly during repeated watchings of Dollhouse, then flung it, completed, back in the basket to ferment for a spell while I worked up the energy to weave in the ends. There were 6 (six!) of them, due to my switching out to a contrasting yarn for the edging and then back to the main yarn for the bindoff row. Six ends is, like, ten minutes of work, people. And yet the fact that I only left it for four months is a vast improvement over my usual pattern of behaviour.

The pattern, of course, is the ever-popular Ishbel by Ysolda Teague. The main yarn is handspun from fibre I received from Mama E (Ceyeber Fiber), and the contrast yarn in the lace edging is a pale gray mohair blend that I reclaimed from an ugly thrift store find. It’s not too contrasty against the main body of the shawl, which I like, but it provides a distinct contrast against the (returning to the main yarn) bindoff row, which I love. Our gracious model is Miss Bones, an employee of the department of Fine and Performing Arts, Nipissing University.

I had a conversation with one of my colleagues today about the importance of video documentation and how I tried (and failed) to get into the habit of making weekly little studio videos. After this photo shoot was over I wished I’d made a video of myself carrying my model around the snowy parking lot with her broken stand, or gently brushing the snow from the bottoms of her feet as we re-entered the building. I have a feeling it must have looked pretty funny.

So. I mentioned yesterday that there were two cockups in the shawl: one fixable, one bearable. Well, on closer inspection after blocking I realized that what I’d thought was a “bearable cockup” in my knitting was actually just a part of the pattern, executed perfectly, that I’d just been examining wonkily in my haste to get the thing pinned out on my way out the door to work. The fixable mistake, a dropped stitch in the bindoff, was easy-peasy. You’ll never notice. I DEFY you to notice it.

And just so y’all don’t think I’m tiring of snow pictures just yet, we had a fresh snowfall today:

Just yesterday I photographed those same branches dripping with water as a warm rain fell, turning much of my hard-packed snowy walk to water and slush: