Check out Karen’s Emma, knit in Sun Valley Fibers MCN Lace after their January Thaw retreat earlier this year:
 

I love, love, love the ethereal look of this shawl. Kudos, Karen!

A couple weeks back I finally resurrected a sweater project that had stalled. Knit from the top down, using a modified form of the “simultaneous set-in sleeve” method that Barbara Walker describes in Knitting from the Top, I set it aside after finishing the fiddly shoulder, neck, and sleeve shaping bits, right before the (equally?) fiddly task of choosing, placing, and getting stitch patterns established. Now: the colorwork is done, the underarm shaping is done, and it’s time to divide body and sleeves.

Except here’s the catch: it seems my gauge may have changed between the plans based on my initial swatches, and the sweater itself. I have to block the sweater-in-progress to find out for sure. (Yes, you can do that! Just slide all the stitches to waste yarn or – better yet – long circulars, and wet-block as you would a finished sweater.) I’ll report back when I know more.

While gathering the nerve to test-block the sweater – and find out if I need to rip and re-start – I’m taking a bit of time to swatch some Cascade 220 Fingering. The plan is to knit some Selbu-style mittens with relatively detailed patterning, more detailed than I could get with Cascade 220 Sport knit at about 7 stitches per inch. So I tried the Fingering with 2.5mm needles, and came up with this:

Isn’t that the most ridiculous swatch ever? It’s 10.5 stitches per inch, fer cryin’ out loud. Yes, that would make for mittens with really detailed patterning... but in the name of finishing the mittens in this lifetime, I plan to swatch again with slightly larger needles. We’ll see if I can hit 8.5 or 9 stitches per inch without getting a loosey-goosey fabric. Stay tuned!

In mid-April I finally managed to upload a bunch of changes to Stitch-Maps.com, all in support of making the site friendlier to knitters whose primary language isn’t English:

• More of the site is now translatable, including the emails that it sends.
• Translated messages can now contain bold text, italic text, and links.

• The security of the translation system has been tightened up.
• The translator’s guide has been updated.
• Translators can now keep tabs on new translations by subscribing to RSS feeds.

But for any of these changes to make a difference to non-English-speaking knitters, the site needs volunteer translators. Can you help, for German, Russian, or some other language? If so, please let me know!

I’m excited to announce I’ll be teaching at the inaugural Stitches Salt Lake this coming October.

Registration is now open. Note that classes run from Wednesday through Saturday instead of the usual Thursday through Sunday – no doubt I’ll get my days of the week mixed up while in Salt Lake!

While we’re on the topic of Stitches: Remember that early bird registration for Stitches Midwest ends on May 9. And space is still available in my classes at Stitches United and Camp Stitches Saddlebrook. Whew! So many Stitches events this year! Where might I see you?

Closer to home... I’ll be speaking on June 8 at the WWKIP event at the Salem Main Library. And, of course, I’m teaching at Black Sheep Gathering. It’ll be nice not to have to travel far for these events!

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