At long last, I have a picture of my Japanese Flower Shawl.

It’s done!   Yes, that’s Hunter’s head.   He’s been trying to eat it, since its made from 6 balls of Rowan Felted Tweed.

This was a pretty quick knit - the pattern came from a Japanese Knitting book (Couture Knit 11 Elegance Knit), and it wasn’t at all hard to follow the chart.

Here’s a close up of the flower motif:

I also finally uploaded some new submitted patterns to the Island Of Misfit Patterns - go check out the Socks section in particular!

Guess what?  Hunter Cat is Super Famous Again!   He made it on to icanhascheezburger.com!

I didn’t write that caption - mine was not nearly as funny.  But when you upload an image to the lolcat builder, other folks can use them to make their own.   Laurel actually took that picture, and I know I’ve posted it to this blog before.

Knitting wise, I’ve been working on the “Flower Shawl” from Couture Knit Elegance 11 Knit that Monica lured me into buying.  It’s a Japanese knitting book.  I cropped out this picture based on the preview.

This super nice blogger posted a better picture of the book and pattern.  Japanese patterns are actually standardized by the Japanese government, so once you know the chart symbols, it ought to be fairly straight forward.    However, I was having a heck of a time figuring out the yardage required.   Luckily, the above link translated the critical bit, and I was able to figure out that it uses a little under a 1000 yards of a DK weight yarn.   I had some dark green Rowan Felted Tweed in my stash that is working perfectly for it.  Mine is more rustic, but I love how its looking.

However, apparently I’m too lazy to take a picture, so you all will have to wait.

Speaking of Japanese Knitting books, YesAsia.com has a ton of them, and they do free international shipping if you order over 25 dollars.   Best yet, their site is largely in english.  What I’ve been doing is finding a knitting book, and then clicking my way through the suggestions.  Many of them have pictures of the inside of the book you can preview as well, which helps.

Once upon a time there was a very cute cat named Hunter.

Hunter, looking sweet and innocent.

One day, Monica was visiting from far off land.   She had just completed her Perfect Pie Shawl from Weekend Knitting: 50 Unique Projects and Ideas, and asked her good friend Gail to please, pretty please, block it for her.

Gail, Monica, Barb and Isis at Fringe a few weeks back.  Which was another event Gail failed to blog about.

Gail happily agreed, and carefully carried the lovely shawl home, where she carefully blocked it on towels on the living room floor.  It was lovely.  She happily wandered off, having covered the shawl with towels, thinking it would be safe until dry.  Let’s not go into what “happily wandering off” entailed. 

Hours later, she returned, and was greeted with a god awful sight.   Some EVIL cat (HUNTER) had managed to attack the shawl, rolling around in it, and tearing holes in it.  After gasping, Gail straightened out the shawl.  At first glance, the damage did not seem so severe.

Yes, he was still stalking the shawl.

But on closer examination, it was pretty hopeless.

Yes, we were shocked.

Poor Gail had to rip half the shawl to get past all the holes.  The body of the shawl was knit in Kidsilk Haze, which is next to impossible to rip.

Nice Monica would not let Gail reknit it, and took the ribbed shawl away, where she will work her magic and make it like new.

So, does anyone want a Kidsilk Haze appreciating Evil Hunter Cat?

My traveling project is currently the New England Socks from Nancy Bush’s Knitting on the Road.   It’s a very nice pattern, which makes me feel even worse about what I did to it.

Laurel says it looks like rotting flesh.   So I’m naming them my Zombie socks.   It’s not really the yarn’s fault (Cherry Tree Hill’s Birch colorway) - I’m the one who kept knitting even when it became apparent that the yarn did not go with the pattern.   But, hey, its more fun than knitting ribbed socks.   If you’d like to see what the socks should really look like, check out All Tangled Up’s blog entry - hers look lovely.

I have done more work on my Queen Anne’s Lace sweater, but it looks the same.  But longer.  No, really, I’m not making that up.

Laurel came over for Project Runway fun, and we took many pictures of the cats.   So, you all get two!  First, we have Katie trying to get to the top of the Ottoman before Hunter does.

There was a lot of zooming going on.    Then, Hunter decided he’d like to make us dinner.  Which was good, because the dinner I was trying to make was taking forever, and we were desperately scavenging for food.

Laurel took that picture.   We did eventually eat, and we were sad to see Allison go.  Vincent is INSANE.

I’m at the point I get to in almost all my projects. The “I Hate You, Project” point. The “Shut Up and Go Away Project” point. You know the point.

I’m definately there with the Isle of Unst Veil. I’m sick of knitting on it. I just want to knit socks instead. But I can’t, because it’ll look stupid to walk down the aisle with a bunch of socks attached to my head. So, the only item I am allowed to knit on when I am in my house is the veil. That’s it. I have less than 6 months to go, and I’m 3.5 balls into it. Or maybe 4.5 balls. They sent me 9 balls of evil, cobweb sheltand lace. I hate you shetland lace, with your littleness and tinyness.

I’m, at best, half way through the project. I’d count the balls of yarn I have remaining, but that might just be depressing. I am half way through the second chart of the border, but as I’ve mentioned before, the border increases 4 stitches every other row, so I’m really like 3% into the border, given that there is a total of 3 charts.

I just pulled that 3% out of my butt, by the way. Maybe it’s like 20%. I don’t know. I just know that it is lace and I want to knit fun fur scarves out of fake fun fur now.

Oh, fine, here are some pictures of the veil. It’s all currently bunched up on a 24 inch circular size 0 needle. A size 0 needle that has given me a very attractive callous on my right index finger tip. If I’m not careful, I manage to poke the needle into the hole right smack in the middle of the callous, and it hurts.

I’ll have a total of around 288 inches on that needle by the time I’m done. Good thing cobweb scrunches up to absolutely nothing.

Knitting fine gauge lace requires a pretty big leap of faith. Who can imagine that that lump of freaky cocoonness will one day be a gorgeous lace veil? Not I, I say. For all I know, once I finish and block the thing, it’ll actually spell out “I HATE YOU TOO”. I’m hoping there will be trees and diamonds and spider webs.

Here’s a close up of the border so far.

I’m also beginning to worry about the cobweb snapping into pieces when I try to block it. I know that won’t happen, but its just so tiny and skinny and fragile.

Edit:  People can now leave me audio comments!  Just go here, record a comment, and it’ll be sent off to me and I’ll probably play it on the podcast!  All you need is a computer and microphone.