FO: Girasole Shawl

i had a lot of trouble concentrating at work yesterday. all day, i was thinking of that lovely piece of red wollmeise stretched out on knitabulous’ floor, waiting to be unpinned. i raced over after work yesterday, and up it came. its so beautiful it nearly made me cry:

the wollmeise has just blocked beautifully, it is so smooth and light and drapey, and its HUGE! its at least 140cm across::

im not sure i made it to wear it, i thought of it more as a decoration, but it was actually very hard to take off:

i should stop preening and tell you a little bit about it, although you can see all the details on ravelry of course. the pattern is jared flood’s girasole, italian for sunflower, which it does indeed invoke:

the yarn is wollmeise lace-garn, in merlot, that george got for me in pfaffenhoffen, and really only natural light does the colour justice. it looks like, well, merlot. the pattern was written for a fingering and an aran weight, but the wollmeise is probably about a 3 ply. i went with 3.75mm sticks, or knit pick option interchangeable with the longest cable actually. it opened up beautifully on blocking:

and is light, and flowing, and drapey. i did extra repeats on chart E and G (6 and 4 respectively i think) and i still have enough yarn left over to make another small shawl. but not enough that i dont think i wasted it, and im certainly not thinking its too small! im so pleased with it, ive bought it to work today.

just because.

missing no more

yesterday i drove down to canberra and back in a day for a govt policy meeting. when i got home, exhausted and brain dead, i was informed that ‘a pick up card from the post office came for you today but ive lost it’. needless to say, said card was quickly found again, because i had a feeling i knew what it was, and i was right. i left work at 4 today and scurried to the post office, where i found this

look at that. the word AIRMAIL scratched out! the postage paid was certainly enough to cover airmail, so i dont know who thought it was ok, somewhere along the line, to decide to send it by boat, but by boat it came. i eagerly ripped off the beautifully wrapped and taped brown paper, cut through miles more of tape, and lo and behold:

chocolate! german chocolate, including my favourite, mozart kugeln, only not in kugeln form!

oh, and yes, there was some wool in there too

squeeeee! that, my friends, is the long awaited wollmeise.

colours and yarns, from left to right are: nobodys perfect (twin) ( i think this is actually midnight); blaue tinte (merino), jutltmonte (merino), ruby thursday (twin) maus ault (lace garn) and merlot (lace garn). george (under instruction to get 2 twin, 2 merino, and 2 lace, in combinations of red, blue or grey) was worried that the jultmonte wasnt my thing but its just perfect, a lovely complex deep burnt maroon that will make a lovely shawl. and the maus ault, oh, how i have wanted that colour for the longest time. they are just perfect, and i am so incredibly lucky that george went to all that trouble to get them for me.

thing is, the timing is a little problematic. we are madly packing to head off to melbourne tomorrow morning  at 5am (with three dogs, in the car, a 10 hour trip), for the australian national flyball championships, and wont be back till monday night. i am a bit underexcited, every nationals there is always some drama, and im just not up to it again, but we have a new team and they are a lot of fun, so hopefully it will run smoothly, and possum will have a good time.

but really, all i want to do is stay home and play with my wollmeise! welcome home precious’.

k xx

for the love of lace

sorry, no, not a post about a pron star. rather, i may have mentioned yesterday that i am loving knitting lace again. oh yes indeed. i am really feeling the love. its so nice to have my sock, and now my lace, mojo return.

of course, it helps if you pick the right project and the right yarn. without too much thought, i put these two together:

jared flood and wollmeise (hmm, now thats an idea for a movie…sorry, distracted). after my intial circular cast on angst, i am really wondering what all the fuss was about. look how its grown!

you cant quite see the pattern yet, but after the first chart i switched from the DPNs to an addi circular (which is nice and smooth but not as sharp as a knitpicks), and now its flying along:

although not quite right, this picture is closest to the true colour. i cant believe how simple this is really. lovely big charts

with easy to remember stitch pattern repeats. my only problem is wondering which chart to do more times so i can use up more wollmeise. or should i just stick to the pattern and have enough left to make something else? (first world problem or what!)

k xx

the sad story of the missing wollmeise

once upon a time, an unassuming aussie girl married a german prince. they settled happily in australia, but every couple of years she travelled back to germany to visit with the prince’s family in their quaint little village. everytime she returned, the girl bought with her strange bundles of balls of wool, mostly from a company called regia, and because of this she soon became known lovingly as the german fibre whore.

on a recent trip, our heroine decided to stray further afield from the green pastures of regia sock yarn, and travelled to a little village in lower germany called pfaffenhoffen to visit the legendary queen claudia in her castle of iron and wool. our heroine had a list of things to buy from the german fibre queen, including 6 skeins of various colours for her friend drk. there was much to and froing, much angst about colour choices, and finally the following items were acquired on my behalf:

2 skeins of lace, merlot and maus ault

and 4 skeins of sock and merino. our heroine, under instruction from me, posted these items, partly so theyd get here quick, and partly because i didnt want to weigh down her own baggage. the sad story is, they are yet to arrive. its been well over 6 weeks since they were posted. this little postcard was mailed on the same day (10 Sept) and from the same place,

and it sits on my mantlepiece, mocking me. a monty-pythonesque conversation with australia post (me: ‘a friend posted me a parcel and it hasnt arrived’. them: ‘we cant track stuff but if you give us the article number we can track it’. me: ’1)make up your mind and 2)how can i give you the article number of something that i didnt post???’) ended with the assumption that given freight constraints on aircraft these days, its likely to have gone seamail. hello? 21st century anyone?

anyway, its not here, and i was sad. until yesterday that is. not because it arrived, because it hasnt, but because my dear beloved germanfibrewhore friend sent me a package:

it contained one of her own skeins of merlot lace that she bought at the same time (plus some yummy german choccies).

she knew i was pining, and was itching to start something lacy and wollmeisy, so she has forfeited her own on my behalf (i will give her my merlot when it finally arrives). thank you george, youre the best! the colours in this merlot are amazing, though for the life of me i cant get it to photograph properly.

but you who have seen it know of what i speak. and even though i havent finished the lily on the valley scarf (i have only the 16 row border to do now) i couldnt help but spend a good hour winding it up into a ball last night:

very careful and very slow i was, but i neednt have worried, not a single knot, not a single tangle. (let me just say that again. 1700 yards of lace weight and no knots. 50g of jo sharp DK, two knots. screw you jo sharp). it made the hugest yarn cake:

in the most mouth watering colour.

its going to be a girasole. i shall cast on tonight. but lest you think i am a fickle fibrewhore as well, im still thinking of those six skeins, out there somewhere, maybe sitting on a tarmac, or lost in a warehouse, or bobbing up and down on the vast pacific ocean.

my poor lost little wollmeise.

k xx