54,180 Stitches

Hee,hee. I’ve finished it! It’s not blocked yet but it’s finished. I figured out that I knitted 54,180 stitches doing this doily. On size 10 crochet cotton. On US size 0 needles. That’s a jolly awful lot of stitches! Unblocked it measures about 30 inches so should be about 32 once the blocking is finished.

I think I’ll wait a little bit to start the smaller thread.

Balmoral

I’ve made quite a lot of progress on the Balmoral ‘coffee cloth.” I’m all the way to round 111 which, considering I started the weekend on round 71, is pretty good. There have been no more pattern mistakes and the more challenging part is past but you still have to pay attention and there is still a lot of counting needed to be sure I don’t miss something. At the moment I’m up to 624 stitches! There are 137 rounds in all before I crochet off the edging and the last will have 840 stitches. I’m definitely going to need to cast on a simple project to work on after this!

My thistle is beginning to show...

The Balmoral coffee cloth from the Marianne Kinzel “Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting” is coming along, not quickly but it’s coming. In fact, last night I thought I was in trouble when I dropped a stitch along the side of one of the thistles. I was able to pick it up but it doesn’t look great. I also made a mistake along the top part of a couple of the thistles but I can live with it, especially since I know this isn’t the final product. I really don’t think many people will even notice the issues and, like I said, I can live with it.

I did find a mistake in the pattern on round 53. Round 51 ends up with 42 stitches but the pattern only uses 41 stitches for round 53. To be honest, I can’t remember where I added the stitch but I will post again when I get to that point with the next version.

Here are some views of it so far…

Progress Report

Today is report on progress day.

Life has been happening so I haven’t been doing too much lately but here’s what’s going on.

Collette Socks: Got this on my UK trip and I love the colors but I wasn’t sure how the yardage would work so I’ve done shortie socks. I’ll wait until I get the second one done and if I have leftover yardage, the plan is to then go back and work the tops up. Anyway, it’s just a basic sock.

Dalek Central: This is a pattern from a fellow Whovian – she did a great job on it, too, even though it was only like the second thing she’d ever knit. Pattern is fun and easy but, alas, due to ‘licensing’ is no longer available generally though I think there is a way to get it from one of the Dr. Who groups on Ravelry. It’s done except for the base and the stuffing and I think it’s so cute! I’m dead pleased with it. For the purl rows, since purling the entire round is awkward for me on double points, I started practicing with the Portuguese-style purling and it’s working great. I haven’t got my pin done but, since this is perle cotton and therefore not so heavy, I just used a coil-less pin on my left shoulder which worked great. It’s been great practice and it’s solved my dp purling challenges!

Saltire and Thistle Shawl: I finally got back to this on my trip home last week. In fact, I got carried away and knit the first half of the middle way, way, way too far (Danish sweater too far). I sat and ripped as my mother groaned just watching me. In fact, I’m still knitting off the overflow! Way too far. Anyway, it’s on track now and I really like the cross. If you’ve seen the entries from the ‘test’ version, the cross was one of the things I needed to improve. I just have a little bit more before I pick up for the thistle border. Of course, being lace, it doesn’t look like much yet but just you wait!

New Thistle Design “Balmoral” Dinner Cloth: I said I wasn’t going to start a new knitted lace doily but this dinner cloth totally drew me in. It’s from the “Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting” from Marianne Kinzel and it has been staring at me since I got it several weeks ago. I think I’m going to try to go whole hog on this and do the full dinner cloth but we’ll have to see how that goes. It’s one of those patterns that you can stop at different points.

And that’s it. A little bit of everything as usual! I think I’m going to try to get the socks finished this weekend because I have some other sock yarn that I want to get started with next and I think it will be with a little fancier pattern. I have a pattern I did a couple of years ago with some braided cables that I just got written up so I think I’ll use this new sapphire blue yarn to test that pattern with.