Elspeth Bolero FO Number 1

It's very lovely at the moment. Mostly sunny days, a little crisp at night, dry and clear. Whenever I think of September in Southern New England, I picture the clear golden light and the green trees all around me just on the verge of turning a beautiful yellow. This is my favorite month here. Maybe except for October...

And just in time for summer to be over, The Amazing Lace entry was all knitted up on Labor Day. But not quite done. The seaming and edging remained. It has taken me FOREVER to do the finishing on this. But I can still wear this for a little while as the days grow cooler.

The edges and the ties are crocheted. It goes perfectly with this tan and denim colored dress.


This photo shows the required laciness better


It also goes perfectly over a t-shirt.



Pattern: Elspeth in Rowan Magazine #37
Yarn: Berrocco Denim Silk, color 1414 Unwashed Denim. 5 skeins. Gift from Blossom.

For the edging, I had to reacquaint myself with crochet. It was much like riding a bicycle though, and I used my good and trusty "Harmony Guide to Crocheting. Techniques and Stitches" just to verify how many times to wrap around the needle for the different stitches. I stuggled some and pretty much had to make up the edging as I went along, because I didn't know that English and American crochet stitch names are completely different. What I mean is that they are the same, but they mean different things. British double crochet is American single crochet. Et cetera. I just realized this yesterday when I got Rowan #40! There are still some mistakes in the crochet pattern directions, though, I'm just saying...

On a completely different note, I saw a childrens movie the other day, Nanny McPhee, with Emma Thompson and Colin Firth. Was I the only one who thought that it was like a Kaffe Fassett fairy tale?

I was really into the sets. If you have ever admired the photos in the Fassett books, the ones where he shows inspiring interiors in glowing, amazing colors... the set of this movie was like one of those books. Deep saturated colors everywhere, acid green walls, cobalt blue woodwork and floor, with fuchsia and lime green costumes. Green and aqua woodwork with yellow walls. It was a visual feast! I want to buy this dvd only so that I can admire the colors! I wish I had better photos to show you than these stills...

In the childrens bedroom, and there were seven children, each bed had a different quilt or blanket in jewel colors. Every single one different, patchwork, granny squares, log cabin, plaids. The effect was so rich. I just wanted to make some quilts!
To top off the textile inpiration, in a beach scene the boys had on ganseys, which looked like they came straight out of Rowan Magazine. Too much fun.

A scarecrow and a sun worshipper

The Elspeth bolero is coming along. It's missing one sleeve still, but that seems ok for a scarecrow. Challenge #6 was to find an unusual model. The scarecrow is guarding the high-bush blueberries, but it seems that the birds have taken most of the fruit already. The cultivated blueberry bushes are five-six feet tall, which is quite surprising to a Norwegian. In Norway, blueberries grow wild on the floor of the forests, little plants maybe ten inches tall, covering the forest. At our house here in Mass, we have six big bushes, and they are a little bit leggy at the moment, but they should fill out by next year after the pruning we did. And next year maybe we will put the net around them, to protect from the voracious birds. I love birds, but I love blueberries, too!

We moved into this house a year ago now, and we thought we would take it easy with landscaping the first summer. Wait and see how all the things planted by the previous owners turned out. Turns out that was a good idea, because flowering things have been popping up in the most unexpected places. And the blueberry bushes actually had lots of berries, they just didn't have a chance to ripen. I should have put that scarecrow up sooner!

I can't believe it's been a month since I posted anything. Not much knitting has been happening, and it's been busy with friends and family visiting, including Blossom and Ohana, and going to the beach. It's been fun. While Blossom was here, we did some sewing. Check out the beautiful Cherry Bomb dress she made. It's so perfect, the style and the cheerful fabric!

The weather has been very good, and here is somebody who has been loving it:




Every time I walk Pippi when it's warm and sunny, she plops down and stretches out on the grass. Greyhounds LOVE the heat. And she doesn't care that the grass has mostly been burnt off by the hot sun. (I know, it's pretty sad) But maybe next year we should also try to use those fancy garden implements called sprinklers.

Amazing Lace #6

A scarecrow wearing a one sleeved Elspeth bolero is watching over the blueberry bushes.

Ah, the Amazing Lace

If you bound off your lace RIGHT NOW - what could it be used for? This is the question for the Amazing Lace challenge 4.


Fortunately, no major shaping has happened yet, so I think Elspeth would make a nice little curtain for the window in our front door. Something with holes is definitely needed here, so that we can look out and still see the trees.


Here is a closeup to prove there are actually holes in this curtain. It's maybe not as lacy as I would have liked, but there are holes!

I started this project about ten times before having any success. In spite of swatching, when knitting the pattern, I just could not get the gauge right.
I wrote a little haiku for challenge 3, about the swatch mocking me, but deleted it.

And then I couldn't get the pattern right. Elspeth is a Rowan pattern, and I have read many blogs lately discussing issues with Rowan instructions. I am going to agree with them. The directions have issues. Maybe this is a recent phenomenon, I have not run into this with earlier Rowan patterns.

One problem with the directions is that the shaping cuts right across the pattern stitches, instead of being shaped around the patterns.

(The holes are not really apparent in the following photo. This is not a blurry photo by the way, but this yarn has little white flecks in it that make it difficult to photograph. I really like the way it looks in real life!)


You can see the effects of how the pattern hits the selvedge and kind of makes it curl unevenly. This is most obvious on the left side in this picture. It will look fine when seamed, and it does have the (mostly) correct shape, but it is awkward to work with this pattern along the edges.
This is common I am sure, with garments that have both shaping and pattern.

Another, more surprising problem, is that the pattern stiches themselves are not written correctly. The pattern consists of slanted decreases first to the right, and then to the left. The first pattern element has standard decreasing, K2tog and P2tog. This slants to the right. But then, for the left slanting pattern, the instructions say K2tog tbl (RS) and P2tog tbl (WS). Knitting 2 together through the back loop causes a twisted stitch, and so the left slanting elements have a more raised look than the right slanting elements. This is not pretty in my opinion. However, out of laziness, I didn't really give this any thought until I was almost at the armhole, when I started thinking this is too easy, no slipping and psso...

I am not going back, but now I am doing it the right way (my way). It's moving along rather quickly now. Whew!