Swan Lake - My Odile

In the beginning, the Prince sees a flock of beautiful swans symbolized by the traditional lace pattern, "Wings of the Swan."

He waits and watches for the swans to land only to discover they are women, dancing women. The center part of the stole is knit in the Shetland lace design, "Cat's Paw," symbolizing the Dance of the Little Swans. The Prince dances with Princess Odette and falls in love.

Odile, the daughter of the evil sorcerer, tricks the Prince into pledging to marry her, however. Faced with a life as both swan and princess, Odette ends her life. Odette's cursed existence is symbolized by the single wing, the last part of the stole.

Thanks for a unique and engaging KAL, Melanie of Pink Lemon Twist.


Back to the knitting. . ..

Happy results from the new carder.

I've been saving some "what if" projects for the relatively new carder and finally have results.

The first one was to blend a multi-colored (blues and greens) perendale batt. I took a picture of the pile of colors, but the picture got deleted before it made it to the computer.
I do have the blended batts though


and the resulting tweed fiber. I like the tweed effect and plan to purposely dye different shades to get this result again.

And a lingering problem . . . how to card cormo without neps. I finally found a technique I can be satisfied with. The washed cormo is fed directly onto the drum, stretching out each of those kinky, curly locks.


Neps cannot be detected in the resulting fiber (fingering weight) without very close scrutiny.


I am working on some other carder projects, but no pictures yet.
Next time.

Another year, Another beginning

Much has been knit and spun during the year, but this post will begin from right now only . . . the last two FO's.
Those would be a pair of socks (always there are socks). These were knit with Lorna's Laces, one of my favorites.
Second would be a summer top. Dug through my stash and found some very lightweight, probably laceweight linen. Needing something to strand with it to get the gauge, I remembered the Habu Soysilk I got at StEast a few years ago. They worked perfectly together giving the top a bit of drape which linen by itself would not do. Then I settled on a topdown raglan pattern in Beyond Wool, by Candace Eisner Strick. It's a quick and simple pattern, but looks elegant. Fits well, too.
The Mystery Stole is coming along . . . almost to the last of Clue 5. Tomorrow the big secret will be out. What is the theme?

My next post will cover the recent carding experiment.