Starting new things

This is my current “at home” project. It’s a shawl made with two fingering yarns… but it uses a ton of short rows and is not conducive to office or social knitting. I’m using the Danish yarns that a colleague brought me earlier this year:

The pattern is Penrose Tile Shawl. The beginning is knit from end to end, like a scarf, except using short rows to achieve these sections of trapezoids:

Then the garter stripe section has very long rows. I’ve moved beyond this section now and am in another short row section that is also long, and lacy, and in general a little different. I’ve been a bit frustrated by the pattern errata, but I’m muddling through. The result is quite pretty!

The other project I began is a weaving project – remember the towel kit I got at MDSW earlier this month? Here is how my loom looked during the warping process. This is a rigid heddle loom (15” Cricket) so you use a direct warping technique. All those threads are connected to a warping peg at the other end of the room.

I worked hem stitch at the beginning and end of each towel to make the ends neat and tidy (though you won’t see that when I’m done, because I’ll turn the hems and sew them down):

Here is some of the weaving coming together:

I love the rainbow look! But I’m kind of frustrated because the work is too open and I don’t think it will look right even after it gets a vigorous hot and soapy bath in my washing machine (which is where it is right now). It is very hard to beat the weft tighter than this. The clamps aren’t holding my loom to my table. I’m getting pretty close to ordering the official Cricket stand to see if that works better. I visited Julie today for some weaving troubleshooting. I’ve already re-warped the loom for another set of two towels, and we’ll see if I can get a tighter weave on them. Wish me luck!