Moving madness–tension and tencel

It’s no lie that our summer has been more hectic than usual… we spent the majority of July and August running back and forth from the new house and the old, and doing about a hundred projects that we’ve been meaning to do, but never got around to because of time and/or money. Well, no time like when you’re ready to leave it all behind, eh?

In the flurry of painting, staining, painting, cleaning, schlepping, painting, downsizing,  packing… oh, and did I mention painting? I needed a few diversions of the fibrous kind to keep me from losing my mind completely.

I had attempted to get started on a shawl or capelet using that gorgeous carbon-gray heavy laceweight tencel yarn I purchased at the Black Sheep Gathering. I spent the better part of the summer deliberating about what to do, downloading a jillion patterns from Ravelry.com, and trying my hand at a little lace knitting. Well, I started several times, but stopped and ripped it back in frustration. The patterns I kept trying had lots of twisted stitches and kbl involving knitting two and three stitches together, and it was just too hard using the slippery tencel. I struggled to find the right lace needles that would grab those stitches without everything slipping off the needles, and nothing seemed to work. Never happy with baby steps, I tried to eat the whole elephant in one go (like that mixed-metaphor-fest?), and wound up annoyed and bored.

This is what happens so much more easily when I’m stressed and overwhelmed—I struggle with sticking with stuff and flit from project to project. So I distracted myself with a couple of baby hats and a few small, portable, mindless projects while we bobbed from old to new house.

During my jillion back-and-forth trips to the Knit Shop on Willamette in Eugene (have I mentioned lately how much I love these guys?), looking for a variety of needles in different materials and sizes to find the right fit, I found Zooey, this awesome cotton-linen blend from Juniper Moon Farm. When in doubt, go for more washcloths, I always say. Well, I don’t always say it, but when I’m unable to find a fun knitting project, I do.

Isn’t it pretty? I chose this cool brownish color, since I thought these would make awesome face cloths—and they’d never get ruined from a little make-up, so that’s even better! I used the usual straight-up grandma’s dishcloth pattern that usually does the trick. I think these are going to make awesome holiday gifts!

So, now that things have settled down a bit, I have some nice yarn to take along to music lessons and other away-from-home activities, and then I have… well, this other weird project I’m working on. After all the aforementioned fiddling around, I have found a nice lace pattern in my go-to The New Knitting Stitch Library that didn’t involve any wild tbl stitches and knitting more than two stitches together so I could keep the stitches on the needles. And, I found a great set of rosewood needles that are grippy enough, but not too much. Instead of a lot of shaping, I’m going to try that taking-baby-steps thing that everyone’s talking about, and just enjoy making the pattern on an open field for a while, without a bunch of decreases and shaping. I’ll make a stole-scarf-shawl thingy, and leave it at that for now.

I never use point protectors, but with this slippery, slidey stuff, I can’t risk it going off the needles EVER, so I actually secure my work when I’m done knitting. It’s turning out pretty, no?

Here’s another photo of the lace in more detail. It’s nothing super-fancy, but I think it looks nice with this lovely yarn. We’ll see how large this measures after I’ve used the first ball, and after that I’ll figure out what I’m making, and whether I want to take on more, such as an edging or shaping of some kind.