A ball of silk in a mixing bowl.
That lace weight silk arrived here in hank form and, after some cuddling, was placed in a plastic tubbie in the stash. In case, you don't recall, it arrived during the sock summer madness and had to wait until I had come to my senses.
Shut up.
Once I was fed up with socks, I went to get the lovely silk and discovered that it had grown an oder.
Yeah, okay.
It smelled. (Think ocean at low tide.)
I remembered that Claudia had talked about the silk smell in her blog while working on her Thermal. I decided to try hot water and wool wash to remove the smell. Not only did that not work, but the silk was now wet and bleeding. I washed/soaked it three times and the bleeding and smell were only getting worse.
I squeezed out what water I could before hanging it in the garage for the night. The next morning, I asked Claudia for help. She is my Sweater Hero... East Coast Edition, after all. She told me to simmer the silk to set the color. She did not mention the smell and I was too freaked out at that point to question.
Simmer I did... and it worked. Claudia is a goddess!
However, it still smelled.
I hung the no longer bleeding silk in the garage to dry for a couple of days before bringing it inside. With summer over, it was going to take forever if left in the garage. One perk about summer is it being over 100 degrees in the garage all the time. After talking to my mother and my LYS owner, I decided to air out the silk and hope for the best.
Weeks Time passed. I did a lot of cleaning (and maybe knit a Swallowtail) while pretending there wasn't a smell coming from the dining room.
Then one day, there was no smell. There was much rejoicing and maybe a little dancing with the cat. Maybe...
Moving on...
I followed Joan's advice and went down a needle size when knitting the shawl. I would have gone down two sizes if I was knitting with wool because of how I block.
<~ Clickity to Embiggen
There should be a knit on edging. The pattern calls for one and provides a chart.
However, I don't like it. It didn't go well and I don't like it.
I am currently toying with the idea of crocheting an edging all the way around, but I'm not sure. I am also thinking about holding off until I am feeling less cranky/less like me and trying the knit on edging again.
Opinions?
Pattern is from VLT, btw. Shoulder Shawl with cherry leaf pattern. Page 134 for pattern. Such a zippy name for a piece of lace. Don't you think? o.0
Oh, and the "I can't count" part. I seem to have more repeats than the pattern calls for. Even though, I tried to keep track of how many repeats I knit. I have forty stitches more than I should. However, I don't see that as a real problem because I like the size, seem to have enough silk left for some kind of edging and am not worried about The Knitting Police coming to get me. I know people. ;^)
It's supposed to be a man sock.
