just in case you've missed out on the angelina along the first time (or perhaps like tina you might like a little online nudge to help with one on the go), fans of white lies designs now have their own knitalong group.
we've completed angelina:
however, there's still a little werk to be done, methinks. due to using a slightly different coloured yarn at the edges (especially the sleeves), it's weighing the garment down, so ripping back the sleeve lace a tad wouldn't hurt. reinforcing the collar with a few stitches probably wouldn't hurt either. we're looking for something to fasten it too - as you can see on the original, a little brooch or something doesn't go astray. time to go thrifting and market hunting...
another gratuitous shot (danke erin!) 
mara who's on the patterns of the past list has finished her angelina:
stunning stuff.
as for our angelina, we're chugging along - one sleeve is complete, and the back and front lace is almost there - due to the yarn shortage, we're just doing a little toing and froing to make sure enough of the original yarn will complete what we've already started pattern wise.
we tried a scan of what we've done, but no go - the plan is simply to knit a thicker, slightly paler yarn, for 2 rows, then the original. it's looking interesting, and row counting is a cinch! it is quite the undertaking though....
tina's angelina is on the go slow - she's put it aside in favour of some faster wintry projects, but hopefully she'll be back into it soon - long way to go in that 2x2 ribbing!
hit a snag re: angelina - we're out of yarn. how this happened, we're not quite sure, so it's time to check the pattern, check tension, check yardage required, check for a stray ball somewhere (melbiners, should you see a stray ball of burgundy 8 ply mohair/wool blend, perhaps left at an s'n'b or something, do let us know...).
plan b is to simply undo the lace (one sleeve and the last bit of the front to go) and work in a thicker yarn of a similar colour from the same dyejob. however, it's not possible to get a colour match due to the overdyeing done on the originally blue mohair. bummer that.
joan has some shots of angelina live (requires windows media player and a decent connection) in the clips section of whiteliesdesigns. progress on angelina - we're up to the lace! no more ribbing! woohoo!
the circular needle at the bottom is where things are happening - the temporary cast on is off and we're racing (well...moving, at least). what we didn't realise is that we could've taken the cast on off at any time we were bored with the ribbing, but we guess one thing at a time is fine.
angelina is getting a little hefty - it's time to leave this baby at home to knit, aside from meeting up with angeltina this afternoon at cafe banter. we've hit the lace part of the knitting - all the ribbing has been done (phew!), the bottom temporary cast on taken off, and the first few rows of lace done.
angelina's "mum" (mom, mother, et al...) joan m-m is in the press with "young women point the way in knitting trend". go joan! it's reassuring to see that following ones love can pay off, and that she has been able to have a lifestyle out of doing what she loves. (if like us you wanted to know what joan is wearing, it's a sorta summer version of angelina, masquerading as shelley's lace cardigan.
turns out both tina and yours truly are being a tad slow with angelina - members of the patterns of the past group doing the knit along are talking about the neck...heck! we're still on the sleeves:
tina still has a fair chunk to go - she hasn't started the sleeves yet, but that's ok...her angelina (or angeltina, as we like to call it...) is being knitted in a bendigo woollen mills wool/cotton/lycra mix "harmony" (a pink shade - perhaps the carnation or a newer shade that bendy has - old shade card..), which is more a spring knit. the mohair number in burgundy is more a wintry thing, so we're keen on getting it done.
something we didn't know before...our lace knitting skill before embarking on this project equals a grand total of one partly done pi shawl. tina admitted to a doily...so it's a good thing we're on a list with the creator of the pattern, plus of bunch of faster knitters who are hopefully just as hapless as us when it comes to lace.
we saw tina's progress over the weekend at the cafe banter meeting - she's done about half of the ribbing before hitting the sleeves. we've finished the cast on for the sleeves, and now it's mindless ribbing for a few inches:
as you can see, there's a very nifty design feature going on here - the whole thing is knit in one piece with the lace added on afterward. the yarn from whiteliesdesigns - a mohair/wool mix - has been a total joy to knit - it's incredibly soft and buttery, and has none of the shedding and sometimes scratchy feel of mohair - if only australian companies sold stuff like this!
tina need not fear. methinks she mightn't have the amount of ballwinding we do (she has none, lucky soul...) and the amount of other projects on the go (then again...). so we have a little standstill at this point - at least, at the time of writing we do. it's getting mighty cold outside though, so we're tempted to speed angelina along for something a little warmer to wear.
so much for hitting a slump with angelina. a little gusset secret - every so often we get the urge to stay up and get something done. so, we checked the schedule for rage on saturday night/sunday morning, and it wasn't looking so bad - lemonheads, peaches, nirvana special. we knew that skeining and dyeing the yarn for angelina would take a while, but there were a few things that perhaps we shouldn't have rushed - read and learn, friends.
before dyeing - yarn really needs to soak in water a long time. longer than an impatient hour. as a result, putting the yarn into the dyebath (a good 18 litres or so, which obviously didn't get hot enough) came out with a lacklustre, streaky, patchy result of a colour that was more along the lines of a weak bloodwood (pale plum/mauve/blue colour). there was a chunk of yarn that did come out more the colour that we wanted. so, the knitted sample was thrown into the dye bath for the duration of nirvana, and at 4am, we had our answer....need to put the yarn back in. end result - 9am, water still hot, yarn the perfect colour. take yarn out. dye bath still a very, very strong colour.
in the name of not wasting dyebath, skein a couple balls of op shop white and put that in. dyebath still strong. repeat with all op shop white. we like this colour, really we do, but we've done enough yarn. moral to story - digital scales would be very handy to weigh both the yarn, and the dye and get accurate results. we went a little over (obviously) with the amount of dye, and mixing by weight of dye, rather than by eye would have been a better way to get a good result. it's all done:
duh. we realised another of our errors (can you tell we haven't been knitting for eons?) was not reading the pattern - it's a 2x2 rib, not 1x1, so we reswatched, and maybe someone was smiling down at us, but we got gauge, and we got it continental! alright!
so now it's pretty much all systems go - there's one ball wound, which is enough for knitting this week, and the rest can be wound with a proper ball winder next week. after all this knitting and skeining, the hands are a tad sore, so here on in, we're taking it easy - and giving tina time to catch up and send in her report... ;)
we've been a good girl:
it's the swatch for angelina, just to make sure that our tension is ok before we embark on the project - we've learnt from experience - when it comes to patterns, it pays to do the thing. what we've done here is started out on the recommended needles (3.75mm) and knitted a sample in k1 p1 rib, as recommended. we tried knitting combined style first, which was way too loose (and a little messy). so we tried our normal throwing style. still too loose, but better. switch to 3.25mm needles. combined - too loose. normal - bingo. there's a garter stitch ridge between each section (bar the last one where the pin is - ridge on the other side) which helps keep track of what's going on, and also makes it easier to check and get gauge. until we're able to get the yarn skeined, dyed, then balled, we've hit a little slump with angelina...so tina will have a major head start on us.
as you can see from the stash pic - there's a slight issue in the gusset camp. it's blue. while it would have looked smashing on blue eyed tina, it's just not our thing. there's a woman whose fashion advice we dig - brenda kinsel. in her book brenda's wardrobe companion there's lots of exercises and thinking and practical ways of uncovering what you really love. leafing through an old newpaper weekend magazine, there was an image that took our breath away - a huge, beautiful, multicoloured moth (the pink/brown one on the first page of the article is similar), part of the photographs of joseph scheer, who has put a book together.
as weird as it might sound, dressing in the colours of a moth isn't too far off some of brenda's recommendations - such as to look at the colours in nature and in food (even though we'd baulk at doing it, we liked the dressing as a sundae bit - vanilla white, cherry red, chocolate brown...)
the pink and neutral colours go together so beautifully. so while going brown is probably pushing things a little, we did have a play with landscape dyes today, and here's the results:
the colours (which are quite a bit different to real life thanks to scanning and monitors and whatnot) were sampled from 3 landscape dyes - working from left to right, desert pea (orange red), grevillea (pink-red), bloodwood (plum), grevillea and bloodwood together, a mix of all three.
the winner is the mix of all three, which is a deep rich burgundy tone which will go with all our pink stuff and is kinda moth like into the bargain.
what's this? :
we've had a visit from the fairy yarnmother - tina initially bought the yarn and pattern direct from whiteliesdesigns for her own use, however she's gone with yarn from bendigo woollen mills, and donated the incredibly lush wool/mohair mix to the kyliegussetfoundation and in return we get to poke and prod her into completing angelina with us as part of the knitalong on patterns of the past- expect weekly updates from us both.
