Carrie, of www.yarnmagnet.blogspot.com, is having some issues with blogger. But she's finished the first repeat of Chart 1. Check out her blog for more!

Icarus -- nearly done with Chart 1.



I've been making lots of progress on my Icarus, & since I'm making it the size of a large scarf, I'm nearly done with Chart 1. In fact, I would be done with Chart 1 already, except that I was zipping along without the pattern in front of me & forgot that the final set of Chart 1 ends early. So I thought I was already done with Chart 1, but then when I went to check the pattern to start Chart 2, I realized that I would either need to frog back several rows, or knit a bit more before starting Chart 2. I decided I'd rather knit the 16 more rows instead of trying to frog back 8 rows. I'm pretty sure I'll have enough yarn for the extra rows without any trouble, since I've used less than half what I have of this yarn.

I expect to start Chart 2 this weekend, though, & I'm really looking forward to it.

Hola KALsters!

It's been many months since Icarus was published, and things have slowed down around here a bit, but there are new KALsters trickling in every week. So, keep posting! :)

I just got an email from Miriam Felton. She says:

I've got a couple bits of news that might be worth a post, but since I'm not part of the KAL, I can't post them. I have discovered some errors from my original intent on the 4th chart of the pattern and in the final border rows. I posted about it in this post. They're bolded, but they're in the modifications section of the FO specs.

Also, I will be offering the Icarus shawl as a stand-alone pattern shortly. I understand that it's getting more difficult to find copies of the magazine.

If you're currently knitting or planning to start, head over to Miriam's blog and check out the corrections. And if you're searching for a copy of the pattern, keep an eye on her blog too.

Thanks folks,

Lynn (aka froggy_dear)

So I thought I'd bring Icarus along with us yesterday when we went to take DH/DP to his echocardiogram which is at a hospital 2 hrs away from us normally even with congestion. You can stop laughing now. We were driving through that there and back.

I had to wait until dawn before I could read the chart clearly enough to start knitting Icarus. As soon as it did get light enough for me to read it, I started to work while DH drove like a man possessed to keep us safe. We diverted south for a bit and took a secondary bridge over just to avoid the Port Mann cause it was backed up to at least 208 if not further east. We got him to Lions Gate just before 9am. His appointment was for 8am and normally, two hours is enough time for us to get there even if we have to divert around congestion. We had left at 6 am.

Then, when I go to drive off, I reach up to adjust the rear view mirror and the frelling thing breaks off. The glue failed!

So, here I am, driving around the North Shore, looking for the nearest dealership - which I never find - without a rear view, feeling oh-so-blind, with three kids in the back seats, praying I don't get hit because we had left our insurance papers for the van at home in Dh's other jacket.

I finally take the kids to Capilano Mall, drag out the wagon to pull DD around, stick D2 in my sling and spend the next half hour to hour praying I don't run over DS with the wagon because he's doing the "jump over the handle, slid under the handle" game in Walmart. I buy some yarn, grab some extra money, and then head to "go bananas" to wait for DH to show up.

Sometime after 11, he finally shows. He thinks they may have spotted something on his echo cause of the talk between the teacher and trainee.

Anyway, from there, I showed him the broken off mirror and DH rolls his eyes. We head from there to our doctor's office in Caulfield, buy a reprint of our insurance papers just-to-be-safe and I buy a replacement map for the van and we head to Horseshoebay to see if our friend is there cause his phone was dead and we wanted to hole up somewhere for a bit. I suggested a couple of alternative friends too, but noooo... the kids want to see that one. We drive past the line of cars trying to get on the 99 north and into HSB, right into our friend's parking lot and lo and behold, not only is the power out, so is our friend. His car is GONE.

So we head back east. As soon as we hit the highway, the radio says (love News1130!!!) to stay off the no 1 between Abbotsford and West Vancouver cause of fallen trees. Guess which highway we're on? Yup.

We stay on it, slipping into the HOV lane for the trip back, and at 176, we decide to take a secondary route. We see that our gas guage is getting low - I had suggested filling up or at least putting more in earlier. We had to divert along our diversion route twice because of blocked roads. I'm glad we had a map with us!

In Abbotsford, we fueled up and I made sure we had a full tank.

Took us easily four hours to get home. And I'm glad I got that reprint of our insurance just in case. It kept us from getting in an accident! Lights were out all over the place. Trees were done. There were several places where we saw instead of the highways crews removing the trees, they had just chainsawed off the worst of it to get the traffic moving again. We saw one car had been hit by a tree, several accidents, and even a consumer trailer tossed to the side like a toy. At least the small truck towing it hadn't flipped. There was also reports all over the place of more insanity and accidents. Places were flooded too.

So I knit there and knit back and pumped milk on the road for D2. DS fed her, the good boy. We were home shortly after 5pm. By 8pm, I was out cold cause I didn't get much sleep the night before either. To top it off, Icarus had driven me nuts cause I had made a mistake and couldn't figure out where I had done it. I had put it down because the drive back was too dark to knit following a graph and I couldn't see it either. At home, I had to frog back 4 sets of rows (knit and purl) to fix a mistake I had made! At least I was able to quickly do that once safe at home. DH said that my knitting was keeping me calm which had helped him keep calm for that trip back.

I think I'm going to make an emergency knitting kit for the car, just in case wew were to get stuck on a day like yesterday...

I've invented a cool trick to speed up knitting the SSK's on the spine section of Icarus. It's working quite well for me. For details, please see my blog. I knit Continental, & this trick may be helpful to other Continental knitters as well, so I thought I would share.

Well now...

My little reason for not doing icarus for the last (almost) 6 weeks is growing like a weed. Romana is cute, cuddly, and a mommy's girl. DH has an echocardiogram or something in the morning (its currently o dark early, or late) and I've found my iky and have put it on a set of straight needles (Clover woods) in order to work on it today. 3-4 hrs in the car and at least an hour of waiting around (hopefully with 3 tuckered out kids) and I should be able to get some knitting in, right? I have socks, a baby hat for a girlfriend based on a pattern I made, and icarus with me so I won't be bored. Romana's Ruffles is the name I gave the baby hat. I'm currently fighting mastitis and am on my second set of antibiotics. Until I'm off them, DH isn't wanting me to do much other than sit and nurse and maybe knit. At least he hasn't hidden my needles.

Time for me to try to get some sleep. Ha. right. Baby induced insomnia... Well, I do need some sleep...

I finally started Icarus yesterday. I have contemplated several yarns while thinking of doing this shawl, but ended up using a completely different from my birthday stash. I decided that a fingering weight mohair blend that my mother bought me is the perfect color for feathers. I'm making a smaller version of Icarus to use in place of a scarf with one of my winter coats.

Double posts! Argh! First blogspot gave me errors & said it couldn't find my post, & then when I redid it, blogspot published it twice!

So I'm going to use the extra post to say how much I am enjoying this pattern so far. Chart 1 is easy to learn, which makes it good take-along or KIP knitting. Yay!

I finally fnished my Icarus! I've posted pictures on my blog.
This took longer than almost any other lace shawl I've knit, I think. I began it back in July, but I got tired of all the Chart 1 repeats, so it got put aside for a little while.
In the end, I skipped the last repeat of Chart 1, because I thought I was going to run out of yarn. I used Misti Baby Alpaca, in black.
I'm really happy with the shawl the way it is, and it's still a good size, 77cm (30.5") down the centre back, and 155cm (62") across the wingspan.
Thanks, Miriam!

Third repeat on Chart 1 completed. This is pretty boring to knit so far, I hope the end makes it all worth it.

I have to admit that I could take or leave the actual knitting, I just love the knitting community!



Doris