Celtic Dreams: Beginning the piece

I mentioned before that at least I already had the wool for this one. I hadn't remembered what a great purple it is, though: it's from Blackwater Abbey Yarns. The shop I worked in before I moved to the UK had a trunk sale for Blackwater Abbey, and even though they weren't offering much of a discount, I was quite taken with the Celtic Dreams pattern. Blackwater Abbey feature Beth Brown-Reinsel's patterns, so it seemed logical to go ahead and buy the pattern and wool right then, and keep it for when I was ready to knit it.

( Photo and some technical bits behind the cut )

Progress on the Celtic Dreams pullover Part 2, Plus Sari Silk!

I'm afraid this really is going to get a bit technical. But the picture is kinda pretty, even if it's nowhere near finished yet.

( Click to see what I've done with my day so far! )

...Which brings me to my next topic, Sari Silk! Some of you know I committed to buying a bunch of this when we were in Singapore, then ended up having to pay more because of a shipping debacle. And it's been sitting in my house for nearly three years, since we got back from Singapore. I've tried knitting with it, but it tears my hands up and it's so heavy.

Thursday night, I went down to IKL just to hang out and knit (my class had no takers), and the subject of a yarn swap at somebody's house in North London came up. I mentioned that I had all this sari silk I couldn't do a thing with, and the woman across from me suggested the following method to soften it up to usability:

1. While it's in the hank, wash it in a very light solution of mild soap and water. Use your bathtub.
   
2. Rinse it, then let it soak in a mild solution of hair conditioner and war water. Let it soak for awhile.
   
3. Rinse again. When it dries, silk gets hard and stiff. When the sari silk begins to dry, beat it against the side of your bathtub. Once it's completely dry, you'll have soft, manageable silk.

Has anybody out there tried something like this? Did it work for you? I may crosspost this to knitting or advanced_knit at some point.

ETA: Geeky extra: It's taking me about 15 minutes to knit a row of this thing, as I flip back and forth between pattern and chart. 15 minutes for 102 stitches. Not my fastest work. ;-)

Wow, there's always something else to want....

This is so cool. I found it when I was out looking for something to make recharting the Celtic Dreams pattern easier, and of course I will also have to produce some charts for both the Cabling Without a Cable Needle and Fair Isle Classes.

Want! Alas, it's $189US, so it won't be anytime soon. But I have a demo, which is fun. I just hope it doesn't run out before I have a chance to really play with it. That's what happened to me with MasterWriter a few months ago. :(