Fastest Shawl Ever

Swallowtail is done!

And there's lots of other progress, too. I haven't had any long breaks this month, and have spent more time out at meetings or with friends than usual, but it's incredible what I've accomplished. Other people have noticed some of the things I've worn to school. Today I wore my Pi Shawl all day around my shoulders -- I'm coming down with a nasty cold and I tried the German scarf idea. It helped, and I got so many compliments from people who know I knit. It's always nice.

A few days ago one of my students had a cabled hoodie. I asked her if I could look at it, and someone else said, "Why would she want to look at the hood?" One of my boys said, "She's going to knit one of those. Watch." Of course that was the reason I wanted to look at it, because I'm thinking about the Central Park Hoodie that is moving along, too.

I'm playing around with a design idea. I think I learned a lot about triangular shawl construction from the Swallowtail. It's brewing.

Finally finished!

The Print o' the Wave Stole is finally done. I began it when we went to Cincinnati to visit my new niece in October. This was my first big lace project -- I had only done the E-Z shawl before, and this was much more complicated. I had to begin by only doing a couple of repeats at a time.

I took pictures of the shawl before I snipped off the ends. I didn't realize that they would show this badly. The shawl is knit with unidentified German 00 circulars picked up at a Berlin fleamarket, and Merino Oro yarn (color: teal). I actually tried the gossamer shawl trick of passing it through a wedding ring -- the whole thing fit through my engagement ring after blocking!

This shawl was knit from the sides in. You can see the seam in the center where I grafted the two pieces together:

The color on this picture is more accurate (it doesn't scream 1982). I still haven't figured out quite where I am going to wear it, but I do like it.

I have news that my grandmother is making good use of her bog jacket, and wearing it daily. This is good, because she has a tendency to keep her "good" clothes separate and not use them. I'm glad it makes her happy!

The socks that I was working on are finished, along with 2 more pairs:

The red ones are the finished Latvian socks. The green ones in the middle are Clock Stockings, knit with Trekking XXL. Both of these are from Folk Socks. On the right are Monkey, knit in Koigu. I used the thumb trick and put in an afterthought heel for these.

I tried to pick up a new project. Colorwork has fascinated me for a while, and I want to try my hand at it. I picked up Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Around and tried some of the mittens. I was using #2 double pointed needles, and got this far:


Unfortunately, they were plagued with problems. They were too small (I didn't check my gauge carefully, despite the gauge swatch I knit) and riddled with problems in the colorwork. I initially decided to keep knitting along without going back to fix any of the mistakes. Then I got here:

I guess you can't see them properly, but near the stripe (which would be at the wrist) there are a series of dark green blotches. I reversed the pattern here, and then again near the needles. None of this was planned. It came to the point where I had no desire to continue, and I've ripped it all out. I'm going to give up on the mittens for the time being, and work on this instead. Can you find a theme with all this stuff?



Before I cast-on for the mitts, here's a photo that will almost make me go into the kitchen and start baking.

A homemade chocolate souffle!