Despite the fact that it seems to barely get squeezed in around the more important parts of life (laundry! vacuuming! puppy training!), quite a lot of knitting has been happening hereabouts and it’s time for an update!
The Tourist Shawl is progressing nicely, in spite of only coming out for an hour or two a week; I suspect I will be knitting it until either I run out of yarn, or I get antsy to try something new, whichever comes first. But so far it’s nowhere near to being boring.
As you can see below, the heathered gold plays beautifully over the navy; the hidden oranges, mauves, and blues move in and out in a shimmery effect that I didn’t expect, and it’s inspiring me to experiment more with heathers once this project is bound off.
My current weekday project is quirky—for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to design a crescent shawl in laceweight yarn, involving asymmetrical short rows and lace with patterned wrong-side rows at the same time. There hasn’t been a fiasco yet; and I am starting to wonder if I haven’t made some horrible miscalculation that won’t become apparent until the end, which thereafter will result in grief and frogging. So far, though, I’m mighty pleased with it. In the picture below the yarn (Malabrigo Silkpaca in their Pearl Ten colorway) is more in focus than the knitting, which is just as it should be; you’ll see soon enough!
The blocking boards have been out almost continuously for the last few weeks; my Crystal Bay shawl got a wash and reblock, and she’s looking as good as new. I forgot to mention this last week, but she’s also the easiest shawl for blocking that I’ve ever knitted, other than maybe the Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark (by a small margin).
Quite a few new projects have been hitting the boards as well, including this beauty which may well turn out to be my Project of the Year. It was so much fun that I forgot I was knitting with aran-weight wool yarn in 90-degree weather; but more than that I cannot say!
Last but not least, two shawls which have been stuck in my head for almost two years now and begging to come out—their turn will come very, very soon. And I must say, they’re even more photogenic than I expected. We’ll see if anyone else actually wants to knit them!
