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This is the shawl that never ends, and I’m starting to think that I’ve lost my mind. I’ve been counting stitches for days now, anxiously waiting for the time when I can stop knitting the blasted slip stitch pattern (which is just simple enough that I manage to screw it up with regularity) and start the lace border. Nevermind that I still don’t know which color I want to knit the border in.
Last night, I hit that magical place where I would begin the border for the small sized shawl. The stitches, without much stretching or spreading, nearly filled my cable and needles. I counted and double checked and made sure that I really was at a stopping point.
And then I kept knitting. Four more repeats will give me the medium size, and while the small seems large enough to wrap a baby, a little bigger seems better, and four repeats isn’t really that much, in the scheme of things.
This morning, I’m really starting to question my decision. The shawl is on the coffee table in a heap with the yarn and the pattern, staring at me, and I’m staring back, and I’m trying to remind myself that it will be worth it in the end. That the only real reason I want to stop is because new projects are taunting me.
Although. Its still not too late to turn back. I only made it a few rows in to the first repeat before I called it a night….
In the course of a week, I have been to a wedding, a baby shower and a funeral, and I am exhausted. The result of attending, planning for, and working through those things is very little blogging but a great deal of knitting. (Yes, Andrew, I did knit during your wedding. I thought about it, and decided that you know me and would understand.) The trouble is that knitting under duress or distraction tends to lead to a lack of attention. That means that most of my knitting progress was frogged, and I’m pretty much back to where I started two weeks ago.
The baby sweater turned out lovely and was well received. I wound up using the sentimental buttons, some slightly pearly white ones that probably came from one of my grandfather’s dress shirts.
I’ve since started an Ulmus shawl in a tencel/merino blend that will be a receiving blanket for that same baby if I manage to finish it in time. Given that I’ve frogged the first half twice, I’m dubious. This time seems to be coming along, though, and I’m using lifelines (always feels like cheating), so there may be hope yet. I haven’t taken pictures because I’ve been wanting to have a decent amount of progress before I take them and I keep ripping back, but the colors are in the picture at the bottom of this page.
Springtime in DC means rain and lots of it, so this was the perfect project to get me through the cloudy days. A simple garter yoke raglan for mostly mindless knitting, offset by the most cheerful colors ever in the world. It still needs blocking and buttons, but I’m calling it finished.
The yarn is Kells Sport merino from Three Irish Girls in the colorway “Oh What a Beautiful Morning.” (April Pick of the Knitter shipment.) I had previously only used Kells for socks, but it has a gorgeous sheen and lovely drape, and I foresee using it for more sweaters in the future.
I’m torn about the buttons. On the one hand, I think it would be adorable with some tiny frogs or bluebirds or something. Or even just plain matte yellow plastic buttons. On the other hand, I have some simple white buttons that are the right size in my grandmother’s button box. The sweater is for my brother’s baby, and using her old buttons just seems fitting. I’m leaning towards sentimental over cute, but I guess we’ll see what happens.
