Well, the good news is the Swallowtail shawl is finished. The less good news is it’s still not blocked. I ended up deciding to wear a dress that I already owned to my brother’s wedding, and unfortunately the shawl didn’t match that dress, so I didn’t bother trying to block it before the wedding. But, I do plan to do so this week, so I’ll be posting a picture or two once that’s done.

Now that the shawl is finished, I needed a new project to work on at my knitting group. ;-) I’ve sort of been bitten by the lace bug, and one project idea I’ve really latched onto is the Sampler Stole from A Gathering of Lace. SO beautiful, but I not only need to buy yarn for it, but also the book and a size 2 circular needle. I went to The Loop over the weekend and discovered they had the book, which got me sort of excited.

BUT…the pattern calls for cobweb weight yarn, which is fine with me, but when I asked the lady (I think she’s the mother of the girl who owns the shop, the lady that teaches the classes) if they had any cobweb weight…she didn’t seem to know what the heck I was talking about.

Her: Cobweb weight?

Me: Yeah.

Her: Do you mean lace weight?

Me: It’s sort of like lace weight, but a bit lighter…

Her: I don’t know how you can get any lighter than lace weight.

And then she showed me all the laceweight yarns they had, which I’d already seen when I was shopping for the Swallowtail shawl. :-/ Meh. I could knit the thing in laceweight, but I didn’t even see anything I loved for the stole. I ended up just deciding to get some sock yarn instead and to wait until I found The Perfect Yarn before I commit to buying the book and the needles. (Besides which, I can get the book for free on Amazon with my gift certificates. Yay for credit cards with rewards.)

So for now I’m working on the Hedgerow Socks in a lovely burgundy shade of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock. Nice quick knit so far.

P.S. Anyone know where to buy Centolavaggi? It’s a cobweb weight yarn that comes in a ton of beautiful shades, but I’m having some issues finding places to buy it online.

Ok, I sort of dropped off the knitting radar for awhile due to my costume which, sadly, did not get finished in time for Anime Central. I stayed up all night before the con trying to finish, but at about 5 AM I realized it was probably best to just call it a night (so to speak) and finish my costume for a future costume contest. Disappointing, but probably the best for my sanity.

So, this Saturday is my brother’s wedding. I haven’t bought a dress yet, but I’ll probably end up going with a basic Little Black Dress affair. However, it might be prudent for me to have some sort of light wrap in case the evening of June 21st gets a little cool. To that end, I’m 6.5 rows (each containing about three-hundred-and-something stitches) away from finishing a Swallowtail Shawl, which has been a surprisingly quick knit even with all those nupps.

Nupp: k1, yo, k1, yo, k1 into one stitch, then on the wrong side of the work purl all 5 of those stitches together, creating a small bobble-type object. Yikes!  Paige was good enough to give me the tip to slip the stitches to a small DPN before attempting to purl them. Worked like a charm!

I should be finishing it in the next day or two, and I am so excited to see what happens when I block it.

Now that I’m on the Knitty mailing list, I received the information that Knitty has added their Spring surprise patterns. I’m kind of digging Tempest–if ever there were a pattern that would look perfect with some gorgeous shades of Malabrigo, that’s the one.

Why must I always find sweater patterns I want to knit? Whenever I’m elbow-deep in the arduous sweater-knitting process, I think to myself “I wish I were knitting a sock right now.” I mean, look at poor Oblique, who I’ve been neglecting for months. And here I am drooling over Tempest and itching to open up Paton’s Street Smart to make me an urban aran cardigan. And, oh yeah, IT’S GOING TO (hopefully) BE WARM SOON, so I won’t even be wearing sweaters for quite some time. *sigh*

You know, I never thought I’d be the kind of person who would ever make a doily (at least not while I’m under the age of 50.) But after seeing the doilies on this page? Oh boy. I foresee a lot of lacy discs in my future. Especially with the number of weddings (currently four) on my radar for this year. The first of these is May 24.

This does not bode well for my vow to make the Alexi Throw my Official Living Room Knitting.

P.S. No, I don’t plan on ONLY giving doilies as gifts. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Do you believe in fate? I’m not sure I do, except maybe when it comes to knitting.

I’ve been wanting to knit a shawl for some time now, but have never really found The One. I’ve seen many I sort of like, but none that call out “YOU MUST KNIT ME THIS SECOND.”

One of those that I only sort of liked was the Swallowtail Shawl. Then, the other day on Ravelry, I randomly came across the pattern again in a post about something else. I looked through some of the completed Swallowtail Shawls on Ravelry, and realized “Wow. That shawl is really beautiful.”

I found that the shawl was from a 2006 issue of Interweave Knits, and felt a little discouraged. A lot of the local yarn stores have old copies of Interweave, but I wasn’t sure if any of them would have this particular issue.

Then I got today’s Knitting Daily issue, with the results of their Reader’s Choice votes for which patterns to put into their free e-book.

Guess what one of the winners was?

I think I’d better force myself to finish Oblique before I go buying the yarn and needles for that shawl.

I’d probably write here a lot more often if I could just suck it up and feel ok about posting without pictures. So, no pictures, but I am alive.

I’m back from St. Thomas, obviously. We had a great time. It was wonderful to get away from the cold weather for awhile, and we did lots of fun things like snorkeling, parasailing, and relaxing.

I hardly did any knitting on the trip. I started the second Monkey on the plane ride down and barely had anything to show for it for the rest of the trip. We got back on March 11, and I just finished the Monkey about a week and a half ago.

I guess I haven’t really been doing much knitting in general. I’ve been working on a Princess Zelda costume for Anime Central, which is eating up quite a bit of my free time. Any knitting I have been doing has been on that Alexi Throw I’ve been working on for oh, at least a year. I’ve made it my Official Living Room Knitting. If I’m in the living room and knitting, that is what I am knitting. No exceptions. (Although not long after I made that declaration, I did exactly what my knitting friends predicted I would do and finished the toe of the Monkey sock first. In said living room. Oh well, starting NOW, the Alexi throw is the only thing I’m allowed to work on.)

In the car and at knit night, however, I’ll probably continue work on that pesky Oblique cardigan. My only regret is that I won’t finish it in time to wear it. Or maybe I will. You never know. That’s part of the charm of Wisconsin.

Well, my first Monkey sock was finished about a week ago, but I’ve been putting off knitting the second one, because I’m leaving tomorrow for St. Thomas! I figure that second Monkey will be the perfect vacation knitting, and the plane ride + layover is so long that I may even get the whole thing done on the trip!

I haven’t been doing a ton of knitting in the meantime, but what little time I have devoted to it has been spent on my Oblique cardigan. It’s really satisfying to go back to it after a few months and still be able to knit the pattern more or less from memory. It’s such a nice, simple pattern with such stylish looking results.

Of course another factor in knitting pattern repeats from memory without having to constantly consult the printout is being able to read one’s knitting. I’ve come a long way in the approximately 1.5 years I’ve been knitting when it comes to reading my work. After awhile, you really get the hang of recognizing a k2tog when you see one, knowing exactly when the next yarnover needs to be made, and remembering whether you’re supposed to knit or purl this row.

Being able to read one’s knitting is also extremely helpful when it comes to fixing big screw-ups. When I first started knitting, I practiced by making small swatches, and if I made one mistake, I would rip the whole swatch up and start over. I am SO GLAD to be past that stage, because I cringe at the thought of ripping up an entire sleeve just to fix a mistake a few rows back. ^_~ Dropping down a column of stitches and then bringing them back up with a crochet hook is probably one of the most valuable knitting techniques I’ve learned so far.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to get all philosophical here. I’m still on the first sleeve of the Oblique cardigan, and starting the increases. I thought about taking it to St. Thomas as well, in case (heaven forbid) I finish the Monkey more quickly than expected, but…I just don’t know if I can bring myself to knit a sweater in a tropical climate.

Yes, I’m still around, even though I’ve been horrible about posting. I come bearing pictures, though, so that’s gotta count for something….right?

Well, in my last entry I talked about a desire to knit more socks because I wanted more instant gratification type projects, and I’ve sort of lived up to that. I present to you, my finished Jacobean socks:

The majority of knitting on those was done on my trip to Colorado in January. I greatly enjoyed having a small project to knit on the plane and whenever I had a free moment. I’m going to St. Thomas in March, which will be a much longer flight, complete with layover, and I anticipate doing some heavy sock knitting then as well. ^_^

Right now, I’m working on my first (and definitely not the last) pair of Monkeys:

I’m really enjoying knitting these, and they go fairly quickly, especially now that I have the lace pattern memorized. The yarn is Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Amethyst Stripe.

When I was winding the yarn into a ball, I noticed there was a bright fuchsia-ish spot on the  skein. The jury’s still out on whether that’s supposed to be there or not. As it is, I sort of like the occasional bright stitch it creates at random points on the sock, but I’m interested to see whether the other skein has the same splotch when I wind it up. (The fuchsia stitches don’t show up in the photo, I’m afraid.)

So, remember my very first post in this blog where I talked about my inside-out DPN knitting and how I had no plans to stop anytime soon? Well somehow, in the course of all this sock knitting, I’ve started knitting right-side out. It really wasn’t intentional, but there it is. I may still choose to do colorwork inside-out, though.

Somewhere in there, I also knit a Gryffindor scarf for my husband’s aunt:

I gotta say, all that stockinette was nice mindless TV knitting, but I am not sad to see the end of that scarf. I need some variety! Fortunately I have those Monkeys, not to mention my Oblique cardigan to finish. (No, I haven’t forgotten about it. I just hope I can remember where the heck I was on the sleeve when I last touched it.)

Lately I’ve had the desire to knit socks. Yes, it just might have something to do with the fact that I’m currently embroiled with my third sweater in a row while simulatenously neglecting the throw I’ve been slowly plodding away at for about 8 months, why do you ask?

I sometimes feel that I should have more FOs to show for the one year plus change that I’ve been knitting, and then I look at the FOs (or nearly FOs) that I’ve done, and quite a few of them are semi-major projects.

So, I’ve been queuing up sock projects on Ravelry like a madwoman.

Incidentally, next Friday I’m going on a trip to Colorado, where I’ll be attempting to thwart my husband’s efforts to get me to ski. I hear socks make excellent travel projects. Hmmmmm…

TO BE CONTINUED…

I hope everyone’s holiday season was enjoyable, and that you have a great 2008. My New Year’s resolution? To be a better knit blogger, of course.

Although I haven’t yet been happy enough with my hair on any given day to obtain photographic evidence, you’ll be happy to know that I met my goal of having the zipper sewn onto Roam by December 23rd. I wore the sweater to my family Christmas party, where it got many compliments and joking (I hope) requests for knit sweaters. As soon as I have a good hair day, I’ll get a picture of myself wearing it.

HOWEVER, I come bearing other gifts. First of all, a sampling of snowflakes:

Those are the Annie, Juliet, and Emma Snowflakes, respectively. They were fairly easy to knit, although there was a lot of weaving in of ends involved. I’m very happy with them.

As a bonus, I have some Oblique progress to show off. I’ve actually got the front and the back done, but I only took pictures of the back because….well, the front is pretty much the same thing, only split in two.

I’m really loving how it’s turning out. Is it a sign of knitting nerd-dom that I’m giddy with anticipation to do the short-row collar?