Saturday, March 10, 2012

One Shawlette Done, Another on the Needles.


I finished my Fall Colored Ginkgo shawlette last Monday, but did not have time to block it until today. It is upstairs drying as I write this. I ran by Jo-Ann Fabrics this afternoon and picked up another 50 pins. I am glad I did, because pinning this one out took every pin in the house. I should have put more pins along the straight edge at the top of the shawlette, but I did what I could.

I should have called this the Tiger Eye Shawlette! I like the way the stripes look now that it is stretched out. For awhile I thought that the stripes were too pronounced and too dark, but now that you can see more light coming through, it is much nicer.

I bought yarn on Monday night to start the Alexandra Shawl and the Haruni. The Alexandra is Dee O'Keefe's latest design. It is beautiful -- very geometric. The Haruni is a shawl by Emily Ross. It has a lovely "star" at the center tip of the shawl. Both these shawls will be summer shawls -- light and airy. For both I selected Knit Pick's Shadow Tonal. For the Alexandra I picked Golden Glow and for the Haruni I picked Blue Violet. The golden is a very pale yellow and the blue violet is more lavender than violet.

Since I did not pay for express shipping, I knew that the yarn would not get here until the end of the week. This put me in a dilemma as I knew I wouldn't be able to not knit for four or 5 days. What would I do on my train rides? But if I started a new project, it would not be done before the yarn for the Haruni and the Alexandra arrived. This meant that I either I would have to wait to start the Alexandra or I would have two shawls going at one -- as if that has never happened before.

So, I decided that I would go ahead and start a new project anyway and I would have to have two projects going at once.  I started a small shawlette called Gail or Nightsongs by Jane Araujo. It is a really beautiful with leaves that look more like peacock feathers than leaves. The yarn I selected was some that I bought myself for a birthday present. I was saving it for a very special lace project. It is a lovely blue, green and rust Crazy Zauberball. This yarn is two ply with each ply a different variegated color. Yum. Rich colors with a great effect. The plies do split a bit, but as long as you are careful, it isn't too bad.

The Knit Pick's order arrived yesterday and I spent the whole evening hand winding one of the Golden Glow hanks into a center pull ball using my Nostepinne. This meant that I did not cast the Alexandra on until this morning. I have only gotten about the 1st 30 rows done, but I did want to get started as the designer is hosting a KAL (knit a long) on Knitting Paradise.

Well, I have better things to knit, er, do; so I will close this post.

Happy knitting!

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