Mad as a...

As soon as fall peeks around the corner, the first thing I want to knit is a hat. A little hat, to ward off the gentle morning chill and keep my ears from getting cold (oh, how I hate it when my ears are cold). In the Phoenix area, this reflex is perhaps maladaptive: last week's flirtation with 70s has been shoved aside this week for what I hope is the area's last fling with triple digits.

But I am still in hat mode. I finished the Vega beret, but my initial attempt to block it tam-style turned out slightly wonky. Actually very wonky, and the wonkiness was only made apparent by the FO photo shoot images. So alack, everyone will have to wait for the next round of temperate weather to see the results of my attempt to Knit American.

The hat theme continues, however: Querido received for his birthday a Sun Devils Hat!

Specs! Pattern: Bonnet 20, available on Ravelry
Yarn: Cascade Eco Alpaca in light gray, Blue Sky Alpacas Melange in Currant and Saffron
Needles: size 3 and 4 dpns
Mods: at 48 sts, began decreasing for crown every row for a traditional beanie shape, rather than the design's intended point.

After a few false starts resulting from my Gauge Issues, this pattern knitted up wonderfully quickly, and the yarn is oh-so-ever-so soft. The idea is that my dear one, a hard core Sun Devils fan, can wear the hat to football games. You never know, there might be a freak snowstorm in Tempe one Saturday night. It would be irresponsible not to prepare for such a contingency. And as a backup plan, he can wear it out of town, and be wonderfully visible in a snowdrift...or at the center of a crowd of fans of some other PAC-12 team. Erm.

I would like to point out that this hat also used very little yarn, a smidge more than 110 yards, so I now have maroon and gold yarn in my stash. In other words, varsity colored yarn in my stash. Enough for at least two more hats. Such is the madness of knitters with romantic attachments.

No-Fail

This weekend, Querido y I retreated up north to escape the muggy heat of the Valley. I brought along the nearly-but-not-quite-finished Lyttelton Brown as my only light sweater.

This was another opportunity to test my favorite sweater-finishing strategy: bring it along as the only sweater on a trip where I'm sure to need a sweater. Sure enough, the weather was deliciously cool and rainy, just the weather for a little sweater. And the morning after we arrived, I had a finished sweater!



Pattern: Lyttelton, by Kate Davies
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Eucool, 5 skeins
Size: Small [1]
Mods: Crocheted the side seams instead of backstitching them; otherwise knitted to pattern.



As with any big project, I had some initial angst. Another little sweater knit with a plant fiber yarn went horribly wrong about 2 years ago, so I was leery of the eucalyptus/wool blend Eucool. Happy day, the ratio of wool to eucalyptus was high, and although the yarn was a trifle stiff, but nothing so awful as when I tried working with pure linen.

The pattern, too, worried me a bit: a single size of sweater fits a human size range of several inches. And it's knitted as just a single piece with minimal shaping--I was fully prepared for another disappointing little-sweater experience. But at the moment of truth--trying it on--it fit! Even after wearing it all that day, there were still no gaps, no falling off of shoulders...

I officially (heart) Kate Davies.

Credit where credit is due: Muchisimas gracias to Querido, for being my on-location photographer. He may soon regret doing such a good job of it ;)

New Week, With Red Shoes

Of late, there has been something about Mondays that necessitates wearing red shoes.

Yes, with a green purse. Criticize not: it's a Namaste bag.

These are not red shoes worn in a desperate attempt to make the week survivable, but red shoes worn in triumph, for I have conquered the festering mess that was my corner of the universe.

Behold:



Clean dog on clean rug next to comforter waiting to be put atop clean sheets.

I will not subject anyone to a blow-by-blow account of my day spent cleaning, but suffice to say that not only can you see the surface of my desk, you can walk up to it without tripping over anything and put things in the drawers without having to ram them shut afterwards.

The bliss!

My knitting got a good ordering, too. Among the items cleared out of the desk drawer was a size 5 circular. When was the last time I used a size 5 circular? January. Some odds of skeins joined the circular in their proper home, and, better still, I finished off my latest never-ending project:




Yes, my latest never-ending project was a potholder. What should have taken 2 days, max, took me 2 1/2 weeks. The pattern, Modern Vintage Potholder by Maryse Roudier, was the essence of simplicity: 9 rounds, 2 sides, smack them together and voila you have a elegant little household accessory.

That's how it might work for you. I, on the other hand, have a wonky little household accessory: On one side, the sections fan out in tidy little pie-shaped sections, on the other, they pinwheel. The rumpling, which no amount of blocking will flatten out, is the result of the two sides being different sizes (different mistake than caused the pinwheeling).

It was agonizing. It would not allow itself to be finished. And yet, I really want to make another.

One Down

1. My second Haruni, called Silver Leaves for the obvious reasons, is completed, blocked, and gifted.

2. In spite of my ridiculous mistake, resulting in a border of single leaves where pairs should have been, it was a quick knit.

3. Knitting the body was faster the second time around. The looped i-cord border was not.

4. My room is still overflowing with yarn.

5. I am knitting another shawl.

Six Months to the Day

That is how long it took me to complete my third Icarus.

I am not sure how I managed to work Haruni--a pattern I'd never completed before--in a month, without a single setback, while this shawl--a pattern I know well--was one setback after the next. I will not ponder that one too deeply; I'm just glad it's done and I can move onto something new! Want to check out the specs? They're Raveled here.

Lace!!!

Finished object!!!

Quick specs:

Pattern: Haruni, by Emily Ross.
Yarn: Alpaca with a Twist Fino
Needles: Size 4 Takumi Clover circular
Full details on Ravelry

This project combined most of the things I love about lace: a basic, organic motif for the body, a bit of fancy for the edge, and *blocking*. I am enamored with blocking. You begin with something that looks like a crumpled flower petal…



… soak it until it looks like something washed up on the beach…



… and then stretch it out as far as it goes & pin it down with half a gazillion pins (Note to self--get some more t-pins soon. Sewing pins appropriated from Mum's supplies were too short.)...



And voila! It looks amazing. From the look of the chart, I expected the second lace motif to be a bit difficult, but once I got past the first few rows and the leaf shapes were established (and less easily confused with lattice sections), it was quite intuitive & surprisingly simple. The i-cord loops were a trifle on the fiddly side to knit, especially as I kept losing track of how many rows I had done since the last join. They were definitely on the fiddly side to block, but the daintiness of the result was oh so worth it. This is definitely a pattern I would knit again, and very well may, as both Mum & Hermanita were rather taken with it.

It's Fall!

Certainly took long enough. We're in for a few freakishly high highs before Halloween, but the mornings are cool, and on days when the clouds are obliging, one can get up at a reasonable hour and bike to the park for lunch and a new-shawl photo shoot.

Pattern: Shetland Triangle, by Evelyn Clark.
Yarn: Mountain Colors Twizzle in Ruby River

Pimlico Finished

As usual, blog time is only an approximation of real time--although I'm just getting around to blogging it now, my Pimlico Shrug has been finished since Friday morning.

But I love it! The yarn is soft and warm, and the pattern has struck the perfect balance between slouch and stylish, as promised. I had to tweak the collar a bit--the increases, as many Ravelers have noticed, create a funny crease in the collar, and I worried that switching to a larger size of needle to approximate the same flare would result in too floppy a collar. Floppy collars and cuffs send me to despair. An attempt at camouflaging the increases at the switch from knit to purl ended in a small frogging session, so I went for option C: work the collar straight for the written length and bind off. This changes the look of the finished shrug, but so far I like it. And if I change my mind, I have plenty of yarn to go back and work a collar with increases.



Specs!
Yarn: Vermont Grand View Farm Natural Romney, all of 2008's CSA share (~16 oz) and 1 skein from 2009's share (~4 oz)
Needles: Size 6, 7, and 8 circulars and size 6 and 7 dpns. If you are not obsessed with Kitchener BO like me, you can omit the size 6 needles.
Pattern: Pimlico Shrug, from Knit 2 Together, by Tracey Ullman and Mel Clark
Modifications: All pattern tweaks are listed in agonizing detail on Ravelry.

As I might have mentioned one or six times before, I've loved the experience of working with a single-breed yarn, and being able to follow the action at the farm where those sheep live has totally added to the experience. This, combined with rave reviews of places like Beaverslide and Imperial Stock Ranch has whetted my appetite for some more single breed/single-farm yarn!

Lace Leaf Pullover Reveal

When I said I was on a wooly wool kick, I meant it--my latest FO, as the temperatures begin pushing past 100 with depressing regularity, is a 100% merino pullover:



The Lace Leaf Pullover!

Started in a moment of possession by EZ, finished in a few days of marathon knitting, the Lace Leaf Cardigan is the latest installment of what is shaping up to be a line of sweaters that I've heavily modified/improvised to get them to fit the way I want.

First was my Undercover Cardigan, its pattern copied off a vintage sweater before I had any knowledge of pattern design or the fear of attempting it. Then, the Graphite Shrug, which I had to modify to fit my wonky effigy jar physique. As you'll remember, the inspiration behind modifying the Lace Leaf was the need for a sweater that I could wear in a place where it never gets very cold (not to mention the desire to not look like a caterpillar in a cocoon). I won't say I'm an expert now at pattern modification--the Lace Leaf has a few wonky bits, especially in the yoke area--but I am pleased to report I'm getting a better handle on it with each modified pattern.



Specs: 7 skeins Twisted Sisters Jazz in Olive Gold and not quite 1 in Chocolat.
Pattern: Teva Durham's Lace Leaf Pullover
Needles: Size 5 circular and dpns
Modifications: Lots. The two main ones were adapting the pattern to be knit as a standard bottom-up round yoke sweater, and in a light worsted/DK yarn



The color change was not planned--I started running out of Olive Gold yarn and elected to stripe in the Brown so it looked like I'd meant to have it there all along. One of the elements of the pattern I did not change much was the detailing--the lace rib up the side of one sleeve, the leaves on another sleeve and the body. I only omitted the leaf at the collar because I didn't want to mess around with a pattern among decreases, but I made up for it with a button. In my opinion, all these elements were improved by knitting with a relatively fine yarn: it rendered all the decorative elements both subtle and detailed.



My current sweater is keeping up the wooly vein, but is at the other end of the spectrum in terms of construction. Post to follow as soon as I get enough knitted as to be photogenic!

Darndest Thing

Remember how my beloved PowerBook crashed a while back? I finally got the chance to take it in for data recovery, and lo--the very professional young fellows at MacMatters recovered all my data. They did a good job, and were both more courteous and endearing than the staff at the nearest Apple store. If you're in their service area, I highly recommend them!

In other news, the temperatures have hit 100 and I have developed the burning desire to knit with wool. Good, hearty, warm wool. Inexplicable? Absolutely. Above is my Flower Basket Shawl, modeled on a cool day that was still rawther too warm for standing in the sun wrapped in a wool shawl. Good thing I find lace addictive--I finished this at the end of April, took a good look at it, and realized that it was far too stiff to be a good shawl. Would you know, that was because I had knitted it on needles two sizes too small. I have made some pretty crazy mistakes over the years, but that one tops the charts.

Frogging was less painful than expected, and it was back on the needles by the next night. Now, I'm quite happy with the result. I'd been slightly suspicious of the assertion that many yarns derided as scratchy are in fact crunchy, but now I'm convinced--spun Icelandic wool is indeed crunchy. This will be a perfect transition piece, either for over dresses like in the picture, or between a denim jacket and a t-shirt. All I need is some cold weather!

Week 4: Fresh Start

I'd hoped to go for a hike this morning and bring you guys back pictures of the mountain turning green, chubby little quail puttering among shoots of grass and wildflowers that have sprouted from all our rains. The only thing is that it was supposed to rain today. Not a problem as far as keeping me inside--since our big storm, we've reverted to our pattern of little, short rains. But the deal was that if it did, I got the car. If it didn't, las hermanitas got the car.

Talk about stacked odds.

There's no way I could walk to the mountain, so I took a hike around the neighborhood and down the canal, thinking I could find some good sidewalk graffiti left by construction workers, or a particularly gnarled tree, or something to photograph. Turns out, I could've given you guys a sweeping vista of the mountain from the entrance to the canal path (oh, the irony), but I forgot my camera in my haste to leave before the dog realized I was taking a walk without her.

So you'll have to be happy with a 2-week-old picture of a cactus, taken on the mountain, and pictures of little green things and quail will have to wait until next week.

I am not totally crushed here: This morning I finished the Hermanita Warm-up. That was the last of my Christmas knitting, and now--finally--I am free to start fresh and focus on new knits. Woohoo!

Abandon/Control

As a student, my year follows a slightly different cycle from the average person's. My "year" officially ends with the end of the fall semester, and while I certainly mark the new calendar year January 1, my "year" doesn't actually start until the start of the spring semester. In between is a short, blissful period of abandon. A period where I can do what I want, as I want, without restriction.

This past year, proper abandon didn't start until after Christmas (giftsgiftsgifts), but even that mandate to knit was self-imposed. Thus the bloggy silence these past weeks has been my absence from routine, from duties, from all distractions except the ones I chose, and it was absolutely magnificent.

As of tomorrow, that period is over, and it's time to return to control, to order, to obligations, limitations, deadlines--all those things that ensure the proper functioning of society but not necessarily the well-being of one's spirit. My room is straightened, my school supplies purchased. All that's left is to look back on the year past.

Resolutions. At the beginning of last year, I resolved to do a great many things. Some I did, some I did not. I did read two of the unread books in my library--I did not read the rest. I did not knit a steeked cardigan, but I did continue to knit from my stash. Browsing through my Ravelry project page, I was floored by how much I had knitted, and how much I'd learned from these projects.

Socks: I knitted two pairs of socks this year, the Latvian Stockings and the Ponyo Socks (toe pictured inside-out above). The latter, actually Nancy Bush's Lichen Ribbed Socks from Knitting Vintage Socks, are so named for their color and because I began knitting them when I went to see Miyazaki's Ponyo. The Ponyo socks were my fourth pair for myself, and it wasn't until I'd finished them that I realized that by following the pattern strictly, I was making the heels too short. I feel sort of silly that that one took me so long to figure out, but I guess I can look forward to my next pair of socks being much better-fitting than their predecessors!



Sweaters: Without intending to, I knitted a whopping five and started two others. After so many sweaters, in so many styles and yarns, I finally feel I've got a good handle on this class of project. My Garter Yoke Cardi was a sort of sampler of colorwork, raglan and circular yoke shaping, and waist shaping. In the course of knitting (and reknitting) the Graphite Shrug, I discovered that I am not a standard shape (and how to tweak patterns accordingly). Lesson from Thundercloud Cardigan: I really and truly cannot stand finishing work. That was my only multi-piece sweater, though, and as a matter of fact, all but one of the rest were raglans. My troubles resizing Monita's Retro Duotone Cardigan (shown above) and my Graphite Shrug highlight that this is a tricky style for me to rework, but I only had one real dud out of the whole bunch: Wendy Bernard's Yogini Bolero, aka the Undercover Bolero because I never could bring myself to blog about all the trouble it gave me. It's adorable--don't get me wrong there--but I really didn't like working with the hemp yarn, and after all that yarn wrangling, the sweater came out too small to fit not just me, but also both of las hermanitas!

After such an eventful year, I don't have any new resolutions, but I'm looking forward to putting my new knowledge--especially knowledge of fitting--to good use on new projects. Here's to a happy, yarn-filled new year.

Week 11: Elizabeth Zimmerman Made Me Do It

For all I've been blogging about it, one would think I wasn't knitting at all. Au contraire, my dear readers.

First came the Mousie.



Knit out of small amounts of Blue Sky Alpacas Sport Weight and my all-time-favorite stash yarn, Lamb's Pride Worsted for a little instant gratification, my Mousie got me thinking about my other stash yarn and the joy of knitting something for oneself.

Not that I don't like knitting for other people, but sometimes it's discouraging to only knit what others will like rather than what makes *you* happy.

So I started daydreaming about Teva Durham's Lace Leaf Pullover, a sweater I've wanted to knit for eons. Since it came out in the Spring '05 issue of Interweave Knits, as a matter of fact. I'd bought the yarn and swatched it in April:



...but then my library classes started, and I had two summer sweaters going, and so I set it aside.

The pattern calls for a bulky, and my yarn is DK, so I'd have to do some fiddling with the gauge. I looked on Ravelry to see if anyone else had tried this. I never found out--I got sidetracked first by the neck. It looked wonky in just about every single one of the pictures. A dozen Ravelers can't be wrong, so it had to be the pattern. I could fiddle with that, too. So I pulled out The Opinionated Knitter and Knitting in the Old Way, decided to scrap the bottom-up-meets top down approach and do the whole thing in the round bottom up, and to scrap the raglan for a better-fitting round yoke...

And then I just cast on. Finals? Unfinished Thundercloud Cardigan? Another Christmas gift in the works that is most definitely going to need the same size 5 circular? The fact that I have only the gauge and the barest idea of how I am going to execute my sweater? I generally consider myself a practical person, but for this sweater, I threw practicality out the window. I have been inspired (possessed?) by the spirit of Elizabeth Zimmerman, and I'm going to go for it.

Week 8: Delurking

This is really terrible--one should not have to delurk on her own blog. But the weeks have been flicking past, and I cannot in good conscience leave my poor little blog (and readers) neglected. Last fall I did week-by-week updates, with success, so let's try that again this semester.

Knitting--I had terrific success with my spate of baby knits. Baby Blue Ears and the coordinating Preppy Toadstool Rattle (Ravlink!) were happily received by our head of adult services (Her first baby received the inaugural Nautie, and she still has it!). Jacques the Octopus, pictured above, went to a fellow Circ employee, and given his success among my coworkers, I can only hope that he is not kidnapped by the baby-to-be's older sisters before the little one arrives.




This picture of the Thundercloud cardigan is about three weeks old, but don't signify because I had to rip the back almost all the way back to this point following a little gauge mistake. Rawther, following my discovery that I hadn't gotten gauge, circa where I was set to begin armhole shaping. Augh.

School--In a few short weeks, I have gone from being able to fit everything in one 2" binder to needing three 2" binders. We will not go into detail on this one.

I Make a List

1. The Red Scarf, a.k.a. the Movie Scarf, is in the mail. Yaaay!

2. Pandora has tried to put Modest Mouse on my Death Cab station. Extermination is underway.



3. Pictured drying beside it is my version of the Cisco baby bonnet: Baby Blue Ears. It's heavily influenced by the brilliant B r o o k l y n t w e e d, and modeled here by Stella. She is such a strange little dog--we can dress her up in just about anything and she's never particularly bothered. Here, she is very busy watching for her twin nemeses, Cats and Boys on Bicycles. Yes, the fact that I used my dog as a model is part of the reason I washed the bonnet.



4. I'm experiencing a bit of destashing mania. The Baby Blue Ears is all stash yarn, and pictured above is the new sleeve I made for my camera (modeled on Hermanita's camera) using a dab of Inca Alpaca I'd been saving for something special, paired with a skeinlet of handspun I simply did *not* know what to do with. The combo is nice and dense, which is good because my old camera case was not sufficiently sturdy to stand up to the rigors of my purse.

5. The new Knitty is up, and the navigation is marvelous. I am so impressed, I'm going to post about it in my Digital Collections class if I can find a place.

Temporary Madness

Fall semester has started, and with a full load of classes, I feel like I'm officially a grad student. Ahhhhh! I went on a finishing-up and cleaning-up spree this past weekend. The cleaning went well, the projects not so much. The scarf above (crummy picture--I was home alone with my camera) is the only finished object I'm really happy with, so let's focus on that.

I'm calling it my movie scarf because I knit it almost exclusively while watching movies. They were all good movies--maybe that's why the scarf had such good karma. I started it while watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (ooh!). Then there was Everything is Illuminated (which I've already praised), Food Inc. (tip: don't get popcorn), and the original Sabrina (Bogart and Holden as good guys).

The pattern is Purl Bee's Easy Mistake Stitch Scarf, and it really was easy. I used a worsted weight yarn--Berrocco's Ultra Alpaca, which is wonderful to work with and very soft--so I had to adjust the number of sts cast on, but for once the adjustment went well.

This scarf isn't for me, which makes me a little sad since I got attached to it after toting it around to all those movies. It's going to a good place, though: the Red Scarf Project, an amazing charity that sends care packages to orphaned or fostered children who have entered college. They start accepting submissions September first, which gives me just enough time to wash the scarf (I wouldn't send it off dirty!), write up a care label, and pop it in the mail.

More FO's to come once I've gotten up the jam to write about a big mistake.

So Much for Soon

I've taken my time getting this project finished, and then there was the usual trouble catching one of las hermanitas in a picture taking mood while the light was still decent. But! I have finished my Latvian socks, and I rawther adore them.

Specs!
Pattern: Latvian Socks, by the venerable Nancy Bush.
Yarn: Rio de la Plata sock yarn, *just* under one skein in Seaweed
Needles: Size 0, which are not so hard to work with once you get the hang of them.
Latvian Socks on Ravelry

I really enjoyed knitting these socks. They took me forever because of the way I worked on it--pick it up, put it down, pick it up, rip out a mistake, put it down--but the pattern is not difficult to read or knit. Bush is brilliant, and all of her patterns are awesome, so the only modification I made was to work on 5 needles instead of 4--this gave me one pattern repeat per needle.

These were a perfect travel project: I carried them around everywhere in my purse or backpack, and all the needles survived the ride. However, I did manage to go through all but one of a replacement package of needles either snapping them in my hands (I have a very firm grip, Petunia!) or by leaning over on a seat and snapping them under my elbow. Oops.

It's hard for me to work up a lot of hyperactivity about finishing these socks because I've been carrying them around, showing off Sock the First to curious onlookers since February. To everyone who asked me, "So how long will it take you to finish them?", here's the answer: Eons when I potter along, finishing other projects in between, less than 3 weeks a sock when I sit my derrière down and just *knit*. But they are really awesome socks, worth all the time I spent on them.

Here's the final mark of a good project: after I finished these socks, I was so sad not to have a pair of socks riding along in my purse with me, I cast on for another pair. A drawer full of handknitted socks? It's a good thing.

I Find Wisdom on the Inside of a Juice Bottle

It was a really. Long. Week. Tucson was absolutely awesome, my class was awesome, most of the people *in* the class were awesome, but ye gods. Eight hours of information a day for seven days straight is a *lot*. So long that when I tipped back a rawther nasty juice I bought on impulse at the campus convenience mart, I thought putting a quote on the inside of the label was so terribly clever and insightful that I had to have a picture. In retrospect, I find it random, but the quote still holds.

I've been home a week, but it's taken this long to get myself organized again, so let's take a quick recap.

The construction workers made a really nice hole under my window by the end of the week.



Mum's Swallowtail Shawl is done, and she loves it. Evelyn Clark, you rock.



I learned Tucson is not the only city in the U.S. that paints their fire hydrants silver. (Quick poll: what color does your city paint its fire hydrants?)

And the second sock hit a snag.



It didn't occur to me to try the thing on until I was nearly done with the leg, and at that point a) I discovered it was not just a titch smaller than the first, but considerably smaller than the first and b) I broke one of my needles trying said too-small sock on. Augh.

I'm pretty put out with myself for having done both things. However, stubborn perfectionist that I am, that's given me the determination to get that sock started right back up again. (That, and I have a million and one things to be doing besides knitting socks)

Alive and Knittin'

Wow--I am sorry for the dead silence that has prevailed here for the past three weeks. I have been distracted from all bloggy pursuits by the demise of my freedom. In short (as Mr. Micawber would exclaim) I have begun graduate school.

I don't know whether to be thrilled to dickens that I've entered the final stage of my academic career (end point: Master's in Library Science) or utterly incensed that all my knitting time has gone the way of the continential glaciers.

Either way, I will not be one of those librarians famed for her ugly, unflattering sweaters; I finally finished the Top-Down Shoulder Warmer!



Mahvelous, dahling. I don't know how many times I had to frog this silly thing--three?--but in the end, it all came right.



Specs!
Pattern: Top-Down Shoulder Warmer, by Laura Chau
Size: Large back with modifications for effigy-pot arms (see below)
Yarn: 3.5-ish skeins O-Wool Balance
Needles: U.S. 8 (5 mm)
Modifications: I had to sub out the sleeves as written for sleeves that would fit me. To do this, I kept the number of sts cast on for the back, cast on fewer sts for the sleeves, and worked the same number of increase rows.

This was the first time I'd worked with the O-Wool, and it receives an A+ on two counts: holding up to a lot of ripping out and being soft and comfy in the finished product. Hurray for organics!

Now I'm off on two different projects at once (one for me, one as a gift), and my biggest job over this next week will be figuring out how to balance school and knitting.

Changing Gears

We in the desert have lucked out with an exceptionally mild spring. Only now is it beginning the transition from gloriously pleasant to hotter than the dickens, which means it's time to transition into a new phase of knitting projects.

My hands were getting sore from all the projects I'd be doing on tiny needles, so I took a break from that branch of crafting and zipped up a recycled materials tote bag.



I am thrilled to death with it--this is exactly how I envisioned it turning out. Big deal, you say, it's just a square of jersey fabric sewn on a bag. Scoff not:the last time I tangled with the Funstyler, it won.

The knit-free day lasted just that long--a day--and then it was back to the needles. I finished up my Pinwheel Shawl, and am similarly pleased with the result:



The pattern is incredibly simple, and as promised in Knitalong, shows off fancy yarns to great advantage. The two I used were Malabrigo (left over from Hermanita's Firebird) and Parisienne (purchased during my post-semester meltdown). For being so little, it's incredibly warm, and will serve me well during the months of freezing A/C.

Now I'm ready for something on bigger needles, with bigger yarn, so the Top-Down Shoulder Warmer may finally get its turn!