I’ve made substantial progress on my shawl! I am quite impressed with Argante and may even knit Gaenor. It would look quite gorgeous with my new Unwind Yarns. Unfortunately, today I have totally lost my crafty mojo. It’s not the inspiration, it’s the actual talent. So now I am avoiding my shawl for fear of killing it. I tried to wind two skeins of yarn today and look what happened to the second:

That’s my poor Unwind Yarns skein of lovelyness. *sigh* I may have to bring it to knitting night on Monday to get some assistance. I really need to figure out how to use my swift properly. It just keeps flying off the ends and getting tangled.

So instead, I decided to sew my new pillow cases… and I realized I hadn’t pre-washed my fabric. So first of all I had to do a load of laundry to pre-shrink my fabric. Look at this lovely fabric I bought:

Unfortunately, as I was trying to figure the second step (and thinking that the fabric looked too square and not rectangular)… I realized that I miscalculated my yardage and didn’t buy enough at Dressew. *sigh*

Now my apartment is a disaster, covered in fabric scraps, yarn bits, and chunks of chewed paper (from the bunny). I quit the living room and went to the kitchen to make pasta salad. Fortunately that turned out well and it was quite tasty.

That’s right, I’m knitting a lace shawl! The pattern I decided on was Argante by Corrina Ferguson (Rav link) and I’m using 1 skein of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock in colourway “Garden Daze” (Rav link).

I was a little worried that it was too busy. Because at the beginning (tip) when I cast on, the colours pooled together a little more. But as the rows are getting longer, the colours are getting more sporadic. When I asked CW what he thought, he said it looked like yarn barf. I said, “But they’re pretty colours right?” and he agreed that they were pretty. Then I explained how blocking would enhance the lace pattern more, which reassured me too.

As you may know, Henry is a yarn snob. He only fondles fibres with 100% natural content. Therefore, I believed my cowl being knit with Nashua Ivy (50% alpaca, 45% merino, 5% synthetic) was safe. I thought wrong:

Fortunately he didn’t try to kneed or lick or roll in it… but he certainly likes it more than anything acrylic! The pattern (for the knitters out there) is the Herringbone Cowl from Hungry Knitter. [Click for my project page on Ravelry].

Hope everyone is having a nice Whiskers on Wednesday. Henry is napping obviously!

I have a lot of Mirasol yarn in my stash, and I often pet it and wonder what it will become one day. I have four skeins (in two different colours) of Mirasol Miski, and one skein of Mirasol Hacho. Then last night, I finally cracked open the Mirasol Sulka and cast on.

OMG it feels like a dream! And keeping even tension, it looks like a dream! Although it feels lightly under-spun like it has no twist, so it often ends up splitty… but still OMG purrrr. Speaking of purring, Henry helped me photograph the progress on my cowl:

The pattern is the Quickie Cowl and the yarn is Cascade Luna. The red of the Luna is quite true in this picture, at least on my monitor. Okay so this isn’t the most up-to-date photo, but Henry and I were too tired to take another. Basically I just kept knitting until my yarn nearly ran out, and all that’s left is to mattress stitch up the sides. We’re planning a knitting photoshoot this weekend… so hopefully I’ll have some lovely photographs.

I trekked out to Burnaby yesterday to meet Chelle and her precious ball winder for a Knitting Meetup. It was really nice, I wound all three balls of the Cascade Luna and then cast on for the Quickie Cowl. And then, I made progress!

Usually I am such a process knitter and don’t get much knitting actually done.