Trip Report: Sweet Pea Shawl

The shawl is all dry!

I am very pleased with how it looks post-blocking, it really does make all the difference in the world.

Final Sweet Pea Shawl Verdict:

I had a lot of fun doing this pattern. it was simple enough to memorize quickly, but varied enough to keep it from getting routine. Despite not really being a shawl person, I really want to make another one now, as I love how the rows keep getting shorter, which is really encouraging. I do feel like I would prefer something with a little more variety next time.

I think my stitching was even and it looks consistent. I think I would have liked it better in a different yarn, though.  Something thinner, and maybe in a lighter colour. I think for my next one, I will do something in a light grey/silver tone and in fingering weight or lighter.

I am also very thankful that no cats went to sleep on it while it was drying.

 Sage stayed on the couch

And Oreo slept in progressively smaller boxes.

Mission Accomplished!

I finished crocheting the shawl! I still need to weave in all the ends, and attach tassels, and block it... but still, finished crocheting it!

This was a fun project, but I am really excited to move on to trying socks. I have decided to try this tutorial, with the 4 DPNs. Hopefully it doesn't go too slowly, or I will be discouraged. I haven't mentioned it before, but I am extremely left-handed. For crocheting, this isn't really an issue, as I just mirror the moves, but knitting is another story. You see, I knit continental style, AND left-handed. So, to many people, backwards backwards. This means that whenever I learn a new knitting style or technique, I need to spend a long time just figuring out how to interpret the instructions in such a way that they are consistent with my method.Anyway, I am looking forward to the challenge, but I want to finish this shawl and the cupcake hat soon as well.


Aside from that, I also harvested and transplanted some bromeliad pups from the plant Erin gave me last Spring for feeding her cats. They are the two plants on right in the photo below. I am not sure my grow shelf will be the ideal lighting conditions for them, but I have them parked there for now. In the foreground of the photo are some cacti I grew from seed that are going through a growth spurt.

Cheers!

The Forest for the Trees

Progress is coming along well on my shawl. It is a lot of fun to crochet and  the pattern is memorized easily.  I will admit I am having a hard time seeing the overall image sometimes though, so lost am I in the individual stitches. It is getting easier to see now that there are more rows, but I still think some of my earlier Dtr stitches could have used some tightening up. I will definitely be blocking this piece once it is done.

Here are a few quick pictures just for the sake of illustration, but the colour looks way off.

I can't wait to see it totally done and blocked, only then will I know for sure how I feel about it!

Birthday Happenings: Knitted Cats and Frogging Cowls

Yesterday was my birthday (I am now 33, or l'âge du Christ, as we call it) and I decided to keep it low-key this year. I received a number of great gifts, including this lovely fig plant given to me by a friend at work:

And the book Knit Your Own Cat: Easy-to-Follow Patterns for 16 Frisky Felines given to me by my boyfriend, which looks totally adorable, and I can't wait to knit little mini Oreo and Sages.

In crochet news, I already scrapped the Ginny Cowl. I finished 3 rows before I decided that I was in no mood to do 86 rows of slip stitches, in BLO no less. Given the yarn's mottled look, it was not fun at all to be poking around trying to find stitches, so if I try it again, I will use a more solid printed yarn, I think. I am really enjoying the knit picks yarn when I am using it, but it was a pain in the ass to frog.

In any case, I have decided to go back to the project this yarn was originally slated for, namely the Sweet Pea Shawl, that I saw in Stitch 'N Bitch: The Happy Hooker. This is a lot more fun so far. It is all a bunch of shells, so it moves quite quickly, and Dtr stitches are something I don't do often, so it's fun.

I haven't begun any socks yet, as I am still not sure about what pattern to use. Do I need a special pattern for circular needles? No I just adapt a 4 needle pattern? If so, how? I think it might be easier for me to talk to someone about this instead of researching it on my own, so I may hit up a knitting store, or see if any of my friends know anything about circular needles.

Finally, I have been using  stitch markers I got in my Knit Picks order the other day, and I LOVE them. I can't believe I have gone on this long without using any; how many headaches and restarted chains would this have saved me?? I really wonder what other tools I'm not using that I should be...