At the end of every year I take the week off between Christmas and New Year's as a time to sleep, re-energize and prepare for the next semester of school. Well this year there is no "next semester", its a very odd feeling around here. Classes started today for Harvard. I'm not registered...not even for an audit class.
So instead of ordering books, and preparing for the next onslaught, I took a look at my knitting projects. There were both old ones that needed to either be queued up to be finished or frogged and new ones that I've been wanting to do.
Several projects that were not old but just were not making me happy were frogged without remorse.
I have several ancient UFO's floating around...one of which is ultimately going to be ripped. Mainly because it has sat for six years and when I started it I was learning a technique and now I don't absolutely need to finish the sweater. The yarn will be frogged and go back into the stash. The other really long UFO is a Hanne Falkenberg shawl, Promenade that I started right before I started school...and I I've only got one side to go on it. So I will finish it.
This is the last known picture of the shawl...its ancient as well, probably four years old, at least three. Since this picture was taken the stitches have been picked up for the other side, the border done and the first color changes started. To make this manageable to finish, I decided to count how many garter ridges needed to be done to completion and divide it by a reasonable number. Not the most creative way to work through a project, but sometimes easier. So this should be a FO by the end of April.
Amazingly with my flurry of finishing stuff in November and December last year, that was it for the old UFOs. There are two other WIP floating around that are sort of old, but one is barely started so its hard to call it anything other than a cast on. The other is a lovely Heirloom-Knitting shawl that I started and then I'm willing to bet I set aside because of school but I know once the weather warms up a little I will pull it out and start working on it again.
Once that business was out of the way, I looked at my more recent WIP...and found my cute little purple shawlette sitting off to the side. I looked at it and realized that I wasn't that far off from finishing it. Spent the time last week doing the final section and blocking.
My apologies for the brightness...it was a cloudy day yesterday when I took pictures and just as I get ready to snap, a ray of sunlight comes in. This picture is closer to the true colors.
This is Citron (Ravelry Link, Knitty Link). I used some left over laceweight yarn from a shawl I did many years ago. This was a nice quick easy knit and will make a nice little cover up when I'm in the movies and the AC starts blasting! A few other pics of it can be seen here on my Ravelry page.
My other finished object is something new. I had gone to an end of the year sale at my LYS and found some really yummy Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk. Soft, warm, glowing even. The kind of yarn you just rest your hand on and feel the warmth of. I decided I wanted something snuggly with this yarn. I may live in Texas now, but winters are still cooler...it can get down into the 20s at night and definitely the low 30s. So I decided a cowl was in order. Enter the Burberry Inspired Cowl. Another wonderful knitter did the work of figuring out the pattern and there are many nice examples of this cowl in Ravelry...mine included now.
Speaking of quick knits....size 10 needles, 3 episodes of Cashmere Mafia on Netflix later. We have one cowl. (4 episodes if you count the episode I watched kitchnering and kept stopping). A yummy cowl, with easy directions, perfect winter knitting. It is slouchy and open, drapes nicely on your neck and the warmth just radiates. Perfect for what I needed.
I have some knitting goals in mind for the year....but next time. Off for some more coffee before work gets rolling!
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