Curses! Foiled again!

Last night I was all set to post when I happened to look out the window -- just in time to see a huge bolt of lightening. Eesh. So, instead of risking frying my hard drive, I decided to do this:

This used to be an Old Navy sweater that I'd bought a couple years ago and then wore maybe twice. It was totally an impulse buy--it was a cheery color (it's actually more of a soft pink than it appears in the photo) and really soft--but unfortately it was a tad big and was rather unflattering. I think I only wore it as a cardigan when I was really desperate and just wanted something to keep me warm. While I was cleaning out my closet in preparation for warm weather, I decided that this yarn was too cozy to just throw away, so it went in the To Be Recycled pile. It's not the nicest fiber (90% acrylic, 10% wool), but, as I said, it's soft and it'll do well for baby garments, I think. The yarn above is from the back, collar and two sleeves. I think the front sections are unless because of the button bands. By the way, here's what the sweater looked like originially:

See what I mean? This thing isn't even flattering on the couch. I don't know what I was thinking.

Once I finished winding the sweater yarn, I decided to make the evening Fun With the Ball Winder Night and tackled my sock yarn. The result of a good hour of winding? Every single skein of sock yarn in my stash is now in a center-pull yarn cake. The proof:

This would be the "affordable" sock yarn drawer (Knit Picks Essential, Regia, and a ball of some German sock yarn whose name I can't read). The "luxury" sock yarn drawer is below this one; it contains the Lorna's and the Koigu.

Knitting on my mom's Pomatomuses (I think I'll call 'em Popos from now on) is going slowly. Why, you ask? Well, I guess this is the point where I have to make a confession: I am addicted to knitting lace. After ripping out my shawl twice, and becoming fully convinced that I would never master lace, I remembered that there was an article on lace knitting in the latest Interweave Knits. I whipped it out, looked up the article, and discovered the one ridiculously simple thing I was doing that was messing me up over and over again: I was yarning over wrong. Hello? Did anyone else know that there's a specific way to yarn over for lace? (And if you did, why didn't you tell me?!) I restarted the pattern, and after only a few rows it became very apparent that the YOs--the correct YOs--made the lace. Ever since, I've been hooked, and I've been spending most of my knitting time this week on the shawl. Here's the obligatory progress shot (and the obligatory statement that lace looks like crap until it's blocked):

Right now I'm almost through six repeats of either 13 (small) or 18 (large). I am thinking the small size will be sufficient, although I specifically bought more than enough yarn for the large. Once it's blocked, the small size should be big enough to throw over my shoulders. Besides, the rows are already taking me about 10 minutes each, and I can't imagine how long they'd take once I got up to 18 repeats.