Days of Lace and Fiber

Is there any Monday as depressing as the Monday following a long holiday weekend? I doubt it. Today was doubly depressing after the weekend I had, in which I indulged in many fibery pursuits. It was a busy weekend, between entertaining on the 4th, going furniture shopping (the new coffee table arrives Saturday!), doing some serious yard work, doing "work work," and even going to the office for a while yesterday, but I made sure I observed the holiday weekend and my vacation day by doing what I love best.

First there was working on the mystery shawl. I'd been working on it a bit last week, but I really focused my energy on it on Saturday afternoon and evening, when The Mister and I decided to stay in for a low-key evening. We made some pasta and watched a Law and Order: Criminal Intent marathon on USA, and I kept at the shawl. I feel particularly proud of myself, because in addition to cooking and cleaning up dinner and doing two loads of laundry, I finished Clue 3. My shawl has now grown to 576 stitches around:

For scale, I will tell you that the needle is a 32" Addi. That little mess of yarn up near the top is what's left from the first skein of yarn. I'll be interested to see how much more I'll use in the last two clues.

Speaking of which, I printed out Clue 4 yesterday, and the charts have gotten much larger -- each chart is a full page. Two of the four options are about 46 rows and the other two are about 96. Take a wild guess which option I'll be choosing.

I'm holding off on the shawl for a day or two, though, because I've been flying on my February Lady Sweater. Sleeve number one is ready for its cuff.

I'd really like to finish this by the weekend (perhaps short of getting buttons if I find I need to go shopping for them), and I seem to be on a roll, so I'm going with it. Plus, I have a movie to watch tonight that will require a bit more attention (and thus is not very compatible with knitting lace).
Yesterday, although I didn't blog about it, I observed a Spinning Sunday and worked on my second bobbin of my All Spun Up merino while watching the marathon men's Wimbledon final.

See that contraption in the back? That's my very high-tech fiber holder (I've graduated from the cardboard box some of my most recent purchases arrived in).

Eventually I think I'd like to get a Lantern Moon basket to hold my spinning fiber, but for now I'll settle for an old pillowcase inside a handled basket. I think it's only appropriate that, on the 4th of July weekend, I used a little old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity!