Magic Every Time

If you've been reading this blog long enough, you know that I love to knit lace. While I find the act of actually knitting the lace rather meditative, my absolute favorite part of knitting lace is the blocking. What can look okay right off the needles can be completely transformed into something light and airy through blocking. It's like magic to me every time I do it.

Last week, I spend nearly all my free time madly working on finishing up my Mad May shawl. I finally finished it on Friday evening (in the car on the way to dinner, of all places) and then blocked it Friday night. I'll admit that I pretty much jumped out of bed on Saturday morning so that I could unpin it and marvel at the transformation. I was not disappointed.

The lace opened up and evened out, and the 40 minutes or so I spent pinning out the picots along the bottom edge were clearly worth it.

There's been so much interest in the pattern on Ravelry that I've fast-tracked it. I spent several hours writing and charting over the weekend, and the pattern is now with my tech editor. I'm hoping to have it up for testing in a week or two and then published by the end of June. Personally, I'm just very excited to have finished it in plenty of time and to have worked out what I saw in my head so well!

I'm still working on my other Mad May project, but that is moving along well. I should have the body bound off tonight and then it's just sleeves, buttonbands, and neckband to do. I'm planning on taking advantage of the holiday weekend coming up to plough through and "git 'er done."