Project Juggling

In case you were wondering, I did end up finishing the sock with yarn to spare. The socks have been blocked and are now awaiting their photo shoot. Now that those are out of the way, I finally started the mate to my current pair of handspun socks, though all I have to show for it is a cuff.

After spinning a lot over the weekend, I returned to my TTL Mystery Shawl yesterday (the clues arrive on Sundays, but I wait until Monday so I can print them out). I worked on it during lunch yesterday and today and a bit last night; another day should see me through to the end of the clue. This clue is only 32 rows long, but the rows are getting much longer now.

I'm still quite enjoying how the yarn is striping, though having seen some other shawls on the TTL board, I think the pattern might show up better in a solid color. Still, I'm happy to be using my handspun, and I think the look of this will be vastly improved by blocking.

I also put in some time on Rainbow's shawl, which is rapidly approaching the end. After the light blue that I'm working with, there are just sections of orange and yellow. I'm planning on knitting a garter border at the bottom and that will be it.

I did spend a little bit of time over the weekend working on my Sople, but I've reached the bottom of the body, which consists of cables and twisted ribbing worked on size 3 needles, so it's become somewhat of a slog. I don't usually mind knitting sweaters in the summer, but I think the fact that it'll be months before I can actually wear this is preventing me from getting excited about finishing it. I predict that this is a project I'll get out about once a week, spend an hour or so on, and then put it away. It'll get done eventually, probably when the weather starts to cool down.

I will continue plugging away at these projects this week, in addition to swatching for a submission and perhaps starting a baby gift that needs to get done soon, but I'm also fantasizing about future projects. My Mad May prize arrived on Friday and I can't stop petting it and thinking about what it will grow up to be.

This is six skeins of tosh dream alpaca dk (a 50% wool/50% alpaca blend) in the colorway Jasper. At 1200 yards, that's probably enough for a decent sized sweater; I'm thinking of something cozy and drapey, because this blend should be very warm. At the top of my list at present is Amy Christoffers' Bailey Cardigan, which has been in my favorites for some time, though I expect I will do a lot of pattern searching for the fun of it.