Garter Party

As I had intended, I have been working steadily on my First Point of Libra in an effort to get it wrapped up as quickly as possible. I'm feeling pretty good about the progress I've made, and I can definitely see the end in sight. I'm nearly finished with the penultimate stripe in the gradient, and if I can get Rainbow to bed quickly enough this evening, I might even finish the last one. Then all that will remain is the borders of the main color.

One thing that I have been doing with this shawl to keep myself from being crazy at the end is weaving in the ends as I go. Each time I've finished a stripe or a section, I've woven in the ends. I'm leaving little tails on them so that if I stretch the shawl when I block it they won't pop loose (if you leave a bit of a tail and the fabric stretches, some of that excess can be pulled into the fabric), so all I'll need to do at the end is trim them. Weaving in ends is one of those things that I don't exactly despise doing, but it certainly takes time that I'd rather use for actual knitting. This shawl does have a lot of ends (I think about two dozen, if I'm counting correctly), so that would likely take a good portion of an evening to deal with if I left them all for the end. This way, I can spend about five minutes here and there and save myself the aggravation.

The sun came out a bit over the weekend, so I was finally able to get some glamour shots of my finished Zeccola Cowl in fingering weight:

I got a good amount of additional length when I blocked it (it's now approximately 68 inches around), and it fits perfectly around my neck doubled. I wore it over the weekend, and I wore it to work today (it was pretty chilly this morning). It works perfectly to keep me a little warmer when it's not cold enough for a sweater.

I ended up using about 767 yards total of the two yarns, so just slightly less than the total used for the original. I probably could have squeezed out two more repeats if I really wanted to, but I'm happy with the length I got. The leftovers will go into the stash and perhaps become a square in Rainbow's log cabin blanket, if I ever get it out again.

My father's socks are still in progress and moving along regularly. The first sock was finished Friday night, and now I'm a little more than halfway done with the leg of the second sock. I'd like to finish them up as soon as possible, though I'm not sure that that will happen this week. I do, of course, want to get them to my dad soon so he can make some use of them before spring really comes, and I think he'd be happy to have them now, as he's been sick for the past week. He and I are alike in that our feet are always cold, so I'd love to help him feel better with some cozy wool socks!