It'll Be a Nail-biter

I have a feeling I'll be knitting like a crazy person to finish my shawl before we go away. It's partially my own fault, as I've been spending about half of my nightly crafting time working on spinning up what's left of my holiday minis, but I think I really need to buckle down and focus if I want to finish this in the next week. I'm now just five or six rows away from finishing the final repeat of the main lace chart and then there are two more to go.

The colors here are, again, a bit darker than in real life thanks to limited light. I was hoping for a little more natural light this morning because we got snow last night, but it's so hard this time of year. In any case, you can see that it's getting a bit big more the needles, so things are moving in the right direction. Here's a little preview of what this stitch pattern will look like when it's blocked (though I'll be stretching it quite a bit more):

In the meantime, remember the socks I was knitting for myself? Somehow I'm already halfway done with them. The first sock is done but for grafting the toe (somehow I didn't have needles in my project bag) and the second has been cast on.

I got such a response to this heel on Instagram that I've already written up a draft of the pattern. I'll be reviewing it while I knit up the second sock and then getting it to my tech editor. I wasn't planning on doing much design work this month, but sometimes I guess it creeps up on you!

Tomorrow, if you can believe it, is Rainbow's eighth birthday. We are planning a fairly low-key celebration with family tomorrow evening (she had her kids birthday party last weekend), and then we are going to see The Nutcracker downtown on Sunday afternoon. We've also got another holiday party to go to on Saturday night, and I'm scheduled to podcast with Anna Saturday morning, so it looks to be another busy weekend. But we're down to single digits in the number of days before we leave for our vacation, and I can't wait! Just need to figure out what knitting to pack.