The Miracle of Mindlessness

Summer is winding down, Rainbow starts school next week, and the Mister is about to start several months of regular business travel -- needless to say, life is getting crazy. At times like this, I'm thankful for knitting that doesn't require much thought, especially when some of my knitting requires a lot of it. The latter kind is the kind I can't show you (sorry, secret knitting is very bad for blogging), so here's what I've been working on that has required very little mental energy on my part.

This new shawl design is another collaboration with my friend Lisa of Fibernymph Dye Works using  two sets of mini skeins, one speckled and one semisolid, with the colors in the semisolids being used as the speckles in the corresponding skeins. The shawl will alternate between a speckled mini and its corresponding semisolid, with a little bit of special something-something on the transition between skeins. The beauty of this design is that aside from a bit of counting on those transition rows, the rest of the knitting is mindless -- it's all garter stitch, with standard crescent shawl shaping, and you basically just work with each mini skein until you're almost out of yarn. I expect that this shawl will be on the needles for a while, given that I have something like 960 yards of yarn total to work with, but I'm hoping to have the pattern ready before Rhinebeck.

I have not yet cast on my Floozy cardigan, but I have decided what to do as far as needle size. My gauge with a US 2/2.75 mm was still off (about 24 stitches/4 in. as opposed to the 27 called for in the pattern), but I looked at the pattern and the stitch count for the size smaller than the one I was going to make, and it looks like the sizing should come out just fine with my slightly larger gauge. I may also use a US 2.5/3.0 mm for the sleeves, as I know that my gauge in the round is a bit tighter in general than my gauge flat. I'm using this sweater as my proverbial carrot on a stick to motivate me to finish up my commission projects -- once they're done, I'll allow myself to cast on. There's nothing like a good selfish knitting project for motivation!