A Friday FO

It's been a very long week and I am very happy to see Friday come -- though I have to admit I think I'll be a little happier for Saturday to come so I don't have to wake up to an alarm in the dark. I'm also very happy to have an FO to share this Friday!

I've carefully hidden the ends that still need to be woven in

As predicted, I did finish the shawl up on Wednesday evening. And I did it in grand fashion: by winning a game of yarn chicken. I'd been weighing my main color after each pattern repeat to try to determine how many more I could do. As each one had more stitches and thus used more yarn, that wasn't as easy as it sounds. The first repeat whose MC usage I'd recorded used 7 g; the next one used 8 g. I was down to what I hoped was the penultimate repeat and hoping I had enough for one more. I was very excited when that second-to-last repeat used 8 g and left me with 10 g remaining. I figured the last repeat would use 9 g and leave me with just a little wiggle room, and I was spot on:

I blocked the shawl yesterday morning and started to weave in the ends last night (I'll finish that up later today).

Because I finished the knitting portion of the shawl, I allowed myself to start a new spinning project yesterday. I'd had this one planned for a while. I'm using up two semisolid colors of Southern Cross Fibre South African Superfine Merino that I won as prizes earlier this year. Rather than doing something simple like spinning each onto its own bobbin and plying them together, I'm doing a gradual transition from one to the other in a three-ply yarn. The colors are both soft pastels, so it will be very subtle. This is the photo I took of the fiber after I split it up to give you a sense of how it will be spun:

Each column here represents one bobbin of singles. I'm starting with the left column and have already started the second ball of green. Unless the yarn poofs up significantly when I wash it, I should get a fingering weight in the end, and I'm hoping I can fit the whole skein onto one of my WooLee Winder bobbins (though if it looks like it might be close, I'll get out my miniSpinner and its giant bobbin capacity).

I'm happy to report that opening night of Beauty and the Beast Jr. went very well and had an enthusiastic audience, including, I was happy to see, a lot of students. Mo gave me permission to share a photo of her on stage in full costume, which I think explains very well why she's come home complaining that her whole body is sore:

That's a lot of costume to wear! The Mister and I will be going to tonight's performance with my parents, and then we'll go again tomorrow for closing night with my in-laws and my brother-in-law and sister-in-law.

We've got a much-needed quiet weekend planned ahead of a short holiday week next week. I'm working through Wednesday (with the hope that the office will close early), and I expect many of my coworkers will be taking some extra time off, making it quiet -- back when I went into the office, I used to enjoy working the Wednesday before Thanksgiving because there were usually so few people actually there! We're supposed to get rain coming through this afternoon and tonight and then chilly weather over the weekend, which is just perfect for putting on sweaters and socks and getting cozy. Hope it's a good weekend for you -- see you back here on Monday!