An End in Sight

Thanks to those of you who chimed in on the decision of what to do with the edging on my Stripe Study Shawl. I have decided to knit to 4 inches or as much as I can by Friday night, whichever comes first, so that I can weave in the ends and block it in time to show it off at my LYS on Saturday for their annual Show Us Your Shawl event. As of last night, I had 3 inches done, so I think that's a reasonable expectation. It looks like I will use up most of the yarn, too, so I won't have to worry about what to do with a lot of leftovers.

In the meantime, look! I finished a blanket!

This is my Gothic Leaves Baby Blanket, knit exactly as specified in the pattern with Cascade 220 Superwash in a cheerful lime green color. If you recall, I gave away the original earlier this year as a baby gift, so I needed to whip up another for my trunk show at my LYS later this month. This was a very fast knit (started one weekend and finished the next) and fairly mindless except when I apparently stopped paying attention and forgot yarnovers only to put them in the wrong places, resulting in a couple instances of required tinking. Despite the amount of time I've spent with this pattern, I still enjoyed it, and I especially love how easy it was to block -- I took advantage of the yarn's tendency to stretch and just smoothed it out on my drying racks. While this is going into the sample pile for now, it'll be good to have on hand should I need a baby gift in a hurry.

I've also given my I Heart Aran sweater a bit of attention this week; one front is now complete and the other side is partially done. I'm still amazed by how well my yarn supply is holding out -- I haven't even gone through three skeins yet! Assuming the shawl is off the needles by tomorrow night, the sweater will get my full attention this weekend.

A Replacement

Although I'd really like to finish up my handspun sweater (and my shawl, which needs at least three more inches of border), I've been spending the past week mainly focusing on knitting a Gothic Leaves Baby Blanket for my collection of samples. My LYS is hosting a trunk show of my designs later this month, and as I'd given away the original some time ago, I needed to knit up a replacement!

I'm using the same yarn (Cascade 220 Superwash) that I used for the original, but this time around I chose a bright springy green. I'm into the seventh repeat and am hoping to have this wrapped up and blocked this weekend.

I am still working on the shawl, primarily during my lunch break, though I got in about four rows today while I was home with Rainbow. It's gotten to be a struggle to get it to fit in my Stitched by Sasha project bag, so it needs to get finished soon!

Finally, a bit of housekeeping. You may have noticed that the pattern images are gone from the sidebar. There's now a tab at the top (it's marked Patterns) where you can see all my original patterns. I'll add to the list as more come out and I may put a photo or two up in the sidebar from time to time, but I felt that all those images were starting to clutter things up. If you have strong opinions about them being there, they can always be put back!