Watch One, Knit Two

  From Blah

To Ahhhhh


And



From Just Started

  To in the Groove

This aspect of knitting, this constant sense of progress, of moving forward is probably one of my favorite things about playing with pointy sticks :)

Grandma's Shawl has had an uneasy existence. She first arrived in my consciousness when I saw the yarn Claudia Hand Painted Yarns Silk Lace *drool* (on a side note I just realized that the price at the online shop was cheaper than what I payed for it).  As soon as I saw it, I knew that this was the yarn for the job.  The next step was to pick out a pattern which took me some time since I couldn't quite decide on whether to go with an intricate pattern or a simple one. The simple one won out because a complex design would have competed with the yarns innate beauty for attention and I thought the yarn drool-worthy enough on its own. So then I knit, and knit, and knit as one does with lace shawls.  I wasn't too impressed with the shawl when I finished but I knew that often-times blocking brings out the beauty of lace, so I blocked and this is what I got.



Yeah, not that impressive. And even if I do say it myself .... ugly.  I was heartbroken, such a beautiful yarn, so much time knitting it and the end result being so blah.  After pouting about it some time, I put on my big girl panties and frogged the shawl, the yarn was just too beautiful to leave in such a state.  I picked out another simple pattern, only this time I decided to add a slightly intricate border to add to the "fanciness" of the final product. It's coming along nicely now and I feel that it's going to turn out much better.  But now it seems that timing isn't working out very well.  First there was Christmas and all the socks I wanted to knit,  then after all that knitting on small needles I decided to knit a sweater with bulky yarn and now I'm knitting Preemie Caps for charity.  When oh when am I going to finish up this shawl?  Oh and to complicate things just a little bit further I've got a wedding gift shawl that's waiting in the wings .... the wedding's in June *rolleyes*

I think it's time set some limits. I never thought I'd get to such a state with my knitting that I'd need to do that!  At this point, no matter what, I'm knitting at least a couple of rows of Grandma's shawl every day! I'm guessing if I do that I'll be finished by mid February which should give me a good amound of time to work on the wedding gift. *keeping my fingers crossed*

Back to the pointy sticks ....

I've been listening to the KnitPicks Podcast for a while now. In general I really like it and pay attention to Kelley's tips however one of her recommendations I've pretty much avoided.  Her claim that one needs to have a bunch of different projects on the needles has never sat well with me. For one, unlike Kelley I'm not a process knitter I get little joy from just making stitches one after another, I'm a project or result knitter - my joy comes from looking at the growing sweater or sock or shawl that's on my needles. On top of being a project knitter I like to stay focused on the one thing I'm working on since when I get sidetracked I tend to forget about the thing that had been consuming my attention.  But recently I've discovered the beauty of having multiple projects on the needles.


As I've mentioned in my last post I've been working fevereshly on my Raglan Sweater and it's been growing quickly.  I was hoping to have it finished this weekend but no matter how I tried it was not going to happen.  One of the things that interfered was my daughter's piano recital.  I knew that there was no way for me to bring that giant bit of knitting into those close quarters.  However as I thought about it, I realized that I had Grandma's Shawl tucked away in my knitting basket. It was in progress but I had put it aside since I was so focused on the sweater.  Since it didn't take much room at all I took it along and worked on it the whole hour.

So now I must admit that there's quite a bit of value to having various projects on the needles especially a small one that is easy to take along no matter where!

Back to the pointy sticks ...