Aqua waves...

I'm making some headway on the pretty shawl. I was super sick Tuesday and Wednesday... I didn't even want to knit! But I'm better now... Hopefully more progress will be made this weekend...

Making progress.

It's amazing the change that blocking makes in lace. Above, it's all floppy and crumpled in its just-born state. But give it a good soak and a stern pinning and the lace pops out so beautifully. Sigh. I love lace. ♥

Commissioned.

Yay! I've been commissioned to make a project! My friend Kaitlin has a wedding to go to Memorial Day weekend and she wants a shawl to go with a pretty brown dress she bought for the occasion. Luck for me, she has excellent taste in yarn, color, and pattern! Alchemy Bamboo, Teal Tide, and Print O' the Wave Stole. This is going to be fun! I spent a few hours this morning swatching and working on the math to figure out how big this puppy can be with the yarn that I have. When giving the swatch a bath... I noticed that it bled a bit, tinting the water blue.

Blue water...

And now the wonder of blocking... Turning a wadded up piece of string...

Wad...

Into a beautiful lace pattern...

Blocked.

The color variation in this yarn is awesome. The colorway couldn't be more perfect for the wavy pattern with variations hinting to the shimmering aqua waters of a tropical sea.

I think the finished shawl will be about 13"x46". And one thing that you can't tell from the photos: the yarn is incredibly soft with a lovely drape. After it was dry from blocking, I threw it in the dryer with a towel because it seemed a bit stiff. It emerged silky and soft. Nice.

Yay for new projects! ♥

Springy Projects.

So I was itchy to start some new projects. And I did. There have also been some absolutely crazy decisions made in the last week... like, "quitting my job and moving to California to start a new job" crazy. It still doesn't feel all the way real... but yes ma'am. I'm moving to SoCal. Dang.

Anyway... back to knitting. I started this cute pink cotton lacey top after being inspired by this free pattern at elann.com. I say inspired because this pattern is written in the most vague way possible. But maybe that's the point? I'm having fun charting out the lace as I go because there are no charts included in the pattern and I've discovered that I don't understand lace without charts. It's starting to look like something now!!! I'm very happy with it so far. I'm going to switch up the lace patterns on the bottom of the shirt, but I really love the horseshoe lace on the top.

Pink Lacey Top.

I also started a Lace Leaf Shawl for my mom. We went on a tour of a couple yarn shops in Philly a couple weeks ago and I bought some awesome koigu to make her a shawl. She knits very well, but she asked me to make her a shawl. I love knitting lace so I'm more than happy to oblige.

Dappled Lace Leaf Shawl.

The koigu is a gorgeous mix of greens that remind me of sun shining down through fresh leaves in the spring... so Dappled Lace Leaf Shawl it is...

Ok... I have to go to work!!! ♥

Sigh.

This evening, I was reorganizing the patterns I have accumulated and reassessing my many works in progress. I have decided that this shawl is not going to work out. This is very depressing because I love the pattern and the yarn, and I put so much work into the beads... But I'm only getting 1.4" of scarf length/gram of Kidsilk Haze. I only have one ball of this color and I was planning on doing the edging in a chocolate brown.

1.4 in/gram... sigh...

So I have to decide if I want to continue with this pattern for this project. I might take out one more repeat from the center panel... I'll have to do some calculations to see how much additional length will come from the decrease in width. And all those beads... I don't even know if they are noticeable or worth the trouble.

****10 minutes of calculations later****

Okey. New plan. I'm going to rip the progress so far and reknit with one less repeat which should give an ~50in scarf with milky white beads instead of the matching itty bitty beads. Hopefully they will show up a little better and have more of the effect I was looking for.

Enough thinking about knitting for the night... Time to frog some Kidsilk Haze. This should be interesting. ♥