sunshine supergirl

Lots of knitting going on these days, and a little rug hooking too. I even picked up my spindle, but it's too heavy for the yarn I want to spin. I need to get a lightweight one to spin those laceweight yarns on.

The knitalong shawls are coming along slowly. I've been working a little at each of them. It's actually quite nice to be able to switch between them. It keeps my interest up, and I look forward to working with each different yarn and needle.

The Spring Surprise Shawl is the farthest behind. It's the most complex of the three, and I had to frog back to the beginning of the second clue. I need to really concentrate when I work on this one and I'm going to have to put in a lot of lifelines, I think. Once I get a little more comfortable with it I expect I'll really enjoy it. The plain purls rows on the simpler shawls are a bit boring.

The Secret of the Stole is turning out fairly easy and quick to knit. I love the Alpaca Cloud. It slides through my fingers like water. I'm part way through the second clue but there's some sort of funky boo-boo happening right there at the centre. Won't take long to fix but I was tired and knew I had to just set it down at that point. So I'm only half a clue behind on that one and might be able to catch up this week.

I love the yarn I'm using for the Fisherman's Wife (Dem Fischer Sin Fru) shawl. It's very pink and though it seems a little coarse as I'm working it, it's really quite soft when it's knit up. I was going to use a 2.25mm needle for this to keep the fabric dense but I knew part way through the first section it would be too small. I broke the yarn and started over with a 3.25mm KnitPick's Harmony circular needle. These needles are interesting an different from what I've used before. The surface is smoother than my other wood needles but not as slick as polished metal. The points are quite fine but blunt at the very end. All in all, I like working with them and I think I'll be ordering more.

I needed to get away from the lace and fine yarns for a bit so I started a pair of fingereless mitts. I'd bought this Elann Highland Peruvian Silk for a pair of Mrs. Beetons but it's a very heavy dk weight. I really like the medallion in the Cozy Cable socks so I put one medallion cable flanked by 2 four-stitch cables on the back of the mitt. It took me a couple of tries to get the thumb gusset in a good spot and I finally decided to put it in a purl section of the 2/2 rib, a couple of stitches from the side towards the palm. It keeps the medallion centred nicely on the back of the hand.

I really love lace knitting and I thinks it's actually making all my knitting better. Working with the fine yarn makes it easy to refine my technique and it shows in the rest of my work. It was a little awkward going back to the heavier yarn for a bit but now I'm getting the hang of switching from one to the other. Which is good because I need to finish up my January Sockamania socks...