Hobbiton wrap

Here's the shawl I made for the One Shawl to Rule them All CAL:



It's Eva's Shawl, a sweet little pattern. I only really did two things differently: used dc, ch2, dc at the corners so that I wouldn't need a marker and used more eyelet rows. I always feel like that makes the yarn last longer, and since I made this out of handspun, I wanted to get the most out of what I had.

Supportive husbands

DP is cool with my yarn buying...perhaps too cool. When I came home with this yesterday,



he said, Great! I'd love socks out of that yarn! I guess that just means I have to buy more yarn for myself :)

I finally got the pictures of my other projects up. The first of the Forest of Brethil socks:





I'm pretty happy about how they're turning out, and I'm almost past the heel of the second one.

I picked up a skein of Cascade 220 yesterday as well:



My plan is to make it into a stocking (with some other Cascade for contrast) for my niece for Christmas. I just love the color.

Finally, a pic of the sampler gansey I made as a preamble to making a full size one:



I ordered special 10" long steel needles from the UK to make the full size sweater, but when they arrived, they were NOT steel, but teflon coated aluminum! I emailed the company, and they said that they ship whatever they have in stock at the time, so if they have more aluminum, that's what they'll ship. Rather than waste the money to ship them back to the UK, I decided to keep them. I'm just really bummed, because I specifically asked for steel needles, and that's what they said they'd send. They offered me 5% off my next order, but the dollar isn't strong enough to make it worth my while right now. They're a very nice company, but I guess I shouldn't buy anything from overseas if I might have to return it. Just one more thing to make me depressed.

Do I knit anything but socks?

Not so much :) Every time I get an idea for a different kind of project, I find another sock project to start on.

I'm almost finished with my Forest of Brethil socks. They use the riverbed sockitechture by Cat Bordhi...neat, but I still haven't gotten the hang of how much to increase for the expansion. When I followed her numbers, it came out too big. When I cut the numbers down, it came out too small. I'm just keeping it small and stretching it out, but I'd really like to find out how to make it fit!

I also stopped at my LYS this afternoon and picked up a hank of Cascade 220 in Pumpkin and one of Cascade sock in Thunder. While I was waiting to check out, I saw the Rowan Anniversary catalog...what I wouldn't give to have a copy! It was so beautiful. Unfortunately, it was a store copy and not for sale. Sigh.

Let's try this again

Argh. I can't seem to post often enough. I'm going to give this another try.

I've been making socks:











However, I've also been dealing with an infestation of these. It's been a horrible few weeks, but I think they're dead. Argh.

I'm working on another pair of socks for myself, out of Shibui sock yarn. It's wonderful yarn, but I wish the skeins had more yardage.

Thanks to those who read this...I'm really going to try to keep up with it.