Many Finished

Day 3 in A Month of Craft Photos by Untangling Knots is An Old FO.

Pictured are Chinook Shawl, Shrug This, Chastain Park Shawl, Traveling Woman, Clara's Cowl, and Triangular Leaf Shawl.

This is a hanger by our front door that holds lots of scarves and shawls for when we head out to the cold.

WIP Wednesday: Capelet and Fey Led

Writing:
Fey Led (Working Title) - Rewrites
Previous Word Count: 32,922
Current Word Count: 38,493 (Up 5,571)

OMG I'm getting so close. Things are beginning to come together and I can see the end! I really want this done by Nov. Push, push, push!

Knitting:
I've been working a bit on my capelet here and there as time allows. It's great for working on in the car at night since I don't have to really see to do basic knit and purl.



Hopefully Friday I'll have a couple of semi finished pictures of some wrist warmers! Yay!

WIP Wednesday: Alpaca and Fey Led

Writing:
Fey Led (Working Title) - Rewrites
Previous Word Count: 24,034
Current Word Count: 24,034 (Up 0)

Yeah, I know. Fiona will probably want to kick my butt for the lack of work done. She can do that on Sunday ... Hell, Dragon will probably even offer to hold me down to make it easier on her; he's mean like that sometimes. *grin* But I was hoping to hear back from a couple more people who'd read the first half of the novel and see how things were going. I mean, to me it makes sense to make sure the foundation of the story is solid before I jump thousands of years in the future. She's just a slave driver though. *wink*

Knitting:
I finished the cute beret for a friend, it's finishing up it's blocking at the moment and when Miss Kid gets here tomorrow I'll see if she'll be willing to do model duty. She normally is. So I finally got to cast on for this gorgeous shawl that I've been drooling over since I saw it on the site and ordered the kit to make it. It starts out with this alpaca yarn right around your neck. Oh ... My ... Gods, it's so incredibly soft. The pattern is a bit intimidating as it's charted only, and only one repeat is charted. It looks like a lot so I had a mild freak out about that. But then I pulled myself together and told myself to shut the hell up so I could start with row 1.



The thing with being self taught is I don't have a teacher standing off to the side telling me that I'm not ready for that just yet. I just have to remember to just take it one stitch at a time. However I am having a couple of problems with it. 1. Alpaca is super soft ... and super slippery. 2. My metal needles are super slippery for speedy knitting 3. The yarn is incredibly thin!



See the yarn off to the side, yeah, that thin. Luckily I'm knitting with it held double so that helps a bit. See the split ring stitch markers on the other side? The yarn keeps getting caught in those. On the one hand I 'really' want stitch markers that don't have a split on them, on the other I'd need about 18 of them. Hopefully it'll get easier as I go along. Of course with all those in mind I decided that I needed another project that would require a little less concentration. So I present to you, the start of a capelet.



Again in alpaca .... Because when you're concerned about difficulty you should totally have two projects with slippery yarn! Nobody claimed I was sane after all.

Sparkly Yarn

Every yarn worker has that yarn in their stash. There's always the one that is super soft or completely enchanting in some other way. Mine was Southwestern Trading Company Sparkle in Twilight. I've spoken of my love on this yarn before so I won't repeat myself, other than to say it's all I'd hoped for and then some.

I wanted something small that would quickly dress up an outfit or be perfect for adding a bit of sparkle to an outfit on special nights. I finally found the perfect pattern.

It fairly flew off my needles. I was thrilled with how it worked up. It's a bit smaller than I'd expected despite following the pattern exactly. Either way I think it'll be perfect for what I wanted.

Pattern: Chastain Park Shawl
Project Page: Ravelry

I'd also wanted to make a shrug so I'd have options on dressing an outfit up a little bit and I'd get a chance to make something closer to clothing for an adult. So I went pattern searching again and found another great one. Once more it was a quick project, despite my dislike for the larger needles. There's just something about those that make me fumble fingered. Perhaps if I use a thicker yarn it'll be a bit easier next time. Anyhow, this came out very nice as well.

I suspect the models on Ravelry are a bit smaller than I am and thus I should have added to the length a bit, but I still like it for me. I'll probably make another one in simple black at some point and make that one longer.

Pattern: Shrug This
Project Page: Ravelry

Even though I followed both patterns exactly I still ended up with quite a bit of left over yarn. Now to figure out what else I can make out of this gorgeous stuff.