I just cast off my Quicksilver! I have to weave in ends now and block. I am hoping that it grows a good bit with blocking as I’d like it to be larger. Other than that, I love it. I will get the wifey to take better pictures of it in the daylight tomorrow. For now, here’s what I have:
Not bad for a first real shawl attempt! More pics and some of my project notes can be found here. I learned a few very valuable lessons on this project. They all pretty much come down to this one: be careful knitting while annoyed at your toddler. Over the past couple of days I’ve had somewhat limited time to knit and twice I was set back by errors I didn’t have to make. Both times I was in the midst of a disagreement with my daughter about cleaning up toys. Once, on the next to last stripe section, I randomly inserted a YO that didn’t belong. No way (that I know of) to fix that without tinking back, so that’s what I did for about three rows. Then, on the last mesh section, I managed to drop a stitch. I caught it and tried to repair it, but I couldn’t get it to look quite right so ended up tinking back another couple of rows. Now, there are no errors that I’m aware of, so I’m planning on getting some blocking wires of some sort and finishing it up.
So, I don’t really have anything on the needles currently. I guess there’s one small thing–another Cherry Pie Dishcloth–but I just cast that on to use up some yarn and to be a more portable project. It’s a little over a third of the way done:
It’s really a darker blue than it looks in the pic. I guess it should be a Blueberry Pie Dishcloth instead!
I read this amazing story on Ravelry about a knitter who often finds yarn at thrift stores in her area. She recently found close to a dozen full skeins of madelinetosh yarn for less than $3 each. So, I was inspired to go to a thrift store near where I live that I’d never gone to before, just to poke around and see what was there. I found a few skeins of yarn, but it was all acrylic. I bought them anyway as they were really cheap and would be fine for some cool decor patterns I have on deck. I also found at least a few yards of some wonderfully hideous material:
The amazing thing about this is that my mom made two comforters out of this same print for my brothers, probably before I was born. The other side of each comforter had an animal print on it. I remember those comforters from when I was a kid, so when I saw this pattern I almost couldn’t believe it. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it yet, but it absolutely had to come home with me despite the wifey’s protests. I love it!
Hopefully soon I will have before and after blocking pics to post!
alexand knits 