Triumph and What Comes Next

Whispering Pines is DONE!! I finished the knitting on Saturday, and did the finishing and blocked it last night. It is currently pinned out in the floor of my guest room, and hopefully I will be able to give it to the recipient on Thursday.

I did have one snafoo...one minor meltdown last night. One little episode of tears. I have never grafted lace before, and when I sat down I was a little perplexed because I did not have an even number of stitches on each needle. I thought about this, checked the direction again, and concluded that I had a coule more rows to knit. I don't know if this was actually right, to be honest, but I think I fudged it convincingly. I got to the equivalent number of stitches and then just kitchenered it as I would a sock, very carefully, and then I wove in the end...

And then I realized that I had seamed it such that the seam was on the right side. CURSES. I just stared at it for a minute. Then I unpicked the end I had woven in, and looked at it again. I picked here and there...but I knew there was no way I could undo the seam. I cried. I sighed, I tugged, and finally convinced myself that it would not show much after blocking, and that no one would be looking that closely. I took the end over to the wrong side, and wove it in again.

I put it in to soak and after a mere 20 minutes or so, I took it out, took it upstairs, and pinned it. It was pretty late by then, which is why I only let it soak for a little while, but I was determined to be totally done, and I really needed the blocking lift to make me feel better after my little mishap.

I chose not to pin out the edging. For one thing, my triangle peaks are definatley more of a sawtooth look than nice set of equilateral triangles and I didn't think I could pin them out properly...and frankly, I liked the look of them the way they are. Time will show, I may regret it, I may discover that it was all a ploy of my inner laziness to keep from pinning out all the points, but I'm not going to fret over it too much. The rest of it looks gorgeous, and I have to say, the yarn is amazing. Because of the way the shawl is knit, the varigation appears in random stripey bits of color that slant towards the center line in a way that really makes it look like a snowstorm. Really amazing. I'm excited to give it away.

Now, of course, I am faced with the question of what I shall knit next. The sweater is definitely top of the list and I believe I have settled on the pentagon sweater. On the one hand, it might be kind of a complicated project for my first sweater, and I have an absolute terror of seaming things (apparently, not entirely unjustified, see above), but you know, go big or go home.

I am also knitting the Noro scarf, I'm working on the Tilli Thomas bag kit, Moonlight Sonata has lingered untouched in my basket for ages while I was working on the shawl...so maybe I am not so free to choose a next project as I think. So, yes - sweater, plus WIPs.

I am, however, trying very hard to decide on a new pair of socks. The Coffee Pot socks are still MIA (sob!) and I got a boatload of sockyarn for Christmas (see previous post - oh, shoot, I had more pictures and I forgot to upload them in the midst of the shawl finishing, must do that tonight). I'm having a little difficulty, both because I have so many yarns to choose from and because I am having trouble letting go of the ones I was working on, even though I have acknowledged to myself that I really hate the colorway. No one will be offended if I put that aside since it was not a gift; I bought it myself.

I did buy a couple of sock patterns from Pink Lemon Twist that I really loved - the Air Collection and the Visions of Sugarplums collection. But, I'm not really sure which pattern goes with which sock yarns. I also have The Eclectic Sole at home untouched.

I have to also say that I am frustrated at the loss of my goknit pouch. I need to find a substitute sock carrier, because hauling around a ziplock is not doing it for me. My purse is not big enough to fit the ziplock; I used to hang the goknit pouch off the side of it. I know somebody in the area carries the pouches - maybe I better go hit up the knowknits site and see if I can find out who!