What I've Been Up To

I'm doing more paid design work of late, and I absolutely love it, but it forces me to keep the knitting secret. I can't share it with my world!

I've been (mostly) all about lace of late.

I'm into the second of a three-part lace series, in addition to the recently completed Shetland Skies shawl, another circular shawl idea that's cooking, a rectangular scarf, and a less-lacy triangle.

I love designing and knitting lace - but both elements can be an enormous challenge. This current one is a top-down triangle, and I had very specific ideas about how the patterning should line up. And it nearly killed me. I leafed through stitch libraries, and swatched; and then leafed through stitch libraries some more, and swatched again; and leafed and swatched, and leafed and swatched. There was also some serious use of foul language, and lots of drinking of coffee.



But after 3 days, I cracked it. And now all I have to do is knit it ;-). Aided by more coffee, of course. What also helps is that the yarn is some of the nicest I have ever used - laceweight cashmere in a gorgeous warm brown colour.



The colour is important because, as I might have mentioned, I drink a fair bit of coffee. And this way I don't have to worry if I spill any on the lace. The first in this series was worked in a powder blue colour, and I spent the entire time worried I was going to stain it.

And just in case you're worried that the Queen of Socks has forgotten all about socks, there is a quartet (!) of socks in the works, too, to be published somewhere nice a little later this summer. Let's just say that I'm having some fun mixing and matching colours.