Errold's Grove Update

I have finished the Ghost Cats in Border A. I am now starting the Bond Birds section in Border B. That puts me on round 91 out of 154. That's really quite manageable, when I look at it in terms of row count. Of course, I'm at over 400 stitches per round at the moment, if my math is correct. In the grand scheme of things, that's really not that many stitches per round either.

Once the body is done, I've got the edging to knit onto the shawl, which is joined to the shawl body every other round. This is a 23 stitch wide edging with a 10 row repeat. I've never done a knitted on edging before, so this could be fun. I may learn how to knit backwards on the return rows, rather than turning the whole project each row. We'll see how it goes.

Still no pictures. Perhaps when I finish the bond birds I'll get the thing spread out on a bit of scrap yarn. I'm not even entirely certain what this thing will look like when I'm finished, given that only one or two people have ever even knit this thing. I'm sure I'll like it though. And I'll have a bunch of yarn left over. I started with 2400 yards of Yarn Place Graceful. I'll have to weigh the finished product (or the remaining yarn) to estimate how much yarn is left. If I'm smart, I'll label the yarn ball with the yardage estimate and weight to simplify future project planning.

First of the Ghost Cats Completed

Of course, I have no picture of this because I haven't wanted to risk dropping stitches just to put the shawl on some waste yarn for a photo. I have been diligently knitting a round or two each evening. With a three-day weekend starting tonight and expected rainy weather (so no yard work), I might get some serious progress made on Errold's Grove. No where near finishing it, but I might get through the Bond Birds section. I'm still excited about finishing this project.

I do have a pair of socks to darn. The heels on my blue socks are wearing thin. I had forgotten all about that until I saw them tucked into my knitting basket this evening.

Sitting here, writing this blog entry, I'm now getting excited about the idea of spending the weekend knitting and relaxing. And maybe doing a wee bit of housekeeping to get things shipshape again. It'll be fun.

Slowly but Surely

After having bragged about starting the Sister Socks, I haven't even looked at them. I have, however, managed to complete at least one round on the Errold's Grove shawl every day this week. At the current rate of knitting, it'll only take me 82 more days to get to the border. I have no way to estimate how long the border will take me. I have only glanced at the border directions. I believe the border is knit onto the shawl, perpendicular to the edge. (There was something in there about joining a border stitch to a live stitch on the shawl.)

I am a teensy bit concerned that the diameter of the shawl won't be quite large enough. I'm a bit less than halfway through the knitting, but the diameter right now is perhaps 2.5-3 feet (estimated). If it ends up being six feet across, that would work. I don't want it to be much less than five feet. My wingspan from fingertip to fingertip is five and a half feet. A five foot shawl would do nicely, I think. This will be my first square shawl, so I'm not entirely sure how wide I want/need it to be. I'm sure I can figure out a way to add pattern repeats before the border if I need to do that too.

Baby Knitting
A colleague of mine is having her first baby in about 7 1/2 months. I have, until now, primarily reserved my baby knitting for charity or for family members. But colleague is a lot of fun and I think she'd get a kick out of a baby sweater made just for her baby. She'd appreciate the work that goes into it too, since she makes jewelry herself, so understands the time, thought and skill that goes into a handmade gift. I'll ponder the idea for a few more weeks.

Sister Socks Started

Well, I guess the "slump" has passed. I finished casting on my sister's socks this weekend while watching Firefly on Hulu. These are great TV/movie knitting since they are simple 2x2 rib. I just keep an eye on the tangling of the two yarns and remember to switch colors every 9-10 rows.

The colors really remind me of a fruit smoothie. I'll start the second sock with the strawberry color, rather than the apricot, so the socks will be fraternal twins. They'll have opposite colors on their heels and toes too.

Well, maybe not nothing after all....

For some odd reason, I felt compelled to pick out a round and a half of knitting on Errold's Grove so I could start knitting it again. That took about 45 minutes, which completely by chance perfectly coincided with the length of an episode of Stargate SG-1 on Hulu. I almost started to knit the first round after the ripping back, but wisely decided that turning right around and screwing it up after I fixed it probably wasn't a good plan. It'll still be there tomorrow. As my reward for cleaning up my house.

I'm on call all weekend and the weather is expected to be horribly rainy. I potentially have guests coming next weekend and, with the current H1N1 flu outbreak, may not have any tidying up time this week, nevermind cleaning the boxes o' stuff out of the living room. So this weekend is major clean out/up time with laceknitting rewards. I figure a round of lace for every hour of cleaning is a nice ratio of work to play.