Sunday, December 28, 2025

Possibly the final post for 2025

I think this is post number 50 for the year, which of course means number 50 since I returned to posting on this blog after the decade-long hiatus.

Here's another pic of my recently finished doily.  A place I was visiting had round tables so I draped it over to show off what it looks like when it's actually on a table.  The table would have needed to have been a little bit bigger to display it to perfection, but eh, that's OK.



I finished another charity hat.  This one is black, same pattern and needle size and everything else as I normally do.


This might be my last charity hat for a while until I can acquire more free yarn.  I have partial balls left but not enough to make a full hat with.  Maybe I'll use two strands and fewer stitches and crank out a few more.  We'll see.

Other than that, I've been working on my travel shawl when I'm traveling or at meetings or otherwise need to keep my hands busy.  I've also started to make some progress again on the Appledore gansey now that Lavori 07/30 is finished.  I'd like to get it done this winter so the recipient can get some use out of it while it's cold.  I won't include photos since they look a lot like last month's photos.  I really concentrated on finishing the doily these past few months, to the detriment of everything else.

Since this is quite likely to be the last post of 2025, why not do a bit of rambling about the past year, at least for those things that this blog is occupied with?

I acquired another rescue wheel this year, which came with a rescue rigid heddle loom.  So I did my first-ever rigid heddle weaving project.  The wheel is fixed up and spinning, too -- it's a very nice vintage wheel, very basic and plain but quite serviceable and steady.

I've done other spinning this year, too.  And I've also been knitting with handspun.  The fiber stash is roughly steady-state thanks to a bit of stash acquisition that happened at fiber fairs and elsewhere.  The fiber fairs are always a lot of fun and I like supporting local people, so no regrets even though I don't really need more fiber until after I've spun up some of what I got during my post-COVID restocking spree.

I learned how to do sprang and also explored several new-to-me tablet weaving techniques and braiding techniques.  Those are beyond the scope of this blog, though.

I did some knitting, too.  Duh.  Cat beds, travel shawls, hats, and, of course, doilies.  It was a productive year for doilies, ranging from small and quick to large and more time-consuming.  Hopefully I'll continue to knit doilies next year.  I want to knit some fingerless mitts for a friend so those are on my to-do list for "soon", and I want to finish the sweater I'm knitting so I can knit more.  I might want to knit another cat bed, too.

I ended up not knitting any socks this year.  Sigh.  I really do need to cast on another pair, but keep not doing it.  I like knitting socks but I keep choosing other things when it's time to start a new project.

The people I hang out with for knitting are a delight, as always, and it will bring me great joy to continue hanging out with them.  I still want to get involved with some of the local guilds, though in general, I'm not really a guilds type of person, so who knows?

What do I want to do next year?  The usual.  More doilies, more shawls, more hats, more mittens (and fingerless mitts), more socks, more sweaters, maybe another cat bed, plus anything else that strikes my fancy.  See?  The usual.

For spinning -- continue spinning, and continue using my handspun.  I think that some of my handspun would work very well for weaving if I feel like rigging up a loom.  What would I use the cloth for, though?  All I can think of is stuff like blankets.  I have no real interest in table runners or towels or placemats, nor do I need any woven scarves.  I don't want to make clothes from my handspun, I don't think.  Rugs could be fun but I'd probably need a sturdier loom than the little plastic vintage or really any kind of rigid heddle loom.  Hmm.

I'll try not to buy any spinning wheels this year, though no promises should something come my way.  I'd like to sell some of my rescued wheels that I don't use very often -- they deserve to be in the hands of people who will use them more regularly.

Maybe this will be the year I start dyeing again.  We'll see!  And hopefully I'll continue posting on this blog.

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Apparently Barbara Walker passed away about a week ago.  She was 95, so had a good long life, well lived.  She was one of the big names in knitting in the 1970s and 1980s, as women turned their intellectual abilities towards knitting and other similar crafts.  There's a lot to be said about so-called women's work, the feminism of the era, and the way that women who'd been restricted to women's work began to focus on and respect the worth of that work.  It's part of the whole ferment of that era -- feminism, civil rights, curiosity about other cultures, reclaiming old-fashioned skills that had fallen out of favor with mid-20th century modernizing, and everything else.

Barbara Walker is known for her collections of stitch patterns and also for her work on generating top-down templates for knitting various kinds of garments.  Her work in combination with Elizabeth Zimmermann's work were entirely liberating for me and many others.  I couldn't really follow most published patterns since I didn't fit the size range the patterns were in, and I couldn't get help from the store owners because I knit "funny" (i.e. continental style at a time when everyone around me did Anglo-American), and because I didn't like sewing pieces together.  I went looking for a book on how to design your own things, discovered Zimmermann and Walker, and never looked back.

The work of these new voices, along with the then-new interest in historic and ethnic knitting, helped to revitalize knitting in the 1970s to 1980s.  This is part of why knitting was such a big part of the early internet years.  Or pre-internet, depending on what you call things like bbs and delphi forums and early newsgroups and the like.  A lot of STEM majors in the university system were knitters, and of course they took those interests with them as the interconnectivity of the early internet started to develop and evolve.  Everything is of course related to everything, but modern knitting very much is a direct descendent of those knitting STEM majors and other knitting artists who were influenced by people like Walker.

Barbara Walker was also into feminist-focused mythology and tarot and other fun topics in feminism and spirituality, and apparently was active in modern dance.  She had a major impact in several fields.  I won't say it's a huge loss to the community -- she'd slowed down a lot in recent years, and she made her enormous contributions to each field decades ago and then moved on to yet other subjects -- but it's still a huge loss to all who knew and loved her, and she deserves a great deal of honor and respect for her many accomplishments over her very long life.  Everything she published about knitting is just as relevant today as it was when she wrote it.


Saturday, December 20, 2025

Lavori 07/30, a few bad pics and a full list of known chart issues/errors/typos

 DONE!!!!!  It's gorgeous, of course.  And it feels really good to know that this project is complete.


I took the above photo while standing up next to it, thus the foreshortening.  It really is circular.

It's about 5' in diameter, give or take a bit, and I used somewhat more than 1500 yards of this vintage #30 cotton thread.

I had no trouble getting it to block flat.


It was a lot of fun to knit -- relatively straightforward with an interesting development of the various motifs, and the intellectual challenge of identifying and fixing chart errors.

It was not easy to find a place big enough to block it that would also be safe from the cats.  If I do another large (or larger) doily, I'll need to think about blocking earlier in the process.

Since I always like to list this info:  there are 202 rounds plus the crochet cast-off, and 6 pattern repeats per round (12 pattern repeats per round starting in round 171).  The chart is NOT error-free.

As promised, here's my comprehensive list of chart errors, along with a couple of other things to note.

Lavori 07/30 Chart Errors, Quirks, Typos, etc.

The chart numbering jumps from round 191 to round 201.  There is no reason for this.  So, although the chart itself goes to round 210 (as charted), it's really only a 202-round doily (as counted).

There's an error at roughly round 165 that affects everything in the hex mesh area all the way through roughly round 191.  I'll discuss that below.

Round 55 -- missing V early in the pattern repeat (it's fairly obvious -- there are a lot of V-1-V maneuvers and one of the Vs is missing)

Round 93 -- missing 1 in the stem area in the middle of the pattern repeat (it's fairly obvious -- it should be O-1-O-1-O, but the second 1 is missing)

Round 97 -- there is an asymmetry on the outer sides of the 5-X-5 leaves.  On the right side, there's a single yarnover.  On the left, a double yarnover.  The single yarnover is the correct version.  Again, fairly obvious when you get there.

Round 105 -- missing yarnover at the very beginning of the pattern repeat, another fairly obvious error.

Round 113 --  another fairly obvious missing yarnover, just to the right of the flower.  There should be seven sets of double-yarnovers on each side of the flower.  Also, the flower really is slightly asymmetric here; each knit turns into a (yo, k1) to go from 13 to 26 stitches with no extra yarnover at the end, i.e., no chart error in this section of the pattern repeat.

Round 121 -- a missing yarnover in the middle of the hex mesh section to the left of the flower (i.e., there should be a double yarnover there, not a single yarnover), fairly obvious like most of the chart errors so far.

Round 123 --  a missing yarnover directly above the missing yarnover of round 121.

Round 127 --  a missing yarnover between the left side of the flower and the hex mesh section.  It should be (yo, sk2p) after all of the crossed stitches.  This took me a few minutes to figure out -- sure, there's an asymmetry, but I needed to count the stitches in the next round to decide whether I had a missing yarnover on the left or an extra yarnover on the right.  The next round requires two stitches at that spot, so a missing yarnover it is!

Round 135 --  2 errors in this row!  There's an extra yarnover to the left of the crossed-stitch section (the right side of the crossed-stitch section has the correct single yarnover), and also an extra yarnover in the center section of the leaves (there should be no double yarnovers in the leaf motif area, just single yarnovers)

Round 141 --  Missing yarnover at the very beginning of the pattern repeat.

Round 153 -- Missing yarnover at the very beginning of the pattern repeat.

Round 159 --  After the first set of leaves (and the skp, k3, k2t that finishes it off), the stitches at the beginning of the stretch of hex mesh are charted as yo, skp, k2t.  This should be symmetric with all the others, and the skp should be a double-decrease (sk2p, left-leaning to preserve symmetry).

Round 163 -- In the first set of leaves, the last leaf has a missing yarnover.  It should be (k4, yo, k-tbl, yo, k4) like all the other leaves in this round.

Round 165 through Round 191 or so -- see discussion, but the hex-mesh motif area has a serious chart error that affects this section of the chart from round 165 through 191 or so.  There are several possible fixes -- my approach is in the below discussion.

Round 169 -- There should be a 1Mv at the beginning of the round.  (In other words, the last stitch of round 167 doesn't get knit in round 168, but rather, moves to the beginning of round 169)

Round 173 -- there's a yarnover on one side of the hex mesh but not the other.  Whether it's an extra yarnover or a missing yarnover will depend on how one chooses to re-chart the hex mesh section of the pattern.  (For my choice to follow the chart as written as much as possible, it's a missing yarnover that needs to be added after the leaf tip at the beginning of the pattern repeat)

Round 175 -- For the second decreasing leaf motif (the one before the outer fans), there is an extra yarnover that shouldn't be there.  The leaf motif should be (skp, k7, k2t) and NOT (skp, k7, yo, k2t).

Round 177 -- Same as 175.  That second leaf should be (skp, k5, k2t) like the other leaves.

Round 179 --  Two chart errors in this round!  The first is the same as 175 and 177.    That second leaf should be (skp, k3, k2t) like the other leaves.  Also, the final growing leaf is missing a yarnover.  It should be (k2, yo, k-tbl, yo, k2) like the others in the round.

Round 201 (which should be labeled as round 193) -- First, note that the round numbering has jumped, with the previous round being labeled as 191.  There's no design-related reason for this; it just is.  Second, there is a missing yarnover at the end of the pattern repeat.

And I think that's it for the chart errors/typos I noticed!  There may well be a few I missed.  The pattern is mostly very logical and symmetric so it can be hard to notice one little missing or extra symbol in an area where it's obvious what one is supposed to be doing.

I also noted that there is some asymmetry where the middle leaf tip transitions into the flower stem.  It didn't mess up anything, so I just left it alone while remarking on it as one of the few places in the doily where things don't seem to be perfectly regular and symmetric.

Discussion of round 165 to 191 in the hex mesh area of the chart

In round 165, the hex mesh areas are different from each other.  One of them fits in with the stitch counts, but won't line up with round 171, when the chart officially goes to 12 pattern repeats per round.  The other lines up with round 171, but doesn't fit in with the stitch counts.

The problem has to do with how the hex mesh motifs line up from round to round.  The ones in the 6 PR/round chart area don't align properly with the ones in the 12 PR/round chart area.

So, some recharting is necessary in this part of the chart until it can gracefully rejoin the actual printed chart.

To summarize what I did, I added an extra chart motif (i.e. like the area with the correct number of motifs for the existing stitch count), and then continued with that extra motif all the way to round 181.  For rounds 183 to 191, I kludged a bit to keep the area looking pretty reasonable while trying to converge with the published chart.  After round 191, I could resume working the pattern as charted.


The above is the chart I eventually ended up using for the hex-mesh area (starting at round 171, in the 12 PR/round part of the chart).  It's not the only possible approach!

In the above chart, the rounds with stars to the left of the round number are where leaf tips join the hex mesh area.  Also, I used a basic symbol for the double decrease on the chart but did directional double decreases as I knit.  Also also, I didn't mark where the hex mesh area starts or ends compared to the beginning/end of the round since it's only important for the first/last pattern repeat, and I didn't mark anything where a double yarnover crosses the beginning/end of round nor where the last stitch of a previous pattern round gets incorporated into the first stitch of the next pattern round.  This chart was for my own personal use and I adjusted automatically without needing to explicitly mark it.

I started this doily in late April, finished the knitting in late November (with a break for angst-ing over how to rechart the hex mesh area in the outer rounds) and finally blocked it yesterday.  It's been a fun journey with a beautiful piece of lace to show for it at the other end.  I like the symmetry of the pattern, and I love the way that carefully stacked increases and decreases are used to warp and scallop various parts of the design.  As is common with a Niebling design, different stitch patterns and increase/decrease patterns are used to add textural contrasts.  I'm very glad that I tackled this project.  Not only is the result well worth the effort, I have confidence and faith that I can handle other large designs I've been interested in.  Will I do so immediately?  I don't know, nor do I know what doily I might end up doing next.  We'll see!

And now....  On to the next project!


Monday, December 15, 2025

Still no doily blocking

My doily weighs a bit more than 110g, which, given the estimate of 18g of thread per 250 yards, puts it between 1500 and 1600 yards.

I still haven't blocked it.  When I stretch it out for an estimate, it looks like it'll be at least 5' in diameter.  This is too big for the boxes I've been using.  So I got out my mats.  This took a while since they'd been in a semi-inaccessible location for a few years and I had to enlist assistance to retrieve them.  They're roughly 1 meter square so should work for a doily that's less than 2 meters in diameter.

Now I'm looking for an area where I can lay down 4 mats (2x2).  I used to live in such a place but that was then and things are different now.  I had hoped that I'd be able to do it in a room where I could close the door.  However, such a space does not seem to exist here.  Next I will try the main living area.  This means I'll need a way to keep the cats from helping, either before or during or after the blocking process.  No sharpening their claws.  No puking on anything.  No lying down on the doily and accidentally knocking out a bunch of pins.  Plus the room will be inaccessible for other uses while the doily is drying.

Dang.

It's possible I could use a room behind a closed door if I do some major furniture re-arranging.  But even then, quite possibly not.  The space is a few inches too narrow and I don't want to try and bend or break the mats.

It's also possible I can tape together some boxes in way that will keep them from bending when I pin out the doily.  I might try that because I'm deeply dubious about blocking in the main living area where cats can wander freely, even if I cover the blocking mats with a sheet or something while the doily is drying.

I don't want to fold it in half or quarters to block it.

We'll see.

This means that I need to think carefully before doing any future large doilies so that I have a good blocking strategy.

I also need to figure out where to store the mats since I'm not putting them back where they were.


Sunday, November 30, 2025

Lavori 07/30 progress report (knitting is finished!) plus a few other ramblings

I've been busy so not much has happened lately.

The biggest bit of progress was finishing the knitting of Lavori 07/30!!!!!  (yes, 5 exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind)   It wasn't as quick as I had predicted in my last post.  I made a knitting error in a difficult-to-fix area, several rounds before I noticed its existence.  I took the knitting back, stitch by stitch, until I felt comfortable about trying to fix it.  The fix isn't perfect but it'll be pretty unnoticeable.  But after that, I cruised to the end, all several thousand stitches left to knit.  Several days later, I had a few hours available, and was able to do the crochet cast off.  (hopefully without dropping any stitches, which would be a very unhappy blocking surprise)

I've hidden some of the ends and am not sure how many more I'll bother with.  While knitting, I ended one ball and started the next by tying simple overhand knots.  They're relatively unobtrusive unless I go looking for them.  Heck, I had trouble finding my final end which was poking out on the cast-off round.  There's so much thread and so much else going on that any one little thing is not usually all that noticeable.  Hopefully that's also true of the areas where I imperfectly fixed knitting mistakes!  I fixed a lot of my knitting mistakes perfectly so those definitely won't be visible after blocking.

I'm not sure when I'll have the time to get it blocked.  I'll need a few hours and a fairly large space, and maybe more pins.

I have no idea how much thread I used -- my estimate is in the 1500-2000 yard range, give or take a bit, but I'll need to weigh it to get a better estimate.  I did manage to finish without needing to use any full balls of thread.  That means that I have 1050 yards (3 full balls of 350 yds each) of this Clarks Big Ball #30 crochet cotton (plus a few small partial balls) to use for a future doily.

On the whole, this was a very straightforward knit except for the inaccuracies in the chart.  I'll probably repeat this and bloviate a bit longer about it all when I do the final report after blocking.



Here's a photo, unblocked, showing that I have indeed done the cast-off.

Other than that, I, umm, still haven't done much.  I was fairly motivated to finish the doily and barely touched my sweater.  I still haven't completely decided how to handle the back vs the front, but I want to start knitting on it again so that may well start up again soon.  I won't bother to share a photo since it looks like a generic blob of knitting, nothing too interesting.

The travel shawl is slowly growing.  I made a mistake somewhere in the most recent increase (to over 300 stitches per row), but it was easy to kludge something without knowing exactly where the mistake is.  I was off by a stitch when I started the next set of eyelets, a very quick fix.  Dunno if I have too many or too few stitches -- I'll figure it out later.  Again, it does not matter at all in the grand scheme of things.



I've started to think about future projects but haven't really decided on anything yet.  I don't want to think too hard about doilies until this one is really and truly done.  I should start more projects -- maybe a hat or some socks, fingerless mitts or full mittens, something like that.  And the spinning wheel plus my fiber stash are whispering.  But it's also a busy time of year and I don't always have space for works in progress unless they are small and easily stored away when necessary.

And that's really about it for knitting (and other suitable blog topics) this month.


Sunday, November 16, 2025

The latest charity hat and a Lavori 07/30 progress report

Another charity hat is finished and ready to donate.  I'll have to look at the dwindling acrylic stash to see what color the next hat will be.  This one is a nice dark blue.


Lavori 07/30 doily progress -- I'm almost DONE!!!!!!  So exciting!  I have two more rounds of knitting to go (a pattern round and an intermediate round) and then it'll be time to do the crochet cast-off.  After that will come the challenge of finding a place (and the time) to block the doily, but I'll worry about that when I get there.

There are no further chart errors.  I'll give a full run-down of chart errors along with a re-post and re-discussion of my hex-mesh charting fix as part of the final report once everything is blocked and beautiful.

I have approximately 2400-2500 stitches left to knit.  That'll take a few hours, and the crochet cast-off will also take a few hours, and ditto for the blocking.  I believe there's enough thread in the current ball of thread to get me to the end, and if not, then I'll unravel the filet crochet project that I cut off the previous ball of thread, and use that to finish the crochet cast-off.  Dunno how long this will all take, but hopefully I'll be done before December, and if not, then before January.

It's been a big project for me -- nearly 7 months since I cast on, so far.  There was about a 4-6 week period where little knitting got done because I hadn't yet committed to any specific rechart of the problematic hex mesh area, but other than that, I've made slow but steady progress.

So.  That means I do have the stamina for large doily projects and no longer need to feel intimidated by the time commitment involved.  There's at least one >300-round doily (or tablecloth) I've been eyeing as well as many that are in the 150-250 round range.  Dunno what I'll do next.  I'm still very focused on finishing this doily now that I'm so close to the end.  I don't want to get too distracted.

There's not much else to report.  The Miami Vice shawl is growing.  The Appledore gansey is still sitting there, waiting for me to stop dithering about whether to do short-rows on the back or to contour the front neckline or both.  I also need to figure out many inches I'll need to knit to get to the shoulders.  Luckily, the intended recipient is around so I can take a few measurements and also try on the sweater when I get close.

I need more knitting projects, not counting the doilies.  Maybe another cabled hat?  Or toe-up socks with a self-patterning yarn?  Or another cat bed?

I haven't done much spinning lately, nor warped up a new rigid heddle weaving project.  There's a batch of Jacob/llama in my stash that's been tempting me lately.  I've already spun a different batch of Jacob/llama that I bought at the same time from the same person (but different sheep and llamas, probably, given that the roving color is different).  It made some very nice yarn.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this stuff spins compared to that.  But maybe I'll spin something else first.

And that's it for this post.


Friday, November 7, 2025

Lavori 07/30 progress report (converging back to the chart)

I've gotten through all of the re-charted hex mesh area and have re-converged with the Lavori 07/30 chart as written, yay!!!

It's also the point where the chart numbering jumps from 191 to 201 for no obvious reason.  Indeed, there is absolutely no obvious reason at all, so I guess this counts as another chart typo!

I have roughly 10 rounds of knitting left to go, almost certainly less than 20,000 stitches.  The rounds are steadily getting longer, of course.  They're currently hovering at around 1200 stitches per round.  Also, I'm done with the hex mesh area completely.  The only double yarnovers left are the ones between the outer fan segments.  The leaf garlands are on their final leaf.  And the outer fans are growing.

It's kind of fun to watch what happens to the leaf motifs as there are increases on one side and decreases on the other.  Yup, they start leaning rather quickly.  I hope it all blocks out the way it's supposed to.

There is a chart error/typo in round 201!  Well, two, actually, if you count the mislabeling of the chart (round 193 is instead labeled as 201, and that discrepancy will continue for the rest of the doily).  In Round 201:  There is a missing yarnover at the end of the pattern repeat.

Here's my handwritten chart of what I ended up doing in the problematic hex mesh area of the outer rounds.  You can see eraser marks from some of my previous charts.  It's not like there's only one way of handling the issue, after all!  Probably any of my charts would have worked, and even with this one, there are a couple of variations I could have done on particular rows.

Lavori 07/30 partial rechart variation


I started this chart at round 171, when the Lavori chart transitions to 12 pattern repeats per round.  Everything up through round 181 is the same as the published chart except that there is one extra hex mesh motif per round.  Everything after round 191 is the same as the published chart.  So my rechart mostly applies to rounds 183 through 191.

This only shows the hex mesh area, not the rest of the doily.  Also, for some rounds, the hex mesh area is partly at the beginning of the pattern repeat and partly at the end, and I didn't bother to indicate that since I could use my own judgment pretty easily.  There will be 1Mv moves (move the stuff at the end of the pattern repeat to the beginning) every now and then, which again, I didn't indicate, and ditto for the places where the pattern repeat begins and ends with a yarnover.

The rounds I've marked with stars are where leaf tips (which are double decreases) get incorporated into the hex mesh.

The little vertical lines below the center motif, below round 171, are to delineate the central motif so I could keep things relatively symmetric and lined up all the way up the chart.

I tended to do directional double decreases where it made sense, but didn't chart them out specifically.

Dunno if this'll help anyone, but I thought I'd share it anyway.  It might go into my final post on this doily where I also list all the chart errors and typos.

I've already started thinking about future doilies.

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I finished the charity hat I started a few weeks ago.  It's already been donated.  On to the next one!


The above pic shows it with the brim down.  The brim can be turned up to cover the ears, or the hat can be worn as a slouch hat.  Since it's all k1p1 ribbing, the brim can be turned up as much or as little as the recipient wants.

I'm still working on the Miami Vice shawl.  Tomorrow should offer some good travel-knitting opportunities.  I'll have the shawl with me and also supplies to start the next charity hat.  Plus other non-knitting things to do, though I'm pretty sure I won't bring a spinning project.

The sweater is still sitting as I dither over how I want to handle the neck opening (so that the back is higher than the front).

And that's it for me today!

Sunday, November 2, 2025

A bit of spinning and the first progress report of the month

I had written that the Navajo-Churro/Icelandic roving that I bought at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival a few weeks ago was calling to me.

So I spun it.



It's not the world's softest yarn, but that's OK!  I had some trouble spinning it -- a bit of VM in the roving, areas that were clumpy vs areas that drafted smoothly, and so on.  But even though I was pessimistic after spinning the singles, plying took care of the irregularities.  It looks and feels fairly even.  I have about 200 yards of 2-ply from about 4 ounces of fiber.

Here's a pic of the roving blob.



The color is a nice medium to dark brown, with some of the fibers being a bit lighter or darker brown.

I'm not sure what I'll spin next.  But hopefully something soon.

Here's the roll-call progress report on other projects, complete with pics for a few of them:

Lavori 07/30 doily -- I have decided how to approach the next few rounds and am making slow progress.  I got sidetracked by other things so haven't worked on this for a few days.  It's exciting to be so close to done but daunting that these last rounds still have a few tens of thousands of stitches left to do.



Miami Vice travel shawl -- I've finished the first set of eyelets and am about to increase stitches again.  The variegation isn't doing anything annoying, yay.  I don't know how far I am in the pattern or how much yarn I've used, but that's OK.  I like this pattern/yarn combo enough to keep knitting.  I'm not sure what I'll do when I reach the end -- add a sideways knit edging?  It'll depend a bit on how much yarn is left and how tired I am of the project by then.  There are hundreds of yards of yarn between now and then.


Appledore gansey -- I've done the underarm gussets and am ready to split the front and back.  I'm dithering about whether to do a shaped neckline in the front, short rows in the back, or both.



Charity ribbed hat -- making progress whenever I need some mindless knitting.  I don't have a pic of this to share.  It's pretty basic, just a k1p1 ribbed hat in a dark green worsted-weight Red Heart acrylic yarn.

Hmm, I don't have enough projects going.

That's about it for the knitting/spinning progress!  I've been doing other things so it's not like I'm only sitting around and twiddling my thumbs.  But they are things that I don't tend to write about in this blog.