Finished knitting project -- Miami Vice Shawl

Here is a pic of the completed Miami Vice Shawl, stretched out on a towel to dry.  It opened up nicely and is sufficiently large.  Yes, it's a terrible photo -- the shawl lying in a sunbeam, no details clearly visible.  Maybe I'll take a better photo at some point and add it to this or a future post.

For the cast-off, I ended up doing a few rows of garter stitch and then a crocheted cast-off (single crochet in 3 st, chain 7).  It took a few tries to find a cast-off I liked, which means I dropped a stitch, oops, and had to fix it with one of the yarn ends.

The pattern has no errors, I don't think.  It was straightforward and clearly written.  I don't think I'd make it again, but it kept me reasonably well entertained for almost exactly a year of knitting.  I cast off roughly a year to the day of when I unraveled the project the yarn used to be and cast on for this one.

The shawl probably took about 900 yards of yarn.  The rest of the yarn is now in with the other sock yarn oddballs.

The dye ran/bled a little bit while it was soaking before getting blocked.  That is not atypical for Christy's yarn, and not atypical for pink dyes.

I'm glad this is done.  But now I need a new travel project. 

Finally, some socks!

Finally, I have knit some socks!  It's been quite a while since I've knit any.  These are knit with very thick yarn so they went quickly.  They're for a friend who wanted house socks, the kind that are closer to slippers, and indeed, the friend might eventually add felt soles of some sort to the bottoms.

I used my usual generic sock recipe.  I've knit enough socks that I don't really need an explicit pattern.

The yarn is Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride worsted weight, which is a single ply wool/mohair blend.  I've always liked it a lot.  Heck, some of my first socks were made from Lamb's Pride and they're still going strong.  For these socks, I used it 2-stranded.  And for whatever reason, was able to get a gauge of 4 stitches per inch.  Hopefully that will help with durability.

Maybe I'll knit more socks.  I probably don't have enough of this exact yarn combo for another pair of 2-stranded socks, but I do have skeins in other colors.

In other progress, I am almost done with my Miami Vice shawl.  I've finished all the pattern sections.  So now, I either do the bind-off, or I improvise and add more to the shawl.  I have probably about a quarter to a third of the second skein left, so enough for some improv.  But I'm very tired of this project and want to get it finished.  So chances are I'll follow the pattern, finish it up, and toss the remaining yarn in the sock oddball stash.  Someday I'll have fun with combining sock yarn oddballs into colorful socks or other projects.  I hope I'll like the shawl after I've blocked it.

After it's done, I'll have zero knitting projects except for the current charity hat.  No doilies, no sweaters, no shawls, no socks, no travel projects.  I'd better get dithering!  I need some projects ASAP!

I'm pretty sure my manufacturing-defect Nagy saxony wheel will go to its new home this month.  I hope the new owner is able to tweak her a bit more so that she becomes a more delightful spinning companion.

I also want to do some spinning (on a spinning wheel) if I get a chance in the next few weeks, just because.

In addition, I want to play around a bit more with support spindles.  I watched a bunch of videos of ethnic spinning, i.e., people in other countries who still use spindles for spinning the way their own grannies taught them.  I picked up some ideas I want to play around with to make my support-spindle spinning a bit more consistent.

Today I went to a handweavers guild sale.  I was hoping to get a belt shuttle or other small weaving tools, but those were fairly picked over by the time I got there.  I did buy a few books.  And, well, some yarn followed me home.  Most of it is fairly thick.  All wool, I think.  Mostly not at all soft.  Dunno if it's rug wool or if it would also be good for bags or knitted outerwear.  Dunno if I'll knit with it or weave some yardage for rugs and bags, or do some narrow-band weaving or other crafts.  I seemed to be in an autumn-y mood -- lots of grays and browns and autumn colors.