Mystery almost revealed

As Sunflowerfairy was frogging her mystery shawl, I was repeating the one more row, you can do this, one more row mantra, trying to finish my shawl. I did feel cheated when the rows started getting longer and longer, and I know there are more beautiful versions out there. Nevertheless, I wanted to finish this, if only because frogging it would have made a mess of beads in my house. And, as EZ famously said, "it will fit somebody".

Having just bound off the shawl, I have no amazing pictures to show you yet. I am however, glad I finished the shawl when I did, because this is how much yarn I have left over:



Less than 2 yards.

More ferny goodness

Some people get up on Black Friday to sit in the cold night, hoping to buy some cheap junk, as if we don't all have enough junk already. I will never be one of those people. I got up with the gorgeous morning sun streaming through the (unwashed) windows, read the news, drank a cup of coffee, then finished this:

(picture of hat)

Pattern: Ganomy Hat by EZ, in The Knitter's Almanac
Yarn: Opal Gems Sport, color fern, leftovers from J's socks
Needles: bamboo DPNs and metal circular size 2 1/2 (why not?)
Comments: Had to adjust the pattern to match the gauge in sport weight; very easy to do. It's such a quick and satisfying pattern I didn't even have time to show you "in progress" pictures.

I still hate this yarn. I was hoping I'd run out for the hat, so I wouldn't have any leftovers, but there is still a small ball of fern-green yarn. Maybe I'll throw it away or something. It's such a lifeless, inelastic yarn. Sure it's shiny and somewhat soft, but it just doesn't do anything for me. Booooring.

This brings the total of works in progress to 3! Gauss would have been so proud of me for being industrious, orderly and whatever else. Remember this:



I picked it up earlier this week, and since I'm on clue 7 I will probably finish it soon. I don't know how I feel about this shawl, but it will be warm, it will be finished, and there are times when that should be enough.

The reason for not blogging...

.. is knitting, believe it or not. I've been trying to finish a pair of socks for J's birthday, so every knitting moment has been dedicated to actually knitting. The socks are the Diagonal Cross-Rib socks from Favorite Socks, and they are much further along than this picture indicates:



In fact, the socks are almost done. Which is good, because 1) I am very sick of them, and 2) the birthday is on Monday. I'll post the full project details on Monday, plus the lessons learned (I don't like Louet Gems, and I'm never knitting on a deadline again).

I will end this short post with a nugget of priceless wisdom: the body of a sweater is much wider than the sleeves:



On the bright side, having knit the sleeves makes knitting the body much faster: I've memorized entire rows of the pattern!

Busy, busy times

I got a just a tiny bit of knitting done this weekend; a few rows on the cashmere lace scarf, not even worth a picture. On the other hand, I did get a lot of politics done. If only I'd been born in the US, I could have made a great president some day...