DesigKnit

My last class of the semester was on Monday…I’m officially half way through the MFA program! (Time flies, and all that…). I’ll have to do a quick “what I’ve been doing while I haven’t been knitting” post one of these days, but for now, let’s stick with the yarn.

I’m a little more than halfway through the shawl that I cast on in February. I did about 6 inches in February, 4 in March, and the rest of it one weekend in April when I just couldn’t make myself work on programming any longer.

I love the texture of the stitch pattern; it’s a diagonal version of a basketweave knit-purl pattern that I found in a Japanese stitch dictionary. Sometimes it looks almost like hexagons, sometimes like squares or diamonds, and sometimes like cables.

I just realized that I actually have two balls of yarn left for this project, but I think I’ll probably only use one. I debated going an inch or two wider, but held back to make sure I had enough yarn. Now I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t. I don’t think it will need the extra length, but we’ll see how it goes. I really love the yarn, so it won’t hurt to have an orphaned skein around.

We’re leaving for a trip to Florida to visit family on Friday, and I really only have today to get ready for the trip. With the shawl in it’s current mammoth state, it’s not exactly convenient to carry around (6  250 g skeins of yarn can start to get heavy, and it now takes up my whole bag…). So, I started looking around for a new project that could go along.

I’ve been wanting to pair this sunshiny yellow from Straight Fork Alpacas with a charcoal gray ever since I got it. I think that the carbonized bamboo that I plied up the other night might work, and I pulled a couple of other candidates from the stash as well.

I’m currently thinking Drachenfels by Melanie Berg – enough that I bought and printed out the pattern. I don’t really have time to think or plan on this one, so it’s probably best to just grab something off the shelf, and I love the modern look of her design.

I’m not sure about either the black or the beige yarn in the photo. If I’m working strictly from the stash, it’s the best that I have on hand; I’d like a little more gray in the beige, and a little less weight in the black. The black is a beautifully lustrous alpaca that I bought at Alpacapalooza while we were in Seattle, so it’s been in the stash for something like 8 years. I love it, but it’s made from the alpaca breed that has no bounce to it (I can never remember which is which), and it makes for a very dense and heavy skein. A shawl could be a good use for it, because I don’t have to worry too much about it holding its shape in the garment, and garter would be a good stitch base for a flaccid yarn. Still, but I’m a little worried that so much weight and slippery alpaca combined might make for a shawl that won’t stay on, and that would mean a shawl that I don’t wear.

So, we’ll have to see about those. Fortunately, I think I can probably just start at the other end of the shawl, and make the final call later. A fingering weight medium gray and black can’t be all that hard to find.

With that, I’m off, but I hope to be back again before too long!