Left hanging...ouch

That's how I felt after finishing Diana Gabaldon's Echo in the Bone. It is around 800 pages long and so many things were still left unfinished. Her books are usually very long, but I read through them quickly. The story flies by and I just need to know what's going to happen to the characters. And now I'm left waiting for another 4 years. That's about how long it takes her to publish another one in this series. In the meantime, I've picked up King's Under the Dome. Yes, it's another huge book. I tend to gravitate towards books of this length.

There has been plenty of knitting too. I knit my daughter a few shawls. She's asked for a shawl a few times lately. I'm hesitant to give her anything in laceweight that will easily snag. She's still 8 and likely to use it to tie around herself, her dolls, to some railing, etc. I picked out a few pretty skeins of sock yarn and set out to find suitable patterns. What made this easy is that The Loopy Ewe's 4th quarter challenge is to knit a shawl. Many knitters have found patterns that will use only a skein of sock yarn. Perfect!

I started out with a free garter stitch based shawl pattern called Multnomah. I'm not a big fan of garter stitch, but this shawl is very soft and squishy. So far, my daughter loves it.




Pattern: Multnomah
Yarn: Perchance to Knit in Fleur
Needle: size 4
Blocked size: 56 inches across and 16 inches down the center back
Start: November 7, 2009
Finish: November 11, 2009

Next, I wanted something a bit more like the lace I knit for myself. For this yarn, I picked the Traveling Woman pattern. It starts with stockinette and ends with lace at the bottom edge. This pattern was very fast to knit. I think that I knit stockinette faster than I can knit garter stitch. I like the nicely rounded back to this one. I might make this one in a larger size for myself.


Pattern: Traveling Woman
Yarn: Hazel Knits in Sailor's Delight (90 gms used)
Needle: size 4
Blocked size: 58 inches across and 15 inches down the center back
Start: November 10, 2009
Finish: November 11, 2009

I'm still knitting socks. I started this one to go with the Solid Socks group color for November. It's brown this month and I've had this yarn in my stash for long enough. I used this cable stitch that reminds me of pretzels. yummy. This yarn is thicker than usual sock yarn, so this pattern went by quickly too. Right now, I'm using the leftovers from this skein to knit socks for my son in a basic knit/purl stitch pattern.


Pattern: by me
Yarn: Opal 6-ply solid (90gms used)
Needle: 2.5mm
Method: magic loop, 2 at once, Turkish cast-on, short row heel
Start: 11/4/09
Finish: 11/9/09

And I just finished this shawl yesterday! The sun was really harsh when I tried to take some photos, so I tried some indoor photography. Once again, Anne's pattern was flawless and easy to knit. I like how this is a knit until you run out of yarn type of pattern. I didn't knit that far, but it's good to keep in mind when I have a limited amount of yarn.

This was knit with one of the giant skeins of Nyoni that I bought last year. I had enough yarn to probably knit 2 more repeats, but I didn't need the shawl to be that big.

Pattern: Boxleaf Triangle by Anne Hanson
Yarn: Fleece Artist Nyoni in Moss (180 gms used)
Needle: size 5
Mods: Knit something between the medium and large size.
Blocked size: 74 inches across the top and 36 inches down the center back
Start: 11/12/09
Finish: 11/16/09

Up next, I have two more lace projects that I've just started today. The socks for my son that need to be finished. After that, I need to knit him a few more pairs of sport weight socks for this winter. He's grown out of most of his socks from last winter.