Mid-summer round-up

(I love Michelle's caption for this photo -- Stop: Mitten time!)

It's August, and I just finished my Vinterblomster mittens. They'd been done but for the thumbs for the last couple of months, and I finally picked them up and did it. I'm not madly in love with them, but I like them and I'll wear them. I like that they are lightweight (two layers of sock yarn). They would've looked better with a lighter grey, but no biggie. I'm glad they're done. When projects linger, I start to feel stressed out.


I also took a photo of my (languishing) February Lady Sweater, which I started knitting when I was out in B.C. -- and which I haven't touched since I got home. The wool is Peer Gynt, which is much coarsar than what most people have used for this sweater. I think it can work. If I ever work on it again.


Before I headed to Toronto two weeks ago, I told you I was talking a ball of alpaca and the pattern for Matilda. I spent most of the train ride working on that project, but it has since been frogged. The yarn (the mysterious alpaca I bought at Birkeland Bros. in Vancouver) was too heavy for what I wanted; plus I wasn't enjoying knitting with it because it was a little greasy and still had guard hairs in it. Who wants to knit with alpaca that isn't soft? Not me. Here's how Matilda looked on the train; I was enjoying the pattern, but that yarn was all wrong:


In the last few days I've started a brand-new project, and believe it or not, it's not a shawl. Remember when I bought a bunch of charcoal Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock and thought I could crochet the Butterscotch Cardigan? Well, I made the back piece, and I ended up with 15 fewer stitches than I was supposed to have. Now, I think I could probably figure out how to do the decreases correctly, but I no longer feel the need to make this particular sweater. I still wanted to make a cardigan with this yarn, though, because I love the yarn (and because buying nine skeins of it was quite the splurge!). So I turned to a pattern I've loved for ages, and I started swatching. I knit swatches, washed and blocked them, and it all looked good.


So I'm now knitting a Grannie Smith Cardigan! I like the idea that I'm turning (char)coal into diamonds. :) I'm starting with a sleeve, and so far it's looking good. Actually, the pattern had me at the picot hem.

I still have plenty of shawls in my queue, of course, and when I was in Ancaster last week I bought a skein of alpaca/silk Fino in the prettiest shade of light blue.


Why do I never think to have yarn wound into a ball when I'm at the yarn store? Arrgh. I have a ball winder, but Bill is my swift, and 875 yards of laceweight can get a little challenging to wind.

My Flock of Triangles quilt is still on the go, too; I've hand-quilted around almost every triangle, so I'm hoping to be attaching the binding in a week or two.

Equally exciting, but in a different way, is that for the first time in many months I find myself wanting to do schoolwork! This past year was a real struggle for me -- to the point where I doubted that I belong in grad school -- but I think I've turned a corner. I've planned another research trip to Toronto for later this month, and in the meantime I'm reading and thinking and feeling (tentatively) much better about things. So if I'm not blogging as much, it's because I'm being productive with my research. Hallelujah for that.