This past weekend was extremely productive, in the sense that I got both my ongoing projects done, and got a start on two more!  First, the finishes…

This is the mystery shawl I started in the beginning of June. The pattern is designed by Kirsten Kapur of Through The Loops.  If you have reasonable lace skills, you may want to give it a try!  Although the pattern is written for knitting with two colors, there is no stranded colorwork whatsoever – you change yarns at row ends.  Quite a few people in the MKAL also knit it with just a single color, and it looked beautiful that way too.  Although I’m not much for the shawls, my current project listing non-withstanding, I was interested to take part in this one.  This November I am going to a knitting retreat in Juneau where Kirsten will be the teacher, so this seemed like a good opportunity to see what her style is and so on.  I haven’t been to a knitting retreat before, so I’m interested to see how this all turns out. You will definitely be hearing about it! Anyway – the pattern was very clear and well written, just enough difficulty to keep things interesting but not too complicated at all.  The sky blue gradient yarn is from one of my favorite dyers, Gnarledpaw, about whom I will definitely be writing much more later. The lovely photo is by my Mom,who took this shot as I had it spread out on the table for showing off purposes.

Second, the Sanquhar gloves are finished!  This pattern and kit are by Beth Brown-Reisel.  I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. I would definitely make another pair of these in the future.  They are very warm, being two strands of wool and pretty tightly knit.  I might go for slightly less crunchy wool next time, but then again, maybe not.  I suspect these will be pretty hard wearing.  They are a tiny bit big for me, so maybe the next size smaller needles next time?

So with both those project finished, I started a Leif shrawl, which is in fact very nearly done, and another pair of socks.  The next time you hear about the shrawl, it will probably be finished.  Probably this weekend.  The socks are getting a much slower start.  I’m trying some different methods for this next installment of the Sock Experiment – more on that later.

Happy Knitting!