Late to the party.

Good news! New ear-worm.

"Good Old Reliable Nathan" Detroit, in Guys and Dolls, complains that he doesn't order Mindy's cheesecake or strudel because they're so popular.  "It makes me," he observes, "feel like I'm playing the favorite."

Did you know there are over 24,500 Clapotis shawls on Ravelry?  Playing the favorite, indeed. Which explains why it's taken me so long to make one.

Anything can happen, though, with the right inspiration. In this case, the latest Yarnathon at Eat.Sleep.Knit.

Let me back up a bit. It's a sad and sorry truth that this long-neglected blog is my only foray into social media (for some reason, in my head, Ravelry doesn't count).  Which means I've pretty much ignored past E.S.K. Yarnathons.  Things happen on Facebook and Instagram and I don't do either of them.  And Ravelry doesn't count because, while I'm a member of any number of groups, I never participate in any of the discussions, never post to any of the threads and, in point of fact, almost never update my own projects.

But this time, perhaps as an outgrowth of that knitting for myself binge I've been on, I've decided to try to do a little bit to help my team, which tends to languish in last place.  While I may wonder if my attempts to help may only guarantee my team's continued poor standing, not unlike the way I invariably slow any checkout line I choose in the grocery store, I have opted to participate in a knitalong. 

Yep. Me. Knitalong. Really.

The rules for this one are, any project by a Canadian designer published before 2010, with yarn purchased from E.S.K., and cast on no earlier than July 1.

I'm amazed at how fast this knit up.  Truly, like the wind.

It's sock/fingering yarn from that previously mentioned 7 Deadly Spins yarn club. I have absolutely no idea what pattern was sent along with this yarn.  Yes, sent.  This was before download-the-PDF days, so patterns came as hard copy with the yarn shipment.  That's how old this yarn is.

This yarn.  Right.  The also previously mentioned Unique Sheep Luxe (now discontinued) in Pride.  Specifically, going from orange-est to purple-est, Pride 1, Pride 2, Pride 3 and Pride 4.   

Somehow, it feel appropriate to have knit this old, old, Knitty pattern with yarn that is probably almost as old.

It's been a blast.  Like 30,000 Frenchmen, I guess 24,000+ Ravelers can't be wrong.

And I finished before KAL deadline. Whoohoo! Go me.

Made it!

Not that I was worried.

Except I was.

I measured. That last little bit is 74 inches.

Some might call it luck.  I'm going to pretend I planned it so perfectly.

I actually finished this Saturday evening, and I have a post with a picture of it blocking that I promise I'll finish and publish, probably tomorrow. I just didn't want to leave you all in suspense.

Knit Faster

Still catching up to myself.  Pretend I remembered to publish on time this time. That or pretend you're time-traveling and it's really 7/13.

I had a plan for this shawl.  A little flying by the eat of my pants, perhaps, but still a pretty realistic, or at least simple, plan.  I have 4 skeins in what back then (sometime in 2007) was called a gradient set - Unique Sheep Luxe in Pride 1,2,3, and 4 - purchased from Eat.Sleep.Knit. as part of the long defunct 7 Deadly Spins Club.  Starting with the orange-est, the idea is (was) to knit through a skein, magic knotting it to the next skein until I finished. 

I thought I was being a smart knitter.  I noticed that the beginning of the shawl increased and the end of the shawl decreased. So I marked where the transition between the "increase section" and the "knitting even section" and where the first skein actually ended. Turned out, the marking wasn't so helpful. 

Weighing the skein after only one row of working even (which frankly was only a bit of knitting paranoia) was. Or so I thought.

I knit blithely then through the rest of the first skein and the next two.  The knitting was fast and fun.  The color changes were a little more clearly defined than I had hoped, but so it goes.  I started the 4th skein and knit happily through I forget how many repeats and then thought I had, perhaps, better weigh it. It was a little underweight, but that was all right becasue I had only just started a repeat and could tink back a few rows.  No big deal. So I did and then reweighed the skein.  Still a gram or so light, but I didn't want to give up the length I would lose if I frogged a full repeat.

That was then. Now I'm nervous.  I've got at least 20, maybe 25 rows to go.  I know I'm decreasing all the way, but only a single stitch each row and I'm having serious doubts about whether I'm going to make it.

Good thing this shawl is a fast knit.

Shawl Crazy

 I wrote this on the 10th and forgot to publish. Yeesh.  Clearly need to get back in the blogging mindset. Anyway.

Such an annoying ear-worm lately.  "Drum Crazy" from Irving Berlin's Easter Parade.  Don't get me wrong.  I think Fred Astaire is amazing and getting the bunny away from that Little Lord Fauntleroy wannabe was brilliant, but really.  For days?  And days?  Mae West was wrong.  Too much of a good think is just annoying.

I blame it on the title of this post.  I'm hoping that once I write this up, I'll at least get a new ear-worm.

Most of my yarn adventures this past year plus have gone undocumented.  Partly because I've been crocheting huge afghans for the parish Christmas Market raffle and let's face it, there's only so much one can say after the 8th repeat or twelfth square.

Lately though, like from the beginning of summer, I've been feeling this compulsion to knit selfishly.  As in, knit for me.

To that end, I find I have no fewer than 5 shawls in various stages.

Behold.

Each one has a story behind it (of course).

Some are recent projects and some have surfaced from the depths.

Some are still mere concepts. 

One, though.  One has really got me going. We're talking knit like the wind.

More to come.  Really.