Winning the Race!

I won.! My goal was to finish 24 inches of Candlelight scarf within 7 days and I finished in 5 days! It was a race to the finish and I won! I am blocking it today.

I really need to work on completing my UFO(Unfinished Objects). I have so many and I am starting to forget how to do them, so I thought I would make a concentrated effort to knock them off one by one.

Although……I keep seeing new ideas and projects that I would love to make. Interweaves’ Knitting Daily has come out with the results of its Reader’s Choice poll for the Best Of Interweave Knits and has posted them for free. One of the designs I have fallen in love with since I’ve seen it and have been trying to find the sold out magazine to get the pattern to no avail. I was thrilled when I saw it and downloaded it as fast as I could…..the Swallowtail Shawl. I had put it in my Ravelry queue a long time ago. Photo from Interweave Press: http://www.interweaveknits.com/preview/2006_fall.asp

I’ve been trying to figure out what in my stash is worthy of being the Swallowtail shawl. Finally, it hit me. I am spinning the handdyed merino on my wheel right now. I am spinning it fine, trying to decide if I want it to be 2-ply or 3-ply. Since merino will shrink and felt if mishandled, I don’t dare make a fitted garment out of it. A beautiful shawl will be perfect.

Last weekend my husband and I went to the movies and I was desperately trying to find something I could knit in the movies. In vain, I could not find anything thing already on needles, so I decided to use up my spinning stash and grabbed a few balls of handspun wool and #8 circulars and headed out the door. On the way I cast on for a simple striped hat. By the end of the movie, about two hours later, I finished about 5 inches of hat. Today I finished the rest. I like how it looks. In the dark, its hard to count the rows, so I guessed and thus the result, but I still like it. It is made of a Cotswold wool and an unknown mix of wool for the other colors.