Please excuse me while I do my happy dance.

I can’t believe I’ve actually almost finished with this beautiful shawl. This is the Paisley Long Shawl from Fiddlesticks minus the fringe which will take a little bit to do but I’m so pleased with it. I did find one mistake as I was blocking it but I can live with it. Ain’t it purty?


If I get a picture of it tomorrow with the fringe I'll post again. It's huge. I can't find my tape measure (yeah, I know, I can't find any of the 50 or so tape measures that I own) but I reckon it's about 7 feet long and about 30 inches across. And I didn't even block it hard. The fringe will add about 11 more inches to the overall length but I think it will set it off beautifully. I have to reiterate that if you want a challenge knitting lace with the best instructions, this is the company to go for. Here's a link to the designs page. I actually bought the kit, something I don't normally do and I made the pattern in the garter stitch it called for, something else I rarely do. I will end up with almost a whole skein of yarn left over. In all fairness, they did recommend 2 skeins if you're not doing the fringe and 3 if you're doing the fringe. I got 3 skeins because I didn't want to get caught short. Nevermind. I think I already know what I'm going to do with the 3rd skein - about 600 yards' worth.

I’ve started a sweater with some yarn that I bought from Stitches a couple of years ago. It was on sale on a cone so I’m hoping that there will be enough for the sweater. Because it was on a cone, I was advised to skein it and wash it before I started working with it, which I did. I also decided I wanted to dye it. It was an oatmeal color but I thought this red might be pretty so I broke out the old kool-ade and dyed away. The red came out a real rustic color so I’m going to just do a basic, rustic pattern and I think I'm going to borrow heavily from the Portuguese Fisherman's sweater I found in the old magazine from the 70's.