It's been so long since I've been able to show off a finished knitting project here on the blog and today I have two!
The first I want to show off is The Golden Hours Shawl from Andrea Mowry of Drea Renee Knits. I started this shawl back in the deep dark days of January. Of course I was thinking a worsted weight shawl would fly off the needles and I'd be cozy warm in no time for the rest of winter. I was excited to start and chugged along at a good pace at the start, but then, as seems to be par for the course lately, I found it to be a struggle to keep going. I wanted the shawl but the knitting took significantly longer than anticipated. Once thing I did do was to weave in the ends as I went so it wouldn't be such a daunting task upon completion of the knitting and boy was I glad when I finished the cast off to only have a few ends left to go.
I actually finished this shawl mid-April on the drive into the city for the little boys skills camp morning put on by the Blue Bombers. The boys had to be on the field at 8:30am, there was still snow on the edges of the field and a crisp breeze was making the 0 C temps feel even colder. I was ever so glad to be able to throw my shawl on as an extra layer of warmth while I watched from the stands.
... and then it took me more than a month to actually block it.
Despite my struggles, The Golden Hours is a straight forward, easy to knit pattern. I chose to use stash yarns for mine and I love how it came together. The teal blue came from my Mom actually, left over from a sweater she knit a few years ago (that also came home with me!). The purple was a random skein I'd picked up at the LYS at some point and the light blue/green was very old stash from about ten or more years ago.
My other newly finished project is the Dubois hat by Andi Satterlund of Untangling Knots.
This one I started in February as soon as the pattern was released. Being a hat I honestly assumed it would take me no more than a week to knit. I wildly underestimated how long it would take, and had to completely rip it out and start again a month ago because between my lagging knitting mojo, my inability to focus and a pattern that had a few different cables going on left me thoroughly lost where I was and a with a whole lot of mistakes.
I felt pretty discouraged that I had to rip it out, but once I got going again it went much easier. Still slow going, but at least with no confusion and the cables seemed a lot more intuitive the second time. I cast this one off on Saturday evening and set it to blocking first thing on Sunday morning! (having, of course, learned my lesson with the shawl blocking procrastination! LOL) I'm going to really love the warmth of my Dubois and it'll be so nice to have a fresh new hat to make life more bearable when the temperatures plummet again next winter!
I'm going to continue to try and knit regularly. My favourite "along" the Untangling Knots Outfit Along, has been announced recently and will start June 1st. Instead of having an "official" set of patterns - although we were always welcome to choose our own anyway - this year's OAL theme is Works in Progress. I don't have any sewing WIPs, but I have my Populuxe Cardigan that just needs sleeves and my Mary Mead Cardigan that is part way through the body. Both cardigans were started during previous Untangling Knots knit alongs over the past year so I'm hoping to finish both during the OAL. I'm not sure what the sewing component will be yet, but likely a dress of some sort.
Here's hoping for more frequent wooly posts in the future months to come. I'm really hoping that these two finished projects will really kick start my mojo back to where it once was. Maybe I'll even start spinning again one of these days...
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