FO: Nymphalidea

I don't knit a lot of shawls because they take forever to knit and it's not worth it because I'll never wear them. Or so I tell myself every time I stick one in my queue. "Hmm, pretty" says my brain," but you know you'll never knit it". Well, take that brain, one shawl done in just over a week and it's super dooper wearable. Ha.

I know I mentioned in my last post that this was a very simple and compelling knit and that held true right til the end. I was even considering throwing in a few more repeats, just for fun (well mainly because I had a bit of yarn left really) but I have lots of projects that I'm itching to start so I didn't. I'll totally knit this again some day and I will probably make that one a bit longer and follow the instructions to make the top edge a little straighter from the extra pattern PDF that I, typically, didn't discover until I'd nearly finished. The blocking instructions are on the same PDF so I vaguely followed those. I could have got the top a little straighter, but I'm lazy and I'll mostly wear this like a scarf so no one will ever know.

Anyways, there's not much for me to add here. I loved knitting this and I love the finished item, it's so bright and cheerful how could I not?

Pattern: Nymphalidea by Melinda VerMeer

Despite having loads of projects I want to crack on with I have actually had a bit of trouble deciding what to cast on next. Really I should be getting on with my first Christmas knit, which was due on 28th Feb. I'd procrastinated about yarn for ages and kept changing my mind but I think I've settled on something from my stash now, so I will start that soon. I considered starting another shawl, Stratigraphy again by Melinda VerMeer, but unlike Nymphalidea that starts with casting on a buttload of stitches and I wasn't really in the mood for really long rows so I actually picked up my Greenwich socks instead and knit on them while I did some more procrastinating. And now I've finally finished the first one. It's only taken me since June! I wonder how long the second one will take?

 

Brightening things up a bit

Much as I generally love winter the weather here can currently be described in no other way than 'grey'. Although dreary and drab wouldn't be unfair descriptions either. So when picking new knitting and spinning projects I was clearly looking for something to provide my eyeballs with a bit of a pick me up. From my box of ready to go knitting projects I picked this bag

And from my big bag of fibre

I picked this

The pattern I had matched up with the yarn was Nymphalidea and I'm really chuffed with my choice. The rainbowy goodness of the Drops Delight is set off really nicely by the black stripes. The black yarn is some random Rowan 4-ply I bought on a cone from eBay years ago and I'm really glad to be finally using some of it. The pattern itself is really fun and the little sections make it seem like it is growing really fast. The short rows in it really help as no matter how long the rows get 4 out of 12 rows are 22 stitches or shorter, which is a welcome break as the rows get longer.

I haven't got quite so far with the fibre. There is 200g of South American of which I left 1/3 in white, dyed 1/3 neon pink and split the final 1/3 in half and dyed those bits orange and purple. The plan is to make a 3ply with one white strand, one pink strand and one strand with the orange and purple striping. In my mind this will be nice and bright with a subtle variation, only time will tell if it will work out that way. So far I've only spun a bit of the white, I'll spare you a photograph of that! I had a go at spinning with Cassie in the room, I figured she might be grown up enough to understand that she shouldn't touch. Five minutes later she had head butted the wheel while it was spinning, on purpose, and told me that she wanted to lick it so it went away again. My child is a nut.