Good Knitter, Bad Blogger

I've been a very bad blogger the past two weeks, but I have been an excellent knitter. Except for three days in the past two weeks, I haven't been anywhere without some project with me. For the first week it was a pair of socks that I was working on obsessively while I was waiting for the last of the snow to melt. (It has and there is currently no snow, but a lot of rain.)

For the last week, I have been working on a very special project. The project is so special that even my mom's cat decided that she had to help me out by laying on top of my knitting bag that my yarn was in. It is a lace shawl that I am making for my best friend's wedding present.

I have had some interesting difficulties with this shawl. Now, it is on a timeline (the wedding is in three weeks) and I kept running into trouble with the beaded lace border in the Mermaid's Shawl that I had first cast on to knit for her. I ended up frogging that whole thing last sunday and dragged out my favorite stitch dictionary to find a lace pattern that was easy to do and easy to memorize.

With those two things in mind, I ended up picking out the Old Shale stitch pattern (also known as Feather and Fan). I'm doing a garter stitch border on the sides of the shawl as well as the bottom and the top.

There has been a week worth's of knitting in this shawl so far. I have taken it to a college meeting (where I got to hold a desert fox) and it has been knit on during the Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug. I have knit at least two repeats on it a night and tinked back at least five different rows on it because I made stupid mistakes. The only place I won't knit on it is during my thirty minute break at my first job because the row is so long and I can't put it down in the middle of a row.

I am in serious love with this shawl. I am using the laceweight version of Knit Picks Gloss in Lilac. The lace is so cushy with the merino/silk blend and it shines in the sunlight. The lace is going to be nice and airy because I'm knitting it with US 7 needles. There is nothing I dislike about the shawl right now.

Right before I cast on for the shawl, I did to a Ravelry search to figure out how many stitches I should cast on for the pattern and I couldn't find any patterns. I know it is a really simple pattern and most people can think of a way for it to work like I did, but there are people out there that are highly dependent of patterns. So, when I finish it, I'm going to write up the pattern and put it up for free on Ravelry.