I’m Knitting As Fast As I Can

This week’s “Five On Friday” is brought to you by my cell phone camera.

Since last Friday, I . . . .

. . . started a new sweater:

. . . went to a baseball game and put the cup holder on the back of the seat to good use:

. . . got a haircut (probably should have had the stylist take care of the grey, too):

. . . surreptitiously took a photo of the FLDS protest in front of the state courthouse while stopped at a red light:

. . . chose a yarn to use for Margene’s Feather Duster KAL:

And you??

Until I got a comment from Susanne today, I had no idea it had been more than a month since my last blog post. Yikes. How did that happen? I guess it’s easy to fall out of the habit of blogging.

I’ve decided to keep myself on the posting track by instituting a Friday theme for the blog . . . Five on Friday.  Every Friday I’ll post five things I’ve done since the Friday before.  Is anyone interested in joining me?

Of course, today isn’t Friday, but here are five things I’ve done since last time I posted.

1. I went to Boston to visit my parents and squeezed in a one-day detour to Springfield.

2. I finished NaKniSweMoDo sweater #8 (link to Ravelry project page):

3. I finished NaKniSweMoDo sweater #9 (link to Ravelry project page):

4. I released a new shawl pattern called Beach Glass. You can purchase it by clicking through to my Ravelry storefront and I’ll be adding it to the sidebar early next week.

5. I took a leisurely train ride to Ogden to visit one of my favorite yarn shops, the Needlepoint Joint.

What about you? Have you done something fun in the last month???

I rarely, if ever, knit a pattern exactly as it’s written. Although the alterations I make are not mapped out in intricate detail, I usually have some idea of where I’m headed based on my experiences with past projects. I’ve luckily managed to avoid the frog pond, even when I’ve designed large, lace shawls completely from scratch.

Yesterday, my luck ran out.

I’ve been working on a shoulder shawl design using Judy’s lovely yarns. I decided to try a shape I’ve never played with before: a bottom-up crescent. I had a good idea of the rate and placement of the decreases to get the correct shaping and, voila, the prototype turned out perfect.

For the final version, I had the not-so-clever idea to fool with the placement of the eyelets in the upper portion of the shawl. Tossing aside any remnants of good sense, I plowed ahead with my ill-fated scheme, not stopping to knit even a tiny sample swatch.

To my credit, when I was about halfway through I knew it wasn’t going to work. But, hope mixed with denial is a powerful motivator. So I knit on.

Of course it didn’t work.

Instead of a lovely crescent shape, I have a strange hybrid: crescent on the bottom and inverted triangle on the top. It actually looks very interesting when it’s set out flat–a little like an aerial view of a bird with its wings spread–but it doesn’t sit nicely on the shoulders.

I haven’t frogged it just yet. Perhaps I need to drown my sorrow with some yarn purchases first. Or, maybe I should just sit quietly in the corner and admire the skein of fingering-weight singles I spun from Anne’s lovely merino roving in the Silk Road colorway.