I finished my socks with The Lemonade Shop yarn Bad Day.  It’s  a beautiful yarn 438 yards, 100 gms, 75/20/5 Superwash Merino/Nylon/Stelliana, and I love it.  The pattern was a personal vanilla sock pattern  from a friend from the Fiber Pusher Podcast on Ravelry.  I still need, tho, to either go down another size needle or maybe cast on 60 instead of 64 stitches, I’ll figure it out.

These socks were fun to knit but I took way to long to get them done, my fault – I had to stop to do some Christmas knitting and then finish a blanket for a friend’s son who had asked.  Unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of the blanket.  I just used the Tara Shawl pattern from Lion Brand Yarns, changing the number of cast on from 60 to 90 so that I had a shorter wider end project instead of the longer shawl shape.  It’s a very easy mindless knit that takes 3 skeins of Homespun yarn from Lion Brand Yarns.

I have started a shawl for comfort for my oldest son’s fiancee, who lost her mother recently.  I chose the Heat Advisory Shawl by Maura Clement  because it looked beautiful and didn’t look like it would take a year to knit :).  This is a paid pattern.  I thought I would use the new yarn that I mentioned in my previous post, but it is a sock weight and the pattern calls for a dk weight, so I went stash diving.  Fortunately a friend from my church was preparing for a move and de-stashed her yarn to me, woot woot, I had beautiful dk weight yarn I could use :).   You can see the yarn in the picture, it is called Ardilla Bouquet and is from Spain.  It is 69% acrilic/21% wool/10% mohair  50 g, 105 m.  I have started the shawl, and it seems very easy and at this point is an enjoyable to knit.  The yarn, like most mohair, sheds and is fuzzy, but I think it will be a beautiful shawl. 🙂  I have 10 skeins of this yarn and have wound off into balls, 2 skeins to start with, I’m sure it will take about 3 or 4 skeins.

I’m comfortable at this time with just one project going.  I am not one of those knitters who have tons of projects going at the same time.  I might have 2 or 3 projects at the same time but any more than that is stressful to me.  I intend to do this shawl pattern again after finishing this project, for a gift for a little one’s teacher for the end of the year.  She has had both him and his sister and has been a wonderful teacher.  I’m sure pleasant surprises after a year of teaching little ones is nice ;).  For his sister’s teacher I’m thinking of  pretty pair fingerless mitts, those are always nice to have in our winter months :).   *UPDATE* Ran out of time and did fingerless mitts for both teachers.

We have had an absolutely gorgeous Feb this year.  Yesterday we had a record high of 67.  More like our April temps, tho we have had blizzards in April too, lol.  The temps are going back down into the 40’s today and colder than that on Friday and beyond, but I certainly enjoyed the brief warmer weather and it gave me an emotional pick me up from the drudgery of winter :).