I found myself at loose ends last month, with no knitting “work” to do.  No class samples to knit, the MKAL with Sheep to Shawl (Starry Night Shawl) is completed, and although I will be knitting a new design for Donna, we aren’t ready to start that, yet.  So, I went to my stash and pulled out a pile of fingering weight yarn in sherbet colors that looked like spring.  The white was leftover from something, and there was a mini-skein kit of pinks/yellow/orange that must have struck my fancy because I would never wear those colors.  But, they do look like spring, and sprinkled throughout a shawl, I’m thinking I’ll look fine in them.  I grabbed some leftover blues that looked like they might spice things up a bit.

Then I went to my pattern archive to find a suitable pattern.  I’ve always wanted to knit a Color Affectation.  This has been a super popular pattern, by Veera Valimaki, and I never got around to knitting one, before.  Seemed a good choice, as I thought that random colors would look great in the stripes.

March was a Teaching month, for VogueKnittingLive, and that requires a lot of attention.  This shawl was a good thing to knit, as it is all garter stitch, very easy knitting.  When I ran out of a color, I attached a new oddball to the previous yarn with Russian Joins, as I couldn’t spit splice the superwash yarns.  This eliminated most of the loose ends.  When I was knitting, I thought of this as a “garbage” shawl, which doesn’t seem very nice.  It looked pretty awful on the needles, with all of the weird random colors – but I didn’t care, because I wasn’t going to use any of this yarn for anything else that I could think of, and if the project failed, that would be OK.  I always need to have something on the needles, and this was low risk, and potentially could be a fun shawl to wear for spring.  It’s really nice, sometimes, to knit something that doesn’t matter.  It can just be an experiment.

By the end of knitting, though, I was getting tired of it, and starting to dream about what I could knit next, that might be more exciting and more challenging.  I knew that meant I was ready to bind off.  I did so, last night, and here it is, in its pre-blocked state, and soaking in a warm bath.

 

While waiting for this to soak, and be blocked, I’m going to swatch some yarn, looking for something suitable for a sweater.

 

 

 

Elizabeth Doherty developed a system for knitting a set-in sleeve from the top down, that I have been wanting to test.  I’m looking at the Underwood pattern, and thinking that Cloudborn Highland DK, that I have in stash, might be a good choice.  It’s an updated Gansey, and I could wear this to the offfice.  Stay tuned, for how the FO turns out, and whether the swatch looks suitable!