Good weekend

Persian Tiles shawl for Grandma

shawl


pattern detail


reverse (yes, yes, I know, my long floats suck...I'm hoping that'll improve with practice)


steek the first (a piss-poor sewing job if ever I saw one)


steek #2 (vastly improved - although with more frayed edges)

It should be obvious from the pictures, but everything went bee-yew-tifully. I did have to stick the shawl in the dryer on fluff for about a half hour to get rid of the last bit of dampness, but otherwise it dried very well. My grandma was super delighted with it, I got a great reaction (considering it was my grandma - she's pretty undemonstrative normally, so seeing her as pleased and happy as she was when she opened it meant that the gift was really, really appreciated). The rest of my family seemed quite blown away by the piece, and I'm really happy about the whole thing. Except that five minutes before we started opening gifts, my grandma and one of my aunts were talking about how my grandma is never cold, always hot. Sigh. So I guess she'll be using it as a table runner or something. :)

Twizzle cardigan for DD

This was the fun project that I worked on just for the helluvit this weekend because I could. It's going incredibly fast and already it looks like this:


I do believe this is the pinkest freakin' thing I have ever knitted in my life.

Minnesota Mitts for DH

I started swatching on this today. It turns out that this is an incredibly good project choice for me right now because it involves Tvaandsstickning, which is where you have two strands of the same colour and alternate using them from stitch to stitch (forming a double-thick fabric). I just know that if I use my usual two-strand technique of knitting with strand A, then dropping strand A and picking up strand B, then dropping strand B and picking up strand A (and so-on), I will screw up - because the two strands are the same colour, and because that same colour is black, I am guaranteed to mix them up at some point unless I use a different knitting technique. Specifically, I will be holding one strand in my left hand and one strand in my right. So not only is this going to be a great anniversary present for my dear husband, but I also get to practice knitting continentally! I'm very excited. Doing an entire pair of mittens might enable me to actually get decent at the continental technique. I used the one-strand-in-each-hand thing for the swatching, and it actually went pretty well. I felt pretty good about it, wasn't horribly slow, and didn't feel very awkward. I can totally do this in public.

The only downside is that I'm going to have to buy needles for this project. Swatching determined that I need to use 5mm needles to get the gauge I need for the size I want...and I don't have 5mm needles. This may be an excuse to go to Lettuce Knit SnB this week!

(Responses to comments left in the past several days coming soon!)