What I've been doing Part II: What is that fuzzy blue thing?

So once I pronounced Evil to be an unmitigated disaster I turned my attention to my true blue love: my Shetland Shawl.



Oh how I love this project. The yarn is more fingering weight than lace weight. You can blame the woman at the LYS for that. The Greatest asked for lace weight and she gave him this. It's not his fault he didn't know the difference, he's not a knitter, he's only in there by association. But for goodness sakes, what's her excuse? She owns the LYS. Other than being slightly heavy, the yarn is soft and smooth with excellent stitch definition.



After finishing the center "square" I stalled out for a bit. I didn't like the first border on the original pattern. I thought it was quite ugly. So in my knitting basket the shawl sat. Then as an extension of the nefarious scarves, which I swear I'll explain tomorrow, I bought a stitch dictionary, and a book of lace stitches and I borrowed different stitch dictionary from the library, and I realized I own a general craft book with a section on knitting stitches. And after pouring through those books for hours and hours for the nefarious scarves I realized one of the stitches would be rather lovely for the border of my shawl. I wanted something that was a bit solid, like the original border, but lacier, and curvy like the center. This particular stitch pattern just screamed "try me". Work on the scarves was immediately abandoned and I returned once again to my true love.

I'm only 14 rows into the first twenty row repeat of the stitch, but I think it's going to be lovely. Here it is on the side of the center(my favorite view)



And on the bottom



So there is where the progress on my Shetland Shawl remains. I have six rows and three more repeats of the pattern before I have to choose a final border. I think I have one in mind from my lace stitch book. But we shall see.

Concerning Evil, after much intense debate and negotiation (which included the bribe of a cone of Zephyr yarn from e-bay) The Greatest and I have reached a consensus. I shall merely rip the neck and continue on. I've been reading a book on sweater design and I'm starting to have some concerns about all that ribbing. The sweater is already very long. And we all know the effects of gravity on knitwear. The sweater design book specifically stated that ribbed sweaters will grow longer with wear. It that happens, this sweater could become a dress for me.

So we've decided to make this sweater a prototype. I'll persevere on and he has promised to wear this sweater in public if it is fine, if not he'll wear it hunting, fishing, and working on his car. I'm happy with that. Everyone must start out knitting a sweater for their Husband that is five times too large anyways, right? And the Husband must wear this monstrosity of a sweater to prove his love for his Wife, right? I can live that.

In a completely unrelated event, my good friend and fellow knitter has started a blog: Big Booty Knits. I hope you'll all stop by and say "Hi". She's funny and clever, and I'm so happy to have someone I knit with in real life blog too. Now you can all be jealous that I get together almost weekly to knit with Big Booty Knits.

Finally, here is the obligatory cuteness (I made you work for it didn't I Mom)



Someday, when they're teenagers, I'll wish it were this easy to keep them quiet.