Making Progress ...

For someone who is more the instant gratification type (me), making progress can seem to take FOREVER. Thankfully, the process of knitting makes this much easier to deal with. Like all of you, I love the process of knitting. Not just the finished products but the process itself. Although when it comes to new designs I'm working on, I find myself trying to knit faster and faster because I cannot WAIT to see the finished product. I have it all finished and pictured in my mind but one can only knit so fast. I find myself taking lots of pictures. Not only to share with you, but I want to get as close as possible to that finished look from wherever I'm at in my knitting. As you know from my last blog entry, this is the year of collaborations for me. I may be willing to take on a 7th but its risky. I never know if I'm going to end up in the hospital for something which has a tendency to steal valuable knitting time! Six month ago when I was in the hospital for almost a month, I did very little knitting, I just didn't feel like it, I was very sick. But I digress. So, I am making progress on two shawls now. I started the edging to one of the shawls that just sat while I did Christmas knitting. I am super excited about this shawl and cannot wait to see it done and blocked. I've shared a few of these photos on my Facebook Group page so you may have already seen some of these. Others I just took today showing my progress over the past day and a half. Just starting out it looked like this...


The yarn is Dream In Color Everlasting Sock which is an 8 ply sock yarn. The color is wonderful and vibrant (although not in this picture) and perfectly tonal which I love to work with. I don't like to work with anything that may hide the design. Unless, of course, I have designed something specifically for a nice variegated yarn like Effortless. Effortless has a very simple lace border that is not obscured by a beautiful variegated yarn. Aside from its occasional splitting because of the 8 plies, this Dream In Color Everlasting Sock is wonderful to work with...


I cannot remember if I shared this above photo on Facebook or not. At any rate, this is the closest to the actual color of the yarn. Isn't it scrumptious?! I just love it. I made a lot of progress yesterday so I photographed today in the sun to get good color but there are some shadows so I apologize...


I am hoping to be able to release this by Feb 1st so we'll see...


Shown here in comparison to the spine of the shawl. I cannot wait to block this one. It will breathe so much life into the design when its finished. It will be one of my larger crescent shaped shawls using probably close to 775 yds. I don't think I'll go over 800 yds. Here's a closeup shot of the edging...


Confident that I had at least gotten the edging started on the above shawl, I began work and cast on for the shawl using MJ Yarns Opulent Fingering Weight yarn. First thing I noticed is that it is indeed opulent! It's so fantastic, it's rather like velvet in the hands. And the color! My God the color. The colorway I chose to work with is called Fire Dragon. It's like a bright mauve/fuchsia color and its fabulous...


It is another perfectly tonal yarn to work with. I believe I shared these photos in my Facebook Group but I will indulge you once again here....


You can almost see the velvet like hand this yarn has to it. The yarn is a merino/cashmere/nylon blend. I don't know why or how some are so different than others but they are, they truly are. This 80/10/10 blend is like velvet and yet others I've worked with before are simply not. I don't know if its something that happens at the mills, or the particular mill that is used or what. All I can say is if you can get your hands on some of MJ Yarns Opulent Fingering, you too will be singing their praises!


I can already visualize the finished shawl here. I know exactly where I'm going with it and now, it's all about execution. Confident with the start I have on the MJ Yarns project I am now focusing my efforts back on the green shawl above with the hope that I'll be able to get it released by the 1st of February. 

I finally made my first Zen Garden Serenity Sock yarn purchase at my LYS. They haven't been carrying it long but as soon as they did it was like locusts had hit the building. I seem to be into a gray phase now when it comes to purchasing yarns. I posted a photo of this yarn on Facebook but because I took the pic at night it made the yarn look brownish. Here's what it really looks like...

 
There are some hints of brown in the yarn but this is exactly what it looks like. The colorway is called "Wrought Iron." It also came in a version that had stellina in it and I almost got that, but decided that the yarn itself could stand alone just fine. Cant wait to do something with this. But then again, I have SO MUCH yarn and I seem to say that about all of them. I have some yarn on hold for me at my LYS Village Wools and its tough to know where to begin. Waiting for me are 2 skeins of Malabrigo sock in the colorway Zarzamora (which I have already in silkpaca lace just not sock yarn so I HAD to have it) 4 skeins of Malabrigo Rios in the colorway Teal Feather. I have been wanting to design a DK weight shawl and I think I already know what I want to do with this and this quite possibly could be shawl #7 for the year. Also waiting is a gradient kit of 640 yards in shade of greens that might be difficult to stay away from. (Just so you know, I will be doing an post in the near future on gradient kits! I'm waiting for something to arrive in the mail!)  Mom bought some of the Zen Garden Serenity Sock and came home and cast it on immediately and knit this beauty up in about 2 weeks....


I cant remember the name of the colorway that she bought and I'm gonna check Ravelry real quick to see if I can come up with the pattern name for you...

 
The pattern is called Early Morning Rain...


Isn't it just fabulous?!


I hope you are all doing well and not suffering too badly through this January. We've had a few days of really cold weather and a couple days when we woke up to snow. But our snow generally melts by noon and all is well. Today it was 61 degrees outside. We'll take that, thank you very much! Every afternoon Miss Audrey Grace comes out of her nap so she can sun herself in the patches of sun on the floor. She so graciously allowed me to take this picture of her....


Would love to know what you are all working on, in the comments below, now that the Holidays are over!  And Dilshani, we need to pull out your Persian Crescent and do some stitch counting or whatever to get you back on track! Be kind to one another and pay it forward when you can...and until next time...Knit On!

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