First Finished Object of the Year! (2013 FO #1)

I know the faces of most of the knitbloggers I follow very well, because they're always modelling their creations.

They seem so natural, posing in their handknits, while the thought of being the model of a photo shoot when I've been in the library all day and my eyeliner's smudged and my hair is a mess makes me what to do this:

But I'm trying!

Little by little...

(although next time I will check my eyeliner before heading outside!)

Pattern: Herbivore

Yarn: Madeleintosh Pashmina in Thunderstorm, all but 2g

Notes: Knitted using my digital scale to measure the weight of the yarn at the end of every repeat to get as big a shawl as I can from the skein. 

Finish It February: Fix It Edition

Today Finish It February transformed into Fix It Then Finish It February as I pulled out the Herbivore shawl I wanted to finish before the Radiohead concert last November ... yes, I am seriously the worst at meeting deadlines. I had been working on this shawl while drinking wine one night and I dropped four stitches and in my drunk state I couldn't cope with fixing the problem so I stuffed the whole thing into a project bag and put it into a drawer.

Because drunk people are stupid the next day I was convinced I'd made a huge massive mistake that would take hours to fix so I continued to ignore the whole thing for weeks and weeks (months, really) until I looked at this chart and realised I had five measly rows to finish the project and then I would have a beautiful silky shawl to wear and stroke and be generally delighted with. So I gritted my teeth and pulled out the project from its hidey-hole only to discover this:

a mistake so tiny it literally took me 25 seconds to fix. Durrrrr!

In other news

This is what the end of a Bucks Day looks like. 

Someone else has (unsurprisingly) decided to join me for FebFast too!

Day 31: A Ghostly WIP Wednesday

The sky today is overcast and the light is glarey, giving all of the photos I took from WIP Wednesday an odd ghostly cast. This seems strangely appropriate for Halloween! 

I am pleased to report that working on a few WIPs at a time is doing wonders and I have not one but two projects blocking at the moment. As you can see the Herbivore is growing slowly but surely and I've pulled out the secret socks from the naughty corner in an effort to get them finished before my anniversary on the 14th. Both of these black projects need to be done by the second week of November so I'm going to focus on just these two for the next week and hope I can at least get one of them knocked off by next week. Yay for focus, GAAK and getting things done!

Today is the final day of Blogtoberfest. I have really dropped the ball over the last few days. This is exactly how I finished Dry July (I had a glass of wine on the 31st) so I think I need to start committing to daily stuff in the *shorter* months.  Regardless of my total lack of endurance, I am pretty chuffed with how I have done. I've written 28 posts, only a few of which were about my cat, discovered some great new jobs and attacked my WIP problem head-on and with great success. Most importantly, I really enjoyed myself. Once I've had 10 months to get over the stress of thinking of things to post every day, I may give it another go next year :)

Maybe...

Day 24: WIP Wednesday

Last week in an effort to wrestle my WIP pile into some sort of order, I decided to pick just two projects and concentrate on them. It worked! One of those pairs of socks is effectively finished (dear weaving in ends, why do you suck so much? love me) and the other one is almost complete.

Since this plan was so successful, I've decided to expand it to four projects and work only on those:

The Barefoot Dream socks are my new handbag stockinette stitch sock. They need to be done by December for my mum's birthday, so no hurry. The mitered square blanket now has nine of the 12 blocks joined. It's being held up because I need to unpick and restitch the first three blocks I joined and, I know it's childish but I just don't want to! The Rainy Day socks are almost done. These are the quickest and easiest socks I have ever made. I keep them next to the computer and pick them up and do a row or two whenever my computer or I am thinking and wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, these are almost done. I have to start making more socks on 2.75mm needles!

The final project is the Herbivore that I cast on for during CAST ON MANIA then promptly forgot about. The yarn that I'm using, the completely divine Madelinetosh Pashmina in Thunder, was a gift from my friend Christian. I'm seeing Radiohead with him in three weeks (woot woot!!) and I'd love to have this finished by then. The last Herbivore I made only took me about five days, so it shouldn't be a problem.

I love watching the list of of WIPs get smaller and smaller in number...

24 down, 7 to go.

A Herby Herbivore (2012 FO #6)

A while ago I participated in a Will Work For Yarn project - I knitted a Henslowe Shawl for the lovely CathG and I got this lovely Wollmeise in return.

Wollmeise is a really gorgeous wool. It feels a bit like cotton to work with and makes shawls with a gorgeous drape. The colours are lovely, with an intense depth that is really hard to capture on camera. I love Wollmeise but I absolutely do not have the energy to do all the hard work required to get a skein from Germany to my house, so I was very happy to be a part of the swap.

My friend Katy got married last year and them promptly moved to San Francisco. I wanted to knit her a shawl to commemorate the event bit I was a bit stuck on what specific shawl - Katy isn't the knitted lace triangle type of girl. When I saw the colour of this yarn, I knew what shawl it had to be...

..a herb-coloured Herbivore.

There's not much I can say about this pattern that hasn't been said. It's an interesting shawl to knit, although I would recommend using a lot of stitch makers when starting out - it took me a little while to get the hang of the pattern. I measured the yarn after each four-row repeat and began the edging when I had 20g left. I ended up with a 4g nugget left over and a good-sized shawl.  I love this project and I'm itching to start another Herbivore for me. I hope Katy enjoys wearing the scarf as much as I liked making it :)