Oh happy day! I’ve finished this shawl in time and am so happy with how it turned out!

Pattern: Wilshire shawl
Yarn: Lana grossa lace merino in colour Lilla

I started this shawl a month ago and since it was intended as a birthday gift it had to be done before yesterday. On monday I finished all the knitting and on tuesday I quickly blocked it and weaved in the ends. Yesterday it was wrapped and on to Amsterdam I went. I’m delighted to say my friend loved it! She knows I’m a quite fanatic knitter and I told her I made her a present. I think she was expecting a pair of socks, but this was much better of course. Also my yarn over mistake really isn’t noticeable, probably due to the amount of yarn overs throughout the shawl.

I’m also very happy with the yarn. It is so soft and quite elastic. I don’t think I have one bad thing to say about it. And the colour is really nice as well. Plus I still have plenty left for another big shawl, yay!

Now I feel like casting on some stuff that is a bit more seasonal and warm. And one big cast off equals at least 5 new cast ons right?

This is it. The final stretch. This wednesday I’ll be on a train to Amsterdam and this shawl has to be with me, finished, cast off, blocked and nicely wrapped. There’s no room for failure. This shawl will be gifted.

You might remember me being proud of casting on this Wilshire shawl so well in advance and there being loads of time for me to finish this. I guess I know myself well enough to know it would come to this. Only a couple of days left and still 1,5 lace charts to go over 400+ stitches. It still seems possible, despite most of my weekend already being filled with sporting/social/working plans. And I was quite optimistic until yesterday evening when I spotted a MISTAKE (cue dramatic music). A yarn over mistake right at the spine a couple of rows back. Sorry for making this into a knitting confession but I am terrible at fixing mistakes! Sure, I can pick up a dropped stitch in stockinette, but that’s about it. I’m in awe when I see people fixing complicated lace mistakes by dropping stitches and just knitting them back up again. The only strategies I have when it comes to mistakes are a) don’t make mistakes; and b) if you spot a mistakes carefully knit back every stitch, until said mistake has disappeared.

But here’s the thing, I don’t have time anymore to knit back so many lace stitches. The mistake was a major eyesore to me but I decided to put it to the test to see how bad it really was. I don’t know if this is a horrible thing to think or not but this will be gifted to a non-knitter. So I showed the shawl to my boyfriend (also a non knitter), explicitly told him one of the little holes right next to the spine was wrong and asked him to point it out to me. He couldn’t. So the hard decision was made to leave in the mistake and I’m desperately hoping that even after the yo’s open up after blocking it will still not be visible to non-knitters. Also maybe I overreacted just a tiny bit yesterday, because I also don’t find the mistake that disturbing anymore by daylight, it’s not even visible in the pictures!

I wouldn’t even be in this situation if I’d stick more to my plan. But after casting on I’ve been busy at work, I’ve flirted with cross-stitch and I’m ashamed to admit it but I also cast on a new project. In my defence, I’ve been wanting to cast on the rainbow wanderer socks ever since falling in love with my mini skeinbow. And realising that they would qualify for the September Sockdown fraternal pairs socks challenge I had no choice. And you can’t just cast on a pattern like that and only knit a few rows, I had to see the rainbow evolve a little!

Anyway enough whining for now. I’m getting into full focus mode, no more mistakes and I’m not allowed to do anything besides knit this shawl today.Before wednesday there’ll either be a euphoric blog post about my amazing knitting skills, or a depressed one about how I need a time management course.

I’ve survived all the work deadlines and my life is slowly getting back to it’s less busy self. Which means I can pick up my knitting projects again! Despite not having any FOs to show you I did make some progress at least. But to be honest I got a bit fed up with knitting last week. I was working long days and when I got home felt pressured to knit, rather than feeling relaxed by it. I kind of have a birthday knit deadline for the Wilshire shawl, I really want to cast on something for the september sockdown, I want to start a project to tackle my cable fobia, I wanted to join in with the WIP crackaway etc. etc. This all took the fun out a bit for me so I was looking for something else to relax with until my mind was a bit more at rest.

So I decided to finally learn cross stitch in the hopes of it being as easy as I imagined it and offering me some mindless activity to wind down. I spent one evening reading some tutorials, picking out a pattern and ordering materials. Two days later I was good to go and I actually really enjoy this! The pattern I’m making is called Glia Club, and although it feels like I’m just doing something random, it’s actually starting to look like it’s supposed to. Plus it did the trick for me, it was a great distraction and I feel like I have energy to knit again 🙂

Do you sometimes feel stressed out by knitting?

These past weeks have been insane work-wise. I’m nearing the end of my first year as a PhD student, which means there are all kinds of creepy deadlines coming up for evaluation meetings, progress report presentations etc. And I keep thinking that it would be so nice if only I had a little bit more data to show, causing me to work too much and having sleepless nights overthinking things. Alas, next week will be the busiest and after that it will hopefully all calm down a bit. So despite all busy times I am super happy to be able to actually post an FO post!

Pattern: New Girl
Yarn: Schoppel Wolle Zauberball Stärke 6 in Dottergelb & Petrol

All in all it took me little under a month to completely finish this skirt, including the time in which I pretended it didn’t exist because I didn’t feel like weaving in the ends. For me, that’s a pretty decent time for finishing a project like this. The biggest battle I’ve been having is second thoughts on the colour choice, and I still really don’t know whether I like the colours or not.. I change my mind about it every other day or so, my thoughts ranging from ‘this is a brilliant combination I should make everything in green and yellow’ to ‘what the hell was I thinking?!’. So if I’m ever knitting this skirt again it will be in nice safe colours, one of them being gray.

The pattern itself isn’t the most exciting knit ever, there being so much stockinette involved, but with the hem, pockets and daisy stitch there is enough going on to keep the knitting interesting. As for the yarn I’m quite pleased with it. The green was splittier than the yellow (weird!) but not so bad that it was annoying. It became softer than I was expecting after washing, so it’s comfortable to wear. And bonus points for the yarn for having such a witty label (although someone should’ve told me this years ago).