Only a couple knits to share this week as I have mainly been working on two shawls. The last clue of Jen's Mystery KAL was released yesterday. But Clue 3 and I didn't really get along last week, which caused me to frog some of the shawl and rework clue 2.
Last Wednesday, I shared a picture of the shawl with leaf tips at the end of clue 2. Clue 3 involved picking up stitches on the wrong side of the shawl and making an "undershawl" beneath the leaves, so the leaves would be left loose. I tried a couple times and even after starting with the correct number of stitches, by the end of the first row of the first chart worked in Clue 3, my stitches were off. It got frustrating. I will pick up 300+ stitches only so many times before I give up and find another way. So I undid all 25 leaf tips. Lucky for me I had only wove in the ends of 5 of them so the first 20 were easy. The last five, I had to unpick the ends which caused the rows below them to begin to unravel, and well... I had to frog the shawl to the middle blue line you see above, between the two green sections. I reknit Clue 2, doing option 2 which didn't have leaf tips, but instead worked lace between the leaves. Originally, everyone was suppose to cast-off after clue 2 and pick up stitches for Clue 3, but I changed that. I added in some garter rows after clue 2 (the blue and green rows on top of the leaf row), then did the last chart of Clue 3, which is the blue section on the needles. (sorry to any non-knitters who are totally confused right now).
A closer look at the leaves and garter rows.
Now I am onto the final clue. It's a bunch of garter rows before doing an I-cord bind off, which I've never done before. I admit, I kind of like my alterations compared to the original pattern so I'm not too upset that my shawl is different. There are over 500 stitches on the needles right now so it's hard to tell what it really looks like. Or how big it will be. Hope to have it off the needles by this weekend.
And last week, I got an email from my sister-in-law saying a shawl I had knit her got accidentally shrunk in the wash and asked if I could knit her a new one. I had the above yarn in my stash, which is the same brand as the old shawl, and cast on a Bradway shawl. Working with worsted weight yarn knits up so quickly. Loving the texture.
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| I made myself a wrist rest this weekend so I can write more at my desk instead of the couch. |
And it's November, which means NaNoWriMo. I wasn't going to write a novel, since I had just finished writing one in August and have been trying to edit it. I looked through my notebook of novel ideas and nothing really jumped out at me. Then I looked at the ideas I had written down for the book series I had started with the novel "Lucy" written during Camp NaNoWriMo in 2012. And I started thinking I should have 2 books written and edited before trying to get the first published and so I made some notes about the second book and started writing yesterday morning. Wrote over 2,000 words while still in my pajamas. But, the novel is much darker than anything I have ever written before and I'm not sure I can keep that up for a month. It's kind of depressing to write. I'm thinking I might write the ending next so I know that my character has a happy ending, despite how crappy her life will be for most of the novel. We'll see.
What have you been working on? Have you ever done NaNoWriMo? Or want to do it? It's not too late to start.
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