I finished the shawl I’ve been knitting – since January, apparently. But really it’s been mostly finished for well over a month, if not more. I just needed to add the last bit of edging, bind off, weave in the ends and block. Which, in a burst of productivity, I finally finished today. Feels good.

Sprayed and pinned to towel-covered sofa cushions for blocking. Naturally Nysse saw this as a chance to appropriate the whole thing as yet another cat bed.

The shawl is based on the Early Blossoms pattern on Ravelry. I liked the pattern. It was easy to follow, perfect as background knitting, and easy to adjust – I think I added one extra red patch and made another one slightly larger. And the result is pretty stylish.

Even with blocking, mine didn’t come out strictly triangular, which I think may have been the original intent. Perhaps I could force it into shape but I don’t want to be too forceful with the alpaca yarn. And it really won’t matter since I’m going to be draping it over my shoulders anyway.

When I first converted to making and wearing hand-knitted socks, I aimed for colours that would harmonize with other things I was wearing. Then I threw in just a couple of colourful pairs because the yarns looked amazing. For wearing at home, or perhaps to the office on Fridays.

Over time I’ve come to love the crazier socks more and more. The pink ones that at first looked garish now don’t even stand out any more. The more colour, the happier they make me. (These are made with Zauberball Crazy.)

There’s a brand of socks called Happy Socks; Adrian loves them. Mine are even happier.

And I realized after a while that nobody at work cares about the colour of my socks, so now I wear the colourful ones to the office as often as the mood strikes me, without thinking twice.

Finally finishing the sweater I started in March. The last little bits are taking forever.

Out of curiosity I logged the time I spent on making this sweater. People showing off their knitted objects on Reddit sometimes say how long it took them to make the thing, and I realized that I really have no idea. Now I do! The first attempt – that I ripped up – took 23 hours. The second one that actually led to a finished sweater took 67 hours. I may have forgotten to log some small bits, so say a round seventy hours all in.

The last couple of weeks’ work hasn’t felt inspiring, just redoing this and redoing that and weaving in ends, so I’m not feeling much of a sense of accomplishment right now. And it’s not the season for woollen sweaters now, anyway. I’m close to just packing it away until November and forgetting about it.

My hand-knitted socks are getting their first holes, with the oldest and favouritest ones going first. I saw a hole in one, which led me to check a few of the other pairs and find three or four more. All under the big toe.

For most of them I have some leftover yarn, so I can achieve some very discreet mends – which is nice when I want to wear these to work.

Most of the maths I did in school was maths for maths’ sake. Brain training, preparing for higher studies, etc. I’ve had very little use for it in everyday life. So when I do need it, it’s kind of gratifying. Today I used the properties of similar triangles to figure out sizing for my shawl. If I have 9 full pattern repeats after using 70% of the yarn, how many pattern repeats can I get if I use all of it? There is a red insert after every pattern repeat, and the last insert is a special one. Will the special one be the 9th, 10th, or 11th?

I’m done with the Sweatrrr body and more than halfway with the left sleeve.

The pattern has a dark red rolled hem at the bottom of the body. But the edge doesn’t know it’s only supposed to roll the red bit, and rolls quite a lot more. I don’t like this look at all. Not sure what I can do about it, though.

The sweater I’m knitting has rows of dots in contrasting colour going down the middle at the front and the back. It’s a weird technique – the main colour yarn runs behind the dots and the dots themselves are barely attached, they just sort of hover over the main yarn. It’s neither proper intarsia knitting nor proper stranded colourwork. I’m still not fully convinced that the dots will lie in place properly in the long run. On my first attempt at this sweater I actually skipped them and thought it would be better to embroider the dots afterwards, but it was a bit boring to just knit a single colour all the time and barely any pattern. So this time I’m following the instructions.

Sweater progress photo.

If I was filthy rich and had more rooms in my house than I knew what to do with, I’d have a crafts room with lots of natural light, and a large mirror well-positioned to take advantage of that light for all my sweater and cardigan selfies.

Now I don’t have that, so I can choose between a dark hallway and a well-lit but sterile-looking bathroom.

But the sweater is looking good!

It doesn’t even feel like a big deal any more to rip up a sweater body after I’m done with a third of it, and start over. Just the way things are.

Wise from experience, this time I did my photographing when Nysse was not nearby.

The producer named this colour of their yarn “Silver lining”. Thinking of clouds, I guess. To me it looks more like rock. The colours are like marble, but it’s not veiny enough, so maybe granite. But a very soft granite.