Less than 20

That’s right. I’ve got less than 20 projects left to knit from what I’ve been referring to as “that fucking book.” (Realizing of course that I still am loving this, but it’s a little wearing.) Mostly sweaters left to go, but I’m not letting that trouble me. Nothing can take this glow off of being this far. I realize that having 19 still means that I have a lot left to do, but considering that I started in June with 32, it’s not that bad. Three more things and I’ll be half way done. Can you believe that? I can’t. I am so happy about this. When I counted, I recounted, then I jumped up so high that I hit my head on the ceiling. (Not that big of a leap, I can reach up and touch it just by doing so.) This is wonderful. (And the hybrid sweater is getting relatively close to done.)

Anyway, the Inner Directed Shawl is done. I can’t believe a whole shawl appeared with me only blogging about it once. Usually I document every inch of progress, but this sort of appeared with little muss or fuss. It didn’t have any big rip-backs or major catastrophies, and I think that it’s safe to say this too, I’m all done, and it didn’t burst into flames while I was taking the pictures.

About ready to go in for a plunge.

During the soak.

All pinned out.

So there we are. As you can see from this picture, this isn’t the best blocking spot, but it’s the only one that I’ve got. I have to do it under my desk at the moment, which is, well, a bit of a pain in the ass. Not only do I have to pull out all the stuff from underneath it, but I also have to not sit at my desk. And this makes my father look all twitchy when I start to pin things out like this. The man isn’t really afraid of, you know, potentially burning off his finger with a soddering iron, but pins, no way. It’s most annoying.

(As an aside. When I finished it, I showed it to him, and he probably won’t want me to say this, he put it on, and said something like, “I’d love to have something like this, only a little more masculine.” I smell a challenge. We’ll just let this one simmer on the back burner for a little while.)

I wish I could have gotten a picture of myself crawling under my desk, pinning this thing out. It must have been a good shot, but boy was it hard on the back. I pretty happy with it though, and it was fun to knit. And remarkably quick, despite the fact that shawls almost always drag on. The points were all pinned out, and I love their neat point-ness. It’s light, warm, pretty, and it was fun. What could be better about knitting?

The window shot

 

The floor shot, please ignore the dirty laundry and paint cans.

The yarn from the inside out

Green: Mohair gift from Cindy.

Blue: ditto

Green: Handspun, an early one, by yours truly.

A slight stripe of the dark blue from earlier.

Medium blue: A sweater I pulled out last spring.

The lace pattern looks planned, but it wasn’t. It was made using random yarn overs with an immediate compensating decrease. Without my knowledge in it, I made up a lace pattern. I would like to actually be random about it, but that didn’t happen. Oh well.

Shawls are laid to rest for now. Only four more to go, with one being closer to done than to not done.