Something besides socks

Ok, admittedly I am currently working on a pair of socks, because I am pretty sure I must have one going at all times:

This pattern is called Winter Wheat Socks and this is the men's version.  I knit a pair of the women's version for my mother for her birthday this year.  I intended to knit this pair for my dad, who has no hand-knit socks from me, for Christmas this year.  Husband expressed delight in the socks.  This pair is for the husband.  Which means that I now have to knit this pattern again.  There's nothing really wrong with it; it's the (boring, BORING) yarn that makes me unenthusiastic about knitting it.

I am also making use of the 1800 yards of Madeline Tosh lace-weight I bought back in April to knit Viajante:

I love it, it's gorgeous, it's taking forever.  Dorothy says lace weight shawls take about three years (argh) which has burst my dream balloon that I would have this shawl done for an upcoming late-September trip to Philadelphia.  Maybe I will have it for a late-September trip in 2016, if I am lucky.

Meanwhile, I took a trip last weekend up to Halcyon Yarn in Bath, ME with my Wicked Weavers group.  I was delighted to discover that Halcyon sells mini-cones of weaving yarn - 600 yards to a normal one-pound cone of 3,200 yards (or more!)  So I bought a bunch of mini-cones of unmercerized cotton, to make dish towels:

Mostly mini-cones, with 2 large in the back

I have several patterns in mind - at least one or two to be done on my rigid heddle loom, which has the advantage of being in the family room and thus more accessible and more frequently used.  My first project is a set of place mats for the kitchen:

Cascade Luna Paints, Cascade Ultra Pima , 3/2 unmercerized cotton

Place mats in progress!

I have a strange affection for purple these days and picked some lighter shades of it to blend with the blue in the Cascade Paints that makes up the foundation of the multi-color in this placemat pattern.  This is a plain-weave pattern, making it less likely I will screw up this weaving.  Unless I did the yardage wrong.....

What else I'm working on

For my birthday, my favorite local yarn shop sent me an email coupon for 15% of my total project - yarn and needles.  In my mind, that's practically free.  I had been intrigued by a pattern I saw in the winter 2012 edition of Love of Knitting called Opening Night.  Instead of the recommended yarn, I splurged and bought 14 skeins of Manos del Urugay Wool Classica in this lovely purple colorway:

You knit the sweater in pieces, then stitch together.  I have successfully finished the back and two front pieces; now I am working on the upper trim.  Sadly, both the upper and the lower trim are 12" wide and about 65" long, so that part is not going so fast.  Also, it's a winter sweater and we're headed into summer, so while I am still excited about how it's coming out, I've lost focus.

Fortunately, the summer issue arrived on Wednesday, and in it was an article about a Summer Night Shawl calling for Metallic Rayon yarn from Blue Heron yarns.  I was delighted to see this, because I remembered that I had seen 3 skeins of it (and they are large skeins - 550 yards) in a slightly different colorway at Windsor Button in downtown Boston.  It is an expensive yarn - it retails for $46 a skein - but the pattern calls for only one skein.  Plus, Windsor Button was going out of business (sadly, they've lost their lease) so all the yarns were discounted.  I went online.....and discovered I had missed their final day by about five days.  I looked online but couldn't really justify spending the money plus the shipping to order it online since my local yarn shops don't carry it.

I decided to see if I had a substitution in my stash on Friday morning.  And discovered that I had splurged on all three of the skeins from Windsor Button at some point before they closed.  I clearly need more sleep if I can't remember a purchase like that.  I determined that I could use the other two skeins to make a summer sweater pattern I had recently downloaded, and that the shawl was a go.  I'm about 90 rows in of 145:

It is an incredibly easy pattern:  cast on three stitches, turn.  Next row, knit one, yarn over, knit to the end.  Repeat 143 more times, adding the yarn over as the second stitch on each row.

I am hoping to finish it by our anniversary this weekend so I can wear it out to dinner.  I am thinking that's a bit of a stretch, but it will be finished in time for me to enjoy this summer.  It might be a little fancy to wear to the movies, but I'll get over it.