Snail Spirals

This is how I spent Friday night.



Wild and crazy, I know. But I got to watch my Stargates, I had M&Ms (Which were a TREAT, by the way. I do not, as a general rule, have them in the house. Mostly because Emma and I can't leave them alone and would make ourselves sick on them.), and knitted. It was lovely.

This is the cranberry yarn I spun in November, from Ashland Bay colonial top. It's becoming a shawl with just a bit of laciness. The yarn didn't really want to be a complicated lacy pattern, as it's a light sportweight. I tried the fir cone pattern first, but that didn't look right, so I charted up this really simple chevron design, seen here as it looked Saturday morning.



I originally did it as a 10-stitch and 12-row repeat, so that each half of the chevron had four yarnovers. Then I realized that because the row count was more than the stitch count, the pattern got progressively farther and farther from the edge as the triangle grew. Each right side row adds one stitch on each side, so after two repeats, I had added 12 stitches (on each side), but then I only used up 10 of them (on each side) when I inserted another pattern repeat. By eliminating two rows of the pattern, it all comes out even and the side borders stay a consistent width. Of course, it took me 75 rows to figure this out, so most of what I knit on Thursday night was ripped out. But it's been smooth sailing since then, and I'm more than halfway up the shawl now. I think I've got 15 pattern repeats across the width now, and about 25-ish inches of length, unblocked.

I'm also going to put a knit-on pointed semi-lacy edging on the shawl, but haven't designed that yet.

Saturday, Emma and I went to the Textile Guild's holiday party. We called it a Twelfth Night party, since everyone's calender was too full in December to have it then. It was really fun. We had it on the ferry, on the interisland run that just does a loop through the islands (and is free if you just walk on), so that the Guild members from every island could attend. We had cookies, punch, and lots of other assorted goodies, a drawing for a year's free membership to the Guild, a donation jar to the Heifer Project, and a White Elephant gift exchange. I put in a couple crocheted snowflakes, and lookie what I got back!



I've had my eye on this book for a long time, and now I own it! It was still in the shrinkwrap, even. I read through it Saturday night, and it has TONS of patterns and great information. I've never made a shaped shawl in the Faroese style, so I'm looking forward to trying one. One of the things I dislike about shawls is that they don't stay put very well, and I think adding some shoulder shaping is a great idea.