Finished!

The shawl is done!  It's not quite as big as I wanted, but frankly I was so tired of knitting all those SSKs in the fourth section of the pattern that I wrapped it up early.  Thus, I did not do the 2 extra repeats I was planning on for that section and knit the ribbing about 3 rows shorter than listed.  My only mod was doing an extra repeat of the 1st section when I was bold and bright with excitement (and the rows being much shorter I'm sure had nothing to do with it.)  The photos above are of it fresh off the needles; now it's having it's bath while I write this post, and as soon as I'm done here I'm off to block it.  I am curious to see how this 50/50 cotton/wool yarn will bloom.  My hope is it will fluff up a bit, but we'll see.  The wing span measures out at 80 inches by 30 inches deep.  The castoff method I employed was one I got from this book called Sarah's Favorite Bind Off for 2 x 2 Rib.  It adds a backward loop every 4 stitches, but is otherwise a standard bind off.  I thought it would give a clean look, but still be stretchy.  In actuality it has the clean look, and while it is stretchier than a traditional bind off it's still a bit on the firm side for my taste.   Of course there is no way I'm undoing the original 381 stitches, not to mention all those added backward loop stitches, so it will have to do.  All in all I really like the look and I'm sure I'll get a lot of use out it when the weather cools off again.  Because, in true Minnesota fashion the weather has changed abruptly again and is headed for the high 80's.  Oddly enough this unpredictable constantly changing weather is one of the things I love most about living here.  Don't like the weather today?  Wait until tomorrow it'll change.

I do have Fall weather on my mind these days so I cast on for this poncho.  Now, you may be asking what happened to this poncho?  Well, the yarn was bugging me so much it was really taking the fun out of knitting it and as you all know life is too short to knit with yarn you don't like.  So, the poncho was frogged, the yarn rewound and put up on my Stash "will trade or sell" page on Ravelry.  Hopefully, it will find a new home with someone who loves it.  Anyway, the new poncho I'm going to knit using this yarn from my stash, paired with this yarn I just purchased.  It's a bit of a bold mix, but I wear navy blue like most people wear black and my thought was the blue would help tie it into my wardrobe better.  My current plan is to simply colorblock the poncho with yellow on top and blue on the bottom.  This would make it very easy to use up all my yarn, but I am toying with the idea of a few stripes to blend the transition a bit.  Any thoughts?

Thus, we end the week with Year of Projects list - 0, and Random Patterns and Projects - 2.  Ah well, there is lots of the year left to get those on the list done.  Right? To view other Year of Projects contributors check them all out here.  Thanks for stopping by!