Still alive and knittin'

I haven't posted in forever. However, I am still knitting. Lazy is the word.

A few weeks ago I started a new shawl using a new pattern by Fibertrends called Ruffles and Ridges. I'm using JJ's Montage, a hand-painted chunky yarn. The killer? I had to cast on 807 stitches! By the 6th row, you have 273 stitches. Sometimes it helps to read the pattern. I struggled through one long row, knitting in the back of every stitch and needed to find the center of the shawl. When I was well past the center and there were supposed to be 30 more stitches, I had about 100! I had read the pattern as "k3, k2 tog" and it was actually "k 3, *k2 tog across row from *" Oh welllllllllll............

It has been fun to knit and I do like the ruffled edge now that I am getting a little bit away from it. When it was all so tight on my 47" needle, it looked like a clown ruffle to me but not so much any more.

The other project I am working on is a pair of Friday Harbor socks from Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush. I'm using Bearfoot yarn for these. They are pretty easy to do and I'm enjoying them a lot. I even knit on them when we got away this weekend....in the Jeep with the top down! I had to contend with the tail flying all over and getting knit in here and there...ha ha. Pretty tricky trying to keep the pattern from blowing away and keeping that tail out of the work, but I did make pretty good progress!

Today I'm headed to the Mariner's Stitch n Pitch! I was trying to get the Friday Harbor socks to the point of mindless knitting, but they aren't so hard that it really matters. I'm really looking forward to the game although I am TERRIFIED of heights and we are in the highest level! Everyone tells me that getting around all those knitters will counteract the height thing. We'll see...if I make it through it, I will post about it soon!