focus friday. knitting.

...it's been nearly seven weeks since I last posted about knitting. and when you knit as much as I do, that means a lot has happened!

I finished lolita. not by the time we returned from hilton head, but not too much later. this was a fun, fast knit and did work great for beach knitting. and thank goodness for soak to remove the sand and sunscreen from the finished sweater :-)

raveled here

then I finished vitamin gray (aka vitamin D). and even got to wear it last week when we had a chilly (75 degree :-) wet day. this is definitely one of my favorite sweaters. it fits great. I love the yarn and the color. and it was fun to knit (except for one tiny bit of short rows that I tried to knit in the almost-dark the night our power went out that I had to rip out the next morning)

raveled here

and summer flies - woo hoo! I think I'm about the last person in our knit along to finish. I've worn this many times - it looks great with black and with white and it's just the right weight to keep the air conditioning off my shoulders.

raveled here

and I started and finished ginger (carol feller's great new gilligan pattern). I used debbie bliss bella again (this is the same yarn I used in white sangria). love having a go-to cotton yarn. it's really perfect for our summer weather. carol uses short rows a lot in her designs. for this pattern, the sleeve caps and shoulders are shaped with short rows so it's all seamless...but fitted. and the sleeves are created with increases worked into that pretty lace ribbing. the top half of this project was kitchen table knitting for me. I had to pay attention, count and ... pay attention! and it took me eight days.

raveled here

so I started hannah fettig's wispy for a "lots of straight stockinette" project (using a single skien of misti alpaca handpaint lace from my stash - yay for stash knitting!) to use for social knitting. and a break. I finished ginger just a few days after I started wispy, so it hasn't seen a lot of play time. and lots of straight stockinette with laceweight on size 4 needles doesn't go very fast. I won't even bother sharing a progress photo.

and back in mid-june, I decided I wanted to teach a lace shawl class. I settled on traveling woman for this first four-session class. of course I have to stay ahead of my students.... and I am, just barely! the stockinette portion is done and I'm going to start the lace today so I have something to share with at tomorrow's class. this one is knit in rowan revive (the same yarn I used for lolita) - the base color is a light purple and there are flecks of bright primary colors that remind me of a box of crayons. very fun.

raveled here

after I finished ginger, I started gibson. another babycocktails design (I've lost count of how many of hers I've knit this year) and my first sweater in the lovely sublime cashmere merino silk dk. after knitting two sweaters in cotton (even super nice cotton that has a bit of silk and cashmere in it), it is a treat to knit with merino. I am obsessed with it... like to the point of knitting at stop lights (I promise I put the knitting down when I'm actually driving!)... so it's going fast.

raveled here

which is good, because the new yarn that's arrived at the shop is very hard to resist. in the past week, we've added fibre company canopy fingering and road to china light. I imagine road to china light, while it's expensive, is going to be fabulous knitting. I've promised myself a (short-sleeved!) sweater - and think the yarn will be perfect for one of ysolda teague's little red patterns, cria. I've had that sweater in my queue since I got the book - finding a new yarn to knit it with is a bonus!

same with babycocktails' irish coffee. that's been in my queue since february...waiting for fall - or at least temperatures below 90 degrees - before I knit it. this week's huge rowan shipment included felted tweed aran. it's the perfect weight for the project and there are plenty of beautiful colors.

I did add one project to my queue. another hannah fettig design, featherweight, in laceweight. to knit with the new rowan fine lace. I can't resist the yarn. it is that gorgeous!

working in a yarn store and teaching four classes really challenges me to stay focused. there is so much great yarn to knit, and so many wonderful designs, and my students and I love to knit-along the same projects. but there are 18 of them and one of me. I'm finally doing better at saying "no, I really can't knit that right now" (or even in the next 6 months!) but it's hard. and it's really hard to resist buying the yarn. my new thing is to buy yarn for the next one, two or three projects. and once I have the yarn, I don't budge on knitting it. we'll see how long I can keep that up!

here's my sweater queue right now. I only have yarn for the first sweater. but I'm knitting at the shop this afternoon. yep, I'm thinking I might come home with that road to china light and the fine lace. especially if I make more progress on gibson. and I'm going to offer another lace shawl class - ysolda's damson shawl. and while I have a skien of the suggested malabrigo sock in my stash, I might need to shop for that too!

and now I have needlepoint, too. can you see the tiny bit of progress I made since my first lesson last week? (I drew a circle around the part I've stitched.) this took me hours. probably a good lesson for me - I'm sure my students feel that way about their knitting, too!

(note to self - more frequent knitting updates - remembering all this...and writing a blog post about it takes a long time!)