In for the long haul.

I think I mentioned that Tejas asked me to make a lace shawl for his gramma, who he's very close to, and who can't make it to our wedding. I had him page through a book of shawl patterns, and he picked out one he thought she would like, and then I showed him all the small-gauge yarn I had with enough yardage to complete said pattern. There was an moss-green skein, some teal stuff from Knitpicks, and a ridiculously bright redbrown-lime green-magenta singles skein that I'd bought off handpaintedyarn.com*, which obviously has some issues with color fidelity on its website (it looked pink and yellow when I bought it). He grabbed the bright one, saying, "This is PERFECT! My gramma LOVES bright things like this!"

*I know it sounds like I've bought a ton of yarn from there, since I've used two skeins of it since I started this blog. But really, it was only one order of about $40 worth of yarn: a few colors of bulky, plus a bit of laceweight. My review: The bulky is slightly lower quality than Manos del Uruguay but very similar and nice to knit with. The laceweight is CHEAPCHEAPCHEAP and really very nice, if you can avoid the ridiculously colored stuff. My moss green laceweight is also from this site, and I adore it.

Anyhoo, I'm knitting the Melon Stitch Shawl from Victorian Lace Today, which is a nice pattern (though has not yet been blocked, so looks kinda scrunched up and weird) but involves knitting seventy thousand repeats of the central pattern, then knitting on a border. Booooooring...I'm forcing myself to make this my main project because I know if I work on something else, I won't come back to this easily, and then I won't get it done in time. Blah. At least I have the central pattern memorized by now, so I can listen to booktapes and not really pay much attention (I do have to look at it though. No knitting & reading for me.) And the melon stitch, which comes once every 6 rows, is kinda fun.
The wonky red bit at the cast-on edge is sock yarn from Trace-trace's socks, scavenged for a provisional cast on. Also, the yarn is brighter in person.

The poor little bobble sweater is feeling neglected...maybe I'll try to finish the sleeves this weekend, to take the edge off the melon stitch monster.
Then, I was thinking...I have a couple of sock yarns in Harry Potter-themed colors (Welsh Green Dragon and Hungarian Horntail Dragon) and some Gryffindor-colored worsted weight. Anyone feel like a Potter project-a-long in honor of the last book? (I'm currently 81st on the library hold list for it--I need something to distract me until a copy trickles down to me.)