On the Needles

What's on my needles?  

It's more like, what's Still on my needles.

I'm still knitting my Sunstorm shawl, mentioned here.  Although it feels like a never ending knit, I'm enjoying watching it grow.  There's enough fluctuation in each yarn to hold my interest throughout all that garter stitch, plus, because it's garter stitch, I can read my email, other blogs, or a few pages of my book while I knit.  Being able to multi-task like that is pretty important to my sanity during this period of my work season.

Several people have asked about the pattern I'm using.  Actually, I'm not using a pattern.  I'm just knitting along until I get so bored I can't stand it.  In the beginning, I started with three stitches and increased until I was bored to the point of declaring it wide enough.  (That point happened at 135 stitches if you're curious.)  When I get bored with the color I'm using, I force myself to knit a few more rows then begin the next color by knitting two-row stripes for a while.  So far, the stripes range from three stripes to seven.  I've based their number on how bored I was and with how much of the old color I had left.

The only problem I've run into with knitting the shawl based on the boredom factor is that I'd originally planned to begin the decreasing once I got to the yellow.  The shawl wasn't long enough though so I'll finish knitting the yellow skein (or get as close to finishing it as I can stand) then add the other half of the speckled yarn before I begin the decreasing.  I think it will be fine in the end.

Hopefully, this shawl will be finished by the end of next week.  Then it's decision time.  Do I knit Christmas gifts with the gigantic box of yarn I ordered last month?  Do I knit the sweater my daughter is asking for, although she can't decide on a pattern?  Do I knit 11+ hats in an effort to catch up on my goal of knitting 52 hats in 2018?  Or do I knit something from the giant box of yarn I ordered yesterday?

Decisions, decisions!