Fall Fever

I'm suffering from a serious case of fall fever.

While unpacking my booth setup stuff after the county fair last weekend, I set the cup of fake leaves down in a random corner of the room for a lack of a better place to store them.  They looked so lonely, I added a pumpkin.  And now I officially have fall fever.  I want candy corn, bonfires, jeans, boots, flannel shirts, and did I mention, candy corn?  I love candy corn.

The fair was a success, despite it incredibly hot and humid.  From my booth alone, I saw three different people get loaded into ambulances, presumably from heat related issues.  It was hot!  Naturally, no one was in the mood to buy wool hats but I did sell tons of pumpkins.  Despite the heat, it was a successful day.  My booth neighbor, Winnie from Sweet Threads, was a lifesaver.  There wasn't room in my booth for the fan I'd brought but Winnie had a spare and aimed it at me for the entire event.  Thank you Winnie!

I've been pretty lazy since getting home from the fair.

All I've managed to accomplish craft-wise is to bind off a scrap shawl I was knitting and I started a granny rectangle blanket.

I'm loving the granny rectangle, although I can't crochet for more than about 30 minutes a day or my hand feels like it's going to fall off. Crochet bothers my carpal tunnel.  Anyway....  

I've never crocheted an official granny rectangle before.  I've always just made two (or more) squares, sewn them together then granny stitched around them to create a rectangle.  This time, I watched a you tube video to learn how to do it correctly and I love the results.  I'm already afraid I'm going to run out of yarn though.  I may have grossly miscalculated how much I'd need.  The blanket may end up being a weirdly large table runner.  We'll see.

As for the scarf, it's another simple scrap Palette garter stitched scarf.  Every row is a different color and I leave a little extra yarn hanging off the ends to become fringe.  Super simple to knit and a great way to use up little bits of mis-matched left over yarns.  I've made a zillion of them and will most likely make a zillion more.

And that has pretty much been my week.  I hope your week has been as relaxing and frivolous as mine has been.

Happy knitting!

What a week!

This has been quite an exciting week!

I finished the Mimosa sweater for Sarah.  I even sewed it all up and she's worn it.  Of course I forgot to take a phot of it.  Next time she wears it...

I finished knitting the Squish blanket and bound it off.

I even wove in all the little ends and have been enjoying snuggling up under it the last few nights.  The blanket really is aptly named because it is incredibly thick and squishy.  If I can stand that many long-term projects, I may have to knit one for each family member.  I love it that much!

And, most exciting of all....

The Cadbury eggs are stocked and on the grocery store shelves.  This pleases me to no end.  My weight-loss doctor, probably not so much.

Off the mats

 

The most recently finished Reyna is finally off the blocking mats.  For the life of me, I can't get my camera to provide me with a true representation of its color.  The yarn is from Organized Chaos and is called Lagoon.  In real life, it looks like gorgeous green/blue Caribbean water that's full of glowing phosphorescence.  Or magic.  Or something.  The yarn isn't metallic but it glows.  But not in a neon way.  It glows in a "hug me and never let me go" way.  I don't even know how to begin to describe it, but it is Glorious!

And for those of you who are purists and have knit a Reyna before and know what it's supposed to look like, you may notice it looks slightly wrong.  Yes, it does.  I screwed up on the second mesh section and kept on knitting mesh instead of switching back to the garter ridges when I was supposed to.  Rather than rip it, I went with the mistake and then knit more garter ridges than I should have on the next section.  I really like the affect when it's laid out flat, but I notice when worn, the extra mesh is making it puddle weirdly on the chest.  Or maybe that's just my lack of wrapping it around the neck skills.  Either way, I'm very pleased with it.

Scottish Highlands

Scottish Highlands Shawl

I feel like all I ever do is apologize for my photos... but please, accept my apology for this one.  I finished my Scottish Highlands shawl and celebrated by spending the rest of the afternoon sunbathing with a bottle of wine and I didn't think to photograph the shawl until the sun had gone down.

Hopefully I'll get the ends woven in and get it blocked today.  I'm looking forward to the lace section looking like lace instead of crumpled up, wrinkled fabric.  The yarn is So soft and squishy and despite it being only June 2nd, I cannot wait until fall gets here so I can wear it.

I guess I need to apologize again.  There are no links in this post because I'm working with VERY limited internet.  I barely had enough to open Blogger so that I could write this.  I'm afraid if I attach links, I won't have enough left to publish this post.

And with that, please note that it may be a few days before you hear from me again.  I've got a week to go until my Hotspot resets.  Yikes!

Stash Busting

Have I even shown you the shawl I'm knitting?

Stash Buster Shawl

I know it's made an appearance on Instagram for my 'post every single day in February' challenge but I'm fairly certain I haven't mentioned it here.

Anyway....

I'm stash busting.  One of my yarn dressers had two drawers of nothing but Wool of the Andes and I decided that needed to change.  I pulled it all out and stuck the sweater/big project quantities back into a drawer.  Next I separated the blues, grays and reds from the greens, pinks and purples.  I am definitely a creature of habit!  All but 3 skeins fell into those color categories!  

I arranged the greens and pinks into a pleasing, (Hopefully. I'm terrible at picking out colors,) display; added two of the three miscellaneous colors into the mix and cast on a shawl. 

Wool of the Andes Stash Buster Shawl

As you can see, it's pretty big.  The idea is for it to be a giant shawl that I can wrap up in almost like using a blanket.  The idea is to also use all that yarn I pulled out of the drawer.  You can also see that I'm not worrying about where the yarns stop and start.  I simply start a new one when the old one runs out.  I don't even want any little, tiny balls of leftover yarns when this project is through.  All I want is a big, giant shawl and an empty drawer.

If I stick to my original color stripe plan, I have three more skeins plus the border to go.  I'm not sure if I'll add the border or not.  It's already pretty big and being garter stitch, it's going to grow considerably when I block it.  I don't want it to end up being so big it looks like a weirdly colored bridal train.  We'll see how it goes.

Despite my urge to hurry up and be done with it, this has been a fun project to knit.  For the most part, I change colors after every two skeins of yarn.  When you're used to knitting 450 yard skeins of fingering weight, Wool of the Andes' 110 yard worsted skeins knit up pretty quickly.  The constant color changes help keep it interesting.  Also, being all garter, I can read while I knit.  That helps a lot too.  Also being all garter and thus 100% mindless, it's a good social knitting project.  The pattern I'm using is Grain  although I'm not sure I can claim to be "using" the pattern.  I simply looked at the start up row and made the shawl my own from there on.

And now, I'm off to clean the bathroom mirror and brush my hair.  Based on that photo, I think both of those things need to happen before I spend any more time knitting.

Colorburst

Pardon the bad lighting.  A cloudy day and a dark house…

Colorburst shawl being blocked

Remember my Colorburst shawl?  Probably not – it’s been months since I finished knitting it.  Well, I finally got around to blocking it. I cannot believe how much it grew in the process.  The miracles of garter stitch. 

I'm embarrassed to show you that photo but since all I've been knitting lately is the Big Secret Baby Thing, I have nothing else to show you.  

I wish you could see the shawl in person.  In real life it’s so much prettier.  Its jewel tones are just so gorgeous although they are looking a little muddy and dull in the photo.  I was a little worried about its muddiness actually.  The shawl turned the soak water dark blue.  I was afraid of what it would look like when it dried but you’d never know it had bled like that.  Now, I just need to be cautious of it bleeding onto my clothes.

Totally unrelated to knitting, my room is a giant attic dormer that juts out over the front porch.  There are constantly woodpeckers and wrens hopping all over those two trees and since we moved in, I've told myself almost daily that I should set up a bird feeder on the porch roof.  I haven't and I won't because it would involve a ladder but it's fun to think about.  And then ... I looked out of the window yesterday and there was a cardinal sitting there, waiting to be fed.

Don't forget - if you are anywhere near Williamsburg, VA tomorrow, stop by Yarn Matters and check out my friend, Martha's,  trunk show of hand dyed yarns.

Yarn Therapy

Thank you all for the kind, encouraging words on yesterday's post.  I was in a rather dark place yesterday.  Thankfully I was able to attend last night's knitting group gathering which always helps.  Getting a couple of hours of sleep also helped.

Bamboo Pop Sock

A little yarn therapy helped too.  It's a good thing we'll close on the sale of our house and be debt free next week because I keep spending all our money on yarn. But hey, yarn is cheaper than the mental institute and that skein is ready to knit.  No winding needed.  And, I have the Reyna pattern already printed.  I'm feeling a lot better today.

Knitting group was quite productive.  Besides making me feel better and helping me de-stress, I was able to finish the Martha Shawl.  

I-cord bind-off

I still have quite a bit of the Sunset (the pink & yellow) from Dying for Art but I ran out of the Carbon from Knitted Wit.  Since there was so much Sunset left, I thought about knitting some kind of lacy border but ... dark place.  I took the easy way out and knit an i-cord bind-off instead.  

Martha Shawl

The shawl isn't quite as long as I'd hoped it would be, but then, I haven't blocked it yet.  Garter does stretch a lot when blocked.  It may even be too long after blocking!

Completed Martha Shawl

I really love the way it looks with a shawl cuff, although I definitely need to buy myself a black cuff.  The brown leather one isn't really cutting it.

Fable Fur

I don't normally post on Saturdays but I am SO excited about a new yarn being offered by Knit Picks, I had to make an exception.  And yes, I could have waited until my normally scheduled Tuesday post to tell you about it, but Knit Picks is offering a coupon code on their home page for a free skein when you order a set of bulky interchangeable needles.  But hurry!  The coupon code expires on Monday.

Fable Fur from Knit Picks

Fable Fur.  Oh. My. Goodness!  

When Knit Picks introduced it a week or two ago I knew I'd either love it or hate it.  Fake fur things aren't normally my thing.  The mention of it does one of two things.  It either mentally sends me to a Walmart's clearance clothing aisle or it takes me back to the '80's and all those colorful 'fun fur' scarves we knit back in the day.  Neither of which are good things.  But it's Knit Picks and I am an affiliate (I'll be up front about that) and it's their new yarn.  I should try it.  So I ordered some.

And Oh. My. Goodness!

First of all, the yarn is crazy soft.  CRAZY soft!  

Second, it's bulky and knits up super fast. SUPER fast!

I stopped by my LYS to purchase US 15 needles because I didn't own any that large.  I went from the LYS to my knitting group meeting.  I sat down and cast on the Ephemeral Cowl, a free pattern designed for Fable Fur, knit a few rows, passed the cowl around for others to feel and pet, knit a few rows, moved to another table to chat with others, knit a few rows, passed the cowl around some more, knit a few more rows... Drove home, knit a few more rows, cast off, sewed the ends together (the cowl is knit flat,) wove in my ends and...

Presto Magic!  A ready to be gifted cowl, (Or kept for myself.  After all, who are we kidding here??)  knit in under 3 1/2 hours, start to finish.  

Ephemeral Cowl knit with Fable Fur

So to answer the question, Will I love it or will I hate it?   Oh, I definitely love it.  The daughter even loves it!  And yes, I've ordered more.  

And I'm sitting here thinking, "You know, that would make a really cool blanket."  I just might have to place a third order.

And since you might be wondering.... 

This cowl was knit with the Kuma colorway on US 15 needles.

I don't normally knit with bulky yarns.  Actually, I avoid them like the plague.  Bulky yarns make my hands hurt.  But this Fable Fur didn't.  Not at all.  

As for actually knitting with the yarn, it's probably not for absolute beginners.  I couldn't see my stitches, I had to feel for them.  Just like the 'fun fur' of the '80's.  But unlike that horrible fun fur of the '80's, the stitches were easy to feel.  The yarn is bulky after all and it's easy to tell if you have your needle in a stitch unlike that awful thread like, hairy stuff of back in the day.

And yes, if you are on my Christmas gift list, you can expect to receive a posh, fur cowl this year.

Off the needles

Today, OTN is standing for off the needles rather than on.

The prayer shawl for Sue is finally finished.  Just in time for her last chemo appointment next week.

After asking for everyone's opinion about the contrasting border color, I went with the white.  I'm So glad I did.  Color-wise, I think it looks great and besides, it looks like waves crashing on the beach.  And since Sue loves the beach....  I think it's perfect.

Well, it's obviously not perfect.  There are several 'creative design elements' in the lacy border.  Oh well.  The shawl is not perfect and neither is Sue.  They can be perfectly imperfect together.  At least that's my story of why I didn't bother to rip and fix them.

Despite the those 'design elements' in the border, I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.  I'm also amazed at how much it grew during blocking.  Pre-blocking, the shawl barely went across my shoulders, much less wrapped around me.  Post-blocking...I'm going to have a very, very difficult time handing it over to Sue.

But hand it over, I will.  Sue deserves it.  She has done SO well with her chemo treatments.  She's had none of the horrible side affects you hear about and didn't even loose her hair.  I'm so proud of the way she's held her head up throughout the whole ordeal.  She'll have one more dose of chemo then go for another round of CAT scans to see what the next step is.  The doctor seems confident that she's going to beat it and be considered 'cured.'  Thank you for all your prayers and well wishes.

Finis

The Kroy blanket

is

finally

finis!

I even wove in the ends!

On the Needles

... Or more like, still on the needles...

Kroy Blanket

Yes, the Kroy blanket is still on the needles.  But, it's now on a 24 inch cord  instead of a 36 inch cord.  The stitches are pretty bunched up on that 24 inch cord, but they are all on there.  And that, my friends, is progress!

Prayer Shawl

My apologies for when this starts to get confusing...

I've started a prayer shawl for a close relative (not my daughter) who's recently been diagnosed with cervical cancer.  She does not want to be identified here but I know that she and her illness will weigh heavily on my mind and will be a big part of my life for the next many months.  I know I will talk about her and/or her illness here and since she doesn't wish to be identified, I'm going to call her Sue.  I've racked my brain and don't think I know anyone named Sue so I don't feel like I'm jinxing anyone by using their name.  If your name happens to be Sue, my apologies for that too.  I wish you nothing but health and happiness.

Anyway, Sue is cold.  Constantly freezing cold.  And as chemo started yesterday, the feeling will only get worse.  So, I'm knitting her a prayer shawl.

The shawl will be a generic half circle design that I'm knitting in garter stitch.  I plan to add in a few lacy, *yo, K2tog* rows occasionally to fancy it up just a teeny tiny bit.  The main goal is for the shawl to be warm and finished quickly.

While the shawl's design is rather generic, the yarn is not.  I'm using Manos Del Uruguay Fino which is a merino/silk blend.  It is Heaven to knit with.  The yarn is incredibly soft and the Delft colorway is fluctuations of violet and periwinkle, occasionally fading to almost while.  In other words, it's not boring to knit with at all.  And I think (hope!) it's Sue's favorite color.  At least she wears it frequently.

As for my reading these days.... Can I call it 'reading' if I'm only on page 5?  This time around, I'm reading an actual book.  A paper version!  Not a virtual book on my Kindle!  It's titled Something in the Water and written by Catherine Steadman.  I may be only on page 5 but I was hooked by page 2.  If the writing keeps up and the story is as chilling as I expect it to be, this book just may knock Jaws off my all time favorite summer/beach read list. 

On the Needles - Kroy

Phew!  I finally finished re-knitting February's cut off stitches back onto my Patons Kroy diagonally striped blanket.  What a time consuming ordeal!  But, it's done and I can move on and hopefully learn from that mistake.  

Patons Kroy Diagonally Striped Scrap Blanket

To celebrate finally getting to knit with 'new' yarn  instead of my self-made sock blank and because it was a glorious spring day, I picked up a skein of Meadow Stripes which really stands out on the blanket.  'Stands out' as in clashes with the rest of the blanket.  

Meadow Stripes is bright greens, blues, pinks and reds and looks nothing like the other mostly muted colors I've been using but I've decided not to care that it looks weird.  The idea behind the blanket is to use up some of the zillions of skeins of Patons Kroy in my stash.  And at some point, there will be a bright turquoise and magenta striped skein added in so ....  So yeah.  I'm just not going to worry about it looking weird.  It's a 'scrap' blanket - it's supposed to look weird.

Another thing I finally finished - I finished reading Disturb Not the Dream.  It wasn't anywhere near as scary as I remember it being, although there was a lot of unpleasant sex in the form of incest and rape.  Perhaps that's what I found so scary when I read it the first time.  I was pretty young and innocent back in those days.  This go round, I found the book to be much more disturbing than terrifyingly scary.

The next book in my queue is By the Unholy Hand by Kathryn Le Veque which I've just started reading.  I'm not sure I'll finish it though.  It's full of typos and grammatical errors.  The story has to be awfully good to put up with that.  I'll probably read another chapter or two before making the decision to finish or delete it from the Kindle.  It's a medieval knights' tale which is a genre I normally enjoy so we'll see how it goes.

Photo Friday

I'm making progress!

Sunstorm Shawl

Slowly but surely, I'm making progress.  I've 'faded' into the final skein (half a skein in reality) and have begun knitting the decreases on my Sunstorm.  I should have a finished shawl by next week.

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!

Dear Blog,

Dear Blog,

I've missed you!  I thought I was only going to be gone a week or two but it's been almost a full month.  I hope you will forgive me.

While I may not have been here talking about it, I have been knitting.  Not knitting as much as I'd like -that pesky job of mine tends to get in the way - but knitting nonetheless. 

Since my last post, I've knit a couple of hats, I finished the Blue Heron cowl and I started another 'faded' project.

Faded Sunstorm Shawl

I'm actually much further along on it than the photo shows.  Since taking that photo, I've added almost two more full skeins to it.  I'm using the Sunstorm Hawthorne value pack I mentioned here.  The first two colors coordinate but don't really 'fade.'  The rest however....  At least so far, the other colors are blending perfectly.  In fact, they blend so well that until I've got a few solid inches of the new color knit, I don't notice the difference in the yarns.  To balance out that non-faded beginning color change, I'm saving the yellow skein for the other end.  The yellow will coordinate but not 'fade' with the color before it.  I think it's going to be perfect!

The design is simple.  So simple, I'm not sure I can legally call it a design.  It's just a garter stitch rectangle with pointy ends.  I started by casing on 3 stitches and increased with a simple K1YO at the beginning of each row.  Once the shawl was wide enough (more like, I got bored of increasing,) I began doing a K1,YO,K2tog at the beginning of each row.  Once I'm ready to decrease on the opposite end, I'll change it K2tog, YO, K2tog.  I think it's going to work and again, I think the shawl will be perfect!

The simplicity of all that garter stitch is exactly what I've needed this summer.

Hopefully I will have a more up-to-date photo to share soon.  I can't believe my luck!  Actually, I can.  Today was a fairly typical day in my life.  I finally had a chance to take a few photos of finished projects and...  It was cloudy and late-ish afternoon, which means the house is not naturally well lit at all so I set up outdoors on the porch.  I wiped down the deck railing, got the shawl laid across it just so, got the camera set up, waited for the lens to clear (It's about 4,000% humidity outside,) got the tripod set so that the shawl was framed perfectly in the camera lens, dealt with the wasp sting I got when I stepped back and my foot landed on Mr. Angry Wasp...  I was finally ready to go and...  Dammit!  The camera battery was dead.  And so was the back up battery.  Double dammit!

So, maybe next Saturday I'll get some photos taken.  And yes, Next Saturday.  Not This Saturday.  Next Saturday is my next day off.

So, once again, you may not be hearing from me for a while.

Someone please remind me how much I love my job.

Makers' Monday - Diagonal Stripes

Today's Makers' Monday post is going to be quick and dirty and not at all what I'd planned to talk about.  Instead of telling you about the new hat pattern I'm knitting....

Diagonally Striped Blanket

I'm knitting a diagonally striped blanket with left over scraps of fingering weight yarn on US 3 needles, while sitting in the rain, in a giant traffic jam, otherwise known as I95.

What are you creating?

On The Needles

My current garter stitch, 'knit while I read' project is another Hitchhiker shawl. 

Hitchhiker

I thought I'd talked about it already, but I was unable to find a previous post, so maybe not.  I'm knitting the shawl with Patons Kroy Socks in the Blue Striped Ragg colorway and using a US 4 needle.  I was worried about how the self striping yarn would behave but so far, I'm very happy with it.  Very happy with it, except that I've knit 30 teeth already and it seems to be growing  in width much faster than in length.  But as they say, I'm sure that sh*t will block right out.

(Sorry.  I try very hard not to curse here on the blog, but I just love that blocking quote.)

Ocean Stripes

I mentioned the other day that I was finally getting ready to bind off my Ocean Stripes shawl, but I never shared photos.

Ocean Stripes

Even while I knit that last row, I still wasn't sure if I was going to keep it or list it for sale.  Once it was bound off though, it didn't take me long to make that decision.  I've been wrapped up in it practically 24/7 since.  I didn't even take the time to wash or block it before cuddling up in it.  Being all garter stitch, the shawl really doesn't need blocking but considering how long it took me to knit it and as a WIP, it was dragged/drug (neither sounds right) all over the house, it's been to multiple outdoor events, and it's even taken a few road trips... it could stand a good soak.

Oh well.  Spring is only a few months away.  It can wait.

It's going to have to wait because I'm never taking it off.  Not until the spring thaw at least.

The shawl was knit with fourteen different colors of Palette from Knit Picks.  If you're interested, I talked about how I knit it in this blog post.  I love knitting these simple, striped garter stitch shawls.  There's something so calming about row after row of garter stitch and the constant color changes keep it from ever being boring.  I also adore the way the various colors play with each other.

To see what others are creating, join me over at Frontier Dreams for today's #Craftingon link-up.

Snowblind

I have the feeling I'm about to become horribly confused. 

I was checking out a book on my Kindle that someone had recommended and while it did sound like a fabulous read, it was $16.99 and I just can't bring myself to pay that much for a book I can't actually touch.  But, my interest in that book caused my Kindle to suggest Snowblind by Michael Abbadon, which I bought.  And that action prompted my Kindle to recommend more books, one of which was Snowblind by Christopher Golden.  And I bought that one too.  Which prompted a third recommendation and yes, you guessed it - another book titled Snowblind. 

I now have three different books on my Kindle, all titled Snowblind.  It was a hard choice, but I decided to read the one written by Christopher Golden first.  And Oh My Goodness!  After reading two pages, I was hooked.  By the end of the second chapter, I was contemplating fixing a second dinner because I was so hungry. All the characters were eating and the writing was so descriptive, I could feel their hunger and smell their food.  It made me hungry too.  Another chapter or two had me going to look out the front door to see how deep the snow was.  Seriously!  It was 85 degrees that day, but I was so involved in the story, I actually, literally, expected to see snow outside.  I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed to admit that, or if the author should be winning every award possible for making me feel that way. 

While I've read a zillion books that I have loved, many of which made me laugh out loud and a few that have made me cry - at work, at my desk.  Yes, that really happened.  Talk about embarrassing!  Specially since I'm constantly on the security cameras at work and a security guard came to check on me.  I was crying that hard.  Over a book! At work!  So yeah, I've loved a lot of books, but I don't remember an author having this kind of affect on me since the '80's when I discovered Stephen King.  I'm fairly certain that Christopher Golden's Snowblind is going to end up on my All Time Favorite Books list.

Ocean Stripes and Snowblind

All that to say, I spent most of today sitting on the deck, reading and knitting on my Ocean Stripes shawl.  Thank goodness for simple, mindless garter stitch projects that I can knit on while I read.

And yes, I'm using a Rubbermaid tote as a knitting bag. 


Join me for today's #Unraveled linkup at As Kat Knits to see what others are knitting and reading.