WIP Wednesday

The unthinkable happened. I ran out of knitting! How did I run out of knitting? Well, I finished the top boarder of the shawl:

The top part will be folded over and sewn to create a double thickness boarder. The shawl is huge now.

Then I sent the remaining yarn home with my in-laws (I also sent our camera, so you are stuck with bad iPod photos this week). The next step is to steak the shawl, which I've done plenty of times, but this is one big shawl so I would like a big table. Then there is picking up 800+ stitches and knitting around 40 rounds.   

Getting the shawl done before 2013 still seems unattainable when you think of the ca. 32.000 stitches I have yet to knit on it.

Friday I was done with the shawl and needed a new project, especially as my SILs and I were having our monthly knitting meetup on Sunday. I had been looking for a pattern to do with the heathered pink Wool of the Andes from a dear friend in the States. The original plan was to knit the French Press Slippers, she had gifted me the pattern and all. But at least two balls of yarn had been cut into. My man, who opened the package, swears he didn't use anything but his hands to do it, so I'm suspecting it went through customs. Oh well, nothing you can do about it. Since I needed every cm of the yarn for the slippers I decided not to bother and simply find another pattern. And while I wouldn't mind having this colour on my feet to remind me of a lovely lady, it isn't really a colour I would wear elsewhere. 

When I found the Baby Sophisticate by Linden Down, I knew I wanted to make it. So Saturday I cast on for it and Monday it looked like this:

The body is complete. I then wanted to make the sleeves, but I don't own 5,5 mm DPNs and I dislike magic looping, so I went on to the collar, read the pattern for it and knit the first 4 rows, then it hit me, this little thing is supposed to have 4 buttons. There are no button holes in the pattern. By then I was slightly annoyed and decided to let go of the needles before some real damage was done.

I keep telling myself that one day without knitting is managable. I could read on the ferry home Tuesday, and today I can figure out where to place the buttons with my mum. I can steal borrow a pair of 5,5 mm DPNs, which I'm hoping she has and I can use her giant dining table for the steaking. And then magically I will have plenty of knitting again. 

I think I might go back to working monogamously on the shawl, because I'm so close to being done, that I can almost taste it.