I mentioned in a previous post that it is my intention to knit all the shawls in the Painting Shawls book, all 13 of them. And I just finished the first!
This first one I chose to knit is Painting Columns. The majority of this yarn is knitpicks palette I had in stash. I’d been saving that yarn for ages to knit some colorwork mittens or a hat. But, I never got around to it, never became inspired to do it, so I decided that this could be used another way. The faded blue is handspun that I created years ago. It is woad dyed, and a fair amount of the woad dye washed out, or lightened, when I washed the shawl. I knew that it would as I had not rinsed the skein after dyeing it.
I do not typically knit half circle shawls, so I forgot how long the last rows take. They feel like they are flying along pretty well until you get toward the end and then suddenly it’s such a slog! My next pattern from this book will be a scarf or stole, so that I do not have to deal with the increases and then sloginess of the last rows of a shawl. Particularly a half circle shawl!
But all in all, I am pleased with this project and I am glad I started on this 13 shawl endeavor.
Spinning has slowed down some due to a number of factors. First, the storms. We’ve just been having severe storm after severe storm and in between, high heat and humidity. These things don’t leave time for patio and fenced yard spinning.
Also, we’ve been busy! Transporting rescue dogs, getting stuff done around the house, working, volunteering, agility classes. Just busy!
I wanted to spin yesterday but we got hit by another surprise storm that left all the patio furniture soggy, so I did not. I won’t have the opportunity this evening either.
So, here’s where I am with my current project.
This is two different colorways of fiber, but I’ve combined them again as they are close enough to look nice together. I am working on a 2 ply laceweight yarn, and with 8 ounces of it, the yardage will be very high on this one. Since I only have half the singles done, I know it’s going to be a long time until I am done with this project but I am so excited to find out what it looks like when it is plied up! I really do hope I can find some time to work on this project this weekend.
On May 4, I posted the start of my graveyard project pan, a project I’ve always wanted to do but never had the space for. It’s time for update 1.
Resurrection products last month:
With the cover FX palette, my goal is to try to hit pan on the blush, bronzer, and brightener.
The NYX cream shadow (in the cover FX palette) the goal is to use up.
The tarte smoothing primer, goal is to use as much as possible.
Here’s the update photo:
I have already hit pan on the bronzer! I am going to keep using this as I attempt to hit pan on the other two pans. I have been using the NYX cream colored shadow to set my eye base but I don’t use it every time. It’s hard to tell if much progress has been made, but there’s so little in there I am not concerned. And, the tarte primer I made a nice amount of progress on though it may be hard to tell. I am really working my way down one side in order to be able to see progress evenly as I update. Originally my goal was to use as much as possible, but now my goal is to use this up. I feel that my progress is pretty good, and even if I don’t finish it before the end of October there’s a good chance I’ll finish by the end of the year.
Collecting Cobwebs last month:
My goal was to use each eyeshadow in the palette at least once, which I did. There were a number of shadows I used 4 times over the month. I have an ongoing project of using each of my eyeshadows once this year, so I am going to roll in new palettes in this category.
The mac powder I’ve been using almost every time I use makeup. It’s a domed product and I am not sure it’s going to be easy to see any progress at all, but I do feel I’ve worn down the dome significantly.
Here’s this month’s photo:
And now to roll in something a little more challenging for my eyeshadow palettes. There’s a total of 48 shadows plus two highlighters here, as I am going to work my way through my BH Zodiac and Zodiac Love palette.
This is rather a large undertaking, and will likely take me more than a month to complete. I’ll hold off the next update until I have completed this portion of the project. I’ll be recording each use and likely each shimmer will get used once but the mattes more than once. In the past I’ve had a lot of trouble with these shimmers staying on my eyelids and not creasing so I am likely going to experiment a bit with what types of primers I use with these. Then I need to write down my results so that I can remember what works best!
Many times I’ve considered depotting these palettes and only keeping the mattes but I am glad these are intact for now. Hopefully I can find a way for the shimmers to work well for me.
That’s it from here! I am thinking that this year’s project pans have been some of my favorite. They’ve been rather reasonable and not too crazy making. Good visible progress and some flexibility built in. I wish the same for you if you are a project panner!
Last month had been great for progress, and I am delighted that while I finished fewer items this month, it was another pretty good month. Here’s last month’s photo:
And this month:
I finished 3 items this month, the Coola spray, the amazonian clay color corrector, and a mascara. So, when including my bonus items, I am at 18 used up products out of 22.
A quick overview of the other items-I have been consistently using the make up forever powder, but only under my eyes, so the progress is slow. There’s a little blue line on the washi tape that indicates where I am now.
The mac foundation-progress is slow! While I am slightly under the line I made last month on the washi tape, it wasn’t worth marking again. But I do feel good about how much I’ve done with this over the year and I think I will be able to finish it. It’s just that it does not work for me at work, as the masks remove this foundation quickly. So, it’s relegated to days off foundation and I don’t always wear makeup on my days off, obviously.
I am happily working on my benefit eyebrow gel, but this will likely dry out before I use it up.
I did not mark my tarte lip jelly because it’s too close to being gone to mark. I really enjoy this and use it fairly regularly.
I have used my frankenblush as I do very much want to get this finished up this year but there’s a lot more of it now that I scraped the edges and mixed it with some highlighter. Plus, it’s rather a cool tone and we are in a season in which I tend to enjoy wearing some warmer toned blushes.
My makeup forever artist color pencil is going well! This is generally what I am wearing on my lips at work, this as my base with a gloss overtop. Since we are masking more than we were, this is a good product for switching between a mask and no mask.
The colourpop supershock shadow is something I keep around for the moments I want a little more sparkle on my eye look. I don’t think I used it much over the past month. Slow progress!
And, my stila lipstick-while I did use it, marking it would have not worked, as the progress was minimal. Again, it’s dark and cool toned which isn’t my preference for a more summery makeup routine.
All in all though, I am pleased with my progress and excited to keep going. The jelly glaze will be gone by next month for sure. I may also be able to finish the powder. The lip pencil is getting quite close too, but I am not certain that’ll be gone by next update.
The two items I am absolutely determined to finish no matter what this year are the lipstick and the mac foundation. I would love to be able to say I finished 2 lipsticks in one year! I have lots of foundation so I am eager to finish up one that doesn’t stick to my face as well as others. So I really need to get to concentrating on those again, even if I just use the lipstick a couple times a month.
Anyhow, that’s it from here, with my master list below. Have a great weekend!
Hourglass Dim Light powder
Bare Minerals Bare Pro Powder Foundation
Cerave sunscreen
Juice Beauty primer (deluxe sample size)
Bite Beauty lipstick
Sephora green color corrector
Tarte Amazonian Clay color corrector
Colourpop supershock shadow Frog
Benefit eyebrow pencil
Elf putty primer (deluxe sample size)
Ilia lip balm (deluxe sample size)
Tarte lip balm (deluxe sample size)
Tower 28 gloss (deluxe sample size)
Sleek Face Palette (darkest contour shade only with use of the light bronzer shade as well)
Makeup Forever Lip Liner
Makeup Forever powder (deluxe sample size)
Laura Mercier secret brightening powder
Coola spray (sample size)
Maybelline setting spray (travel size)
1 mascara of any type
Benefit tinted eyebrow gel
Ofra liquid lipstick travel size any color
Bonus items:
elf eyebrow wax Stila lipstick Pan of blush Mac foundation Clinique eyeliner Pretty Vulgar powder
I had such a delightful time with my Quadrangle Spires shawl that I purchased the Painting Shawls book so that I could continue to knit westknits patterns and stash bust with them. My intention is to work my way through all 13 patterns. I have no idea how long that will take but I do know that I have enjoyed my westknits projects more than anything else I’ve knit over the past few years.
Now that I am doing way more spinning than I was previously over the past few years I am already concerned about the potential yarn stash growth. I had knit down and given away my stash to a point of…relative comfort in the room which I am using as my craft room. I really don’t want it to expand, I still want to keep knitting it away.
So, I immediately started contemplating how to choose the first pattern I would knit out of this book. I had some great suggestions from friends on FB. I landed on starting with the small honeycombs shawl since there are two honeycomb shawls and I am unlikely to want to knit them back to back.
It took me some time to land on an appropriate yarn pairing but I ended up using some undyed alpaca as the solid color and one of my most recent handspun yarns as the colorful accent. I really enjoyed knitting this, but ended up bringing it to work to work on during my lunch breaks as I didn’t have a work project.
Then I went stash diving again the next evening to see what I could come up with for the painting columns shawl, and that’s what I’ve been working on all weekend. For this one, the yarns are all knitpicks palette I had in stash except for one handspun of mine which I woad dyed pretty early on in the pandemic.
This one has gotten quite a lot of progress as it rained a bunch this weekend and I ended up indoors more than expected. Since taking this picture I finished the current section and am on to the next. Of course there are a whole lot of stitches on the needles now, so progress is a lot slower than it was! But I am already contemplating which will be the third shawl in this series since this one is knitting up so quickly.
I finished my quadrangle spires shawl and it was an absolute joy to knit from start to finish. I just couldn’t get enough of the pairing of the handspun yarn and the light color framing it.
It was actually too large for me to photograph horizontally so I chose instead to get a photo of each side.
This project sent me down the rabbit hole-I purchased the Painting Shawls book and have now started two of the 13 patterns out of that book, with the full intention of knitting all of them. These are the shawls that are really inspiring me lately and they are fantastic stash busters as well.
Spinning in my fenced yard has been so enjoyable and productive! I went back and looked at what I’d spun over the previous 3 years and it averaged to one skein of yarn per year. There were many times I thought perhaps I should sell my spinning wheel. But the answer was just to give myself a place to be outside safely with my dogs.
I finished this 3 ply combo spin, 655 yards. I realized at this point that my skills were rusty. Not surprising considering the very long break. This yarn is either DK or worsted weight, I didn’t check. it’s certainly not sock weight yarn.
Over the past year I had been working on spinning some singles onto support spindles but never completed or plied the project. While I was plying the above project I decided to complete the singles so that I’d be ready to ply that skein as well.
This is a sock weight 2 ply yarn, 625 yards. It’s a great blurple color with lovely bits and bobs in it.
I immediately grabbed 2 more bumps of fiber for another combo spin and got started. 8 ounces of fiber spun into 2 ply laceweight will definitely take me a bit longer than these projects have!
Suzy Sells Sea Shells 