I’ve been working on the Painting Diamonds shawl since August. A lot has happened since August! This shawl was one which I was keeping at work and knitting on during work breaks. So while it would not have taken quite so long if it were at home, I rather enjoy the gentle progress of a work shawl.

I chose a hot pink main color for this and then used handspun yarns for the contrast colors. Predominately those colors are purple and teal. It is exceedingly cold here right now, and snowy, so I did not take a photo outside.

This is the 8th shawl out of the 13 in the book. I have already started on shawls 9 and 10. This is the second shawl I chose a “hot” or neon color as a main color in order to keep things rather interesting. While it’s a rather bold and wild color, I do appreciate the brightness of it!

Another shawl from the Painting Shawls book complete. This is the 5th out of 13 so I am moving right along. Painting waves was a good easy knit that was quite enjoyable.

The main color is jojoland harmony reclaimed from a sweater I never wore. It goes from blue to purple to lavender. The contrast color is handspun yarn, this one:

Working with two yarns that had moving colors was an interesting endeavor. I liked not having to think about a color pattern, instead just using the two yarns and letting them do all the color change work.

I am off and running on the next shawl from the book and looking forward to seeing how that one will turn out as well!

I finished another pattern from the Painting Shawls book, this one is called Painting Squares.

I used handspun for the accent color. The main color is yarn I reclaimed from an old tank top I knit years ago. I thought it was a fairly decent repurpose of the color. The color scheme is far more muted than I would typically choose but I am really enjoying the result.

This is the fourth out of 13 shawls from the painting shawls book. I have the 5th on the needles but am also working on the westknits mystery shawl so I don’t anticipate being done any time soon with either of them. Nevertheless, I am enjoying all the new techniques and color play happening with all of these patterns!

I finished my third shawl out of the Painting Shawls book. I have decided to knit all 13 so only 10 more to go! To add a bit of interest I decided to use a neon yellow as a framing color. I feel certain that many of my shawls will have neutral or subdued framing colors so choosing something really different appealed to me.

For the other colors I used a combination of my handspun yarns, Miss Marja’s handspun yarns, my hand dyed yarns, and commercial yarns.

This was a genuinely fun knit and I am glad I gave it a try.

I immediately cast on for two new shawls out of the same book, one to work on during work lunch breaks and the other to keep at home. The two I am now working on are painting diamonds and painting squares. They are going well! I’ll have to remember to get some progress photos. But, I do also intend to take a bit of a break once the fall mystery knit along begins.

In my ongoing but somewhat delayed goal of knitting all the shawls in the Painting Shawls book, I finally finished the second out of thirteen projects. This is painting honeycombs (small) shawl.

I used alpaca from my stash, it’s been in my stash for over 10 years. I paired that with a recently finished handspun 3 ply and I just knit the pattern until I was out of handspun.

I worked on this project during my work lunches which means that it’s hard to get sick of it since it’s just a “bite or two” at a time. An hour here, and hour there. But I admit I was pretty glad when it was done as it felt like it was dragging on.

Oddly, the day I finished this I soaked and blocked it and then sat down and finished my third shawl out of the book. I’d been keeping that one at home to work on but have had so much other stuff going on that it took me an equal amount of time to finish. It’ll be a while before I have a place to block that shawl so I won’t be able to post it for a bit.

I did start my 4th shawl from the book over the weekend so that I could bring it to work for my newest lunch knitting project. And, if I have time this evening I’ll start the 5th shawl from the book to have as my at home project. However, I see that westknits mystery shawl info is going to come out soon, and I do plan to take a break and do the westknits mystery shawl again this year. We will see how far I get on shawl 4 and 5 before that consumes my knitting time.

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!

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.

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.

Recently there was a spring sale on Westknits patterns. I decided that since some of my most favorite projects over the past 2ish years have been Westknits mystery knit alongs, I’d indulge in one of these patterns. I ended up choosing Quadrangle Spires. I had a nice chunk of handspun I’d created out of Loop! batts years ago and I wanted to knit it into something interesting.

Since I really wanted to use yarn from stash, I went looking for an appropriate pairing. I did not have a large amount of a solid color in the yarn weight I needed, so instead I decided to hold 3 strands of undyed laceweight yarn together. One strand is alpaca and the other two are cotton.

Honestly this combo isn’t the most ideal, but it is using up some of my stash. And that, for me, is a big win right now.

This is the middle section of the scarf. Each triangle is knit building on the previous triangle, and then the square is seamed together in one section. Sort of like piecing a quilt. I didn’t love the seaming, and I did have a nightmare last evening that I had done a very poor job on it, but ultimately it looks great and I have moved on to the next section. And it holds true that I am enjoying this pattern very well!

I finished a little knitting project recently.

It’s a cowl, or infinity scarf. I used two different yarns, one is a laceweight alpaca yarn from knitpicks I purchased probably in 2007. The other is an absolutely beautiful handspun with a lot of amazing texture and color. The yarn was spun by Miss Marja, and this cowl will go to her. I wanted to really showcase the amazing yarn, so pairing it with the laceweight really works well.

I am kind of working my way through stash yarn that is already wound into yarn cakes as it frees up more storage space in my craft yarn. Both of these yarns were already wound, so I appreciated getting them knit into something. Trouble is, that something is now sitting in my craft room taking up a different type of space, so I need to get this to its new home soon.

A few years back for my wedding I knit a bunch of coasters out of leftover sock yarn. These served as party favors. We planned out wedding in the span of 3 months so I really had to hustle on knitting them while also doing the hard work of wedding planning. Thankfully it was a very small wedding and I did finish them.

It was a fun project and I am glad I knit them, I still hear about guests who are using them in their home. I only retained one of them but I do still have it.

Recently I donated a bunch of handknit scarves to our dog rescue to be used in gift baskets which will be raffled as a fund raiser. I’ve done this for the past 4 years I believe and was glad to do so again.

I also recently cleaned out and organized my bin of scrap sock yarn which got me thinking that perhaps I should knit a few more coasters for next year’s fundraiser. I think that coasters would be even better in gift baskets. So I started knitting…

I think I can package these up in groups of 4, trying to keep colors fairly consistent, and wrap them in something like recycled sari silk or twine and they should be fun additions to gift baskets.

The obsession has abated somewhat and I am on to my next project but I anticipate going back to these from time to time this year. I think they’ll make a great little knitting palate cleanser.

I am suffering from a bit of an entrelac pattern addiction and it isn’t showing much sign of stopping right now. I recently finished this handspun entrelac scarf, and then went on to finish the handspun entrelac scarf below.

The top handspun scarf is out of my own wild handspun yarn, very bright and goofy. The bottom one is out of Miss Marja’s handspun yarn, much more subtle.

I’ve got yet another entrelac scarf on the needles now, out of Noro yarn. Then I think I can settle down and knit something else.

This has actually been done for a bit but it took me time to get it blocked and then even longer to get it photographed. The good news is I’ve noticed the days getting longer again, something I am very pleased to see!

This is the knit night scarf which I’ve knit a few times before. I made it out of Miss Marja’s handspun yarn.

I took some artistic liberty with the border on this one, and by artistic liberty I mean that I didn’t bother to follow the pattern and do it correctly, only noticing once it was too late. No matter, it won’t be noticeable to the untrained eye!

This is my last in a group of hand knit items I have finished recently. It took me time to block them so I ended up batch blocking them and then waiting until I was home during the light of day to take photographs. I’ve actually been working on this one for a long time as it was my work project. Now that it’s complete, I need to choose something else for work. Except that I am not working this week anyhow. This is a strider scarf which shows off the self striping of handspun yarn beautifully. This was a handspun yarn of Miss Marja’s.

We have a foster dog coming in a few days. I always notice that when we have foster dogs, I tend not to knit as I am too busy training, worrying, assessing, and intervening. So there will definitely be a slowing of all these things in the upcoming weeks while we have her. And yes, of course I will post a photo as I like to document our fosters at least once on the blog!

After finishing the handspun paintbox cowl I immediately cast on another one. I just had enjoyed the first one so much! This one was made out of two different handspun yarns. The grey was one of my handspun yarns and the accent color is one of Miss Marja’s handspun yarns.

I like the final product on this one even more than the previous paintbox cowl! This one turned out really interesting and pretty. I maintain that this pattern is a joy to knit and I will absolutely do another one.

We’ve had a lot going on this fall, and we are kind of just…not doing christmas this year. It was too much to try to plan for a family who is just on the struggle bus. Next year, if things are going a bit better, we’ll do it up right.

But as I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been doing some knitting. I made a paintbox cowl out of a handspun yarn paired with a commercial hand dyed yarn.

The handspun yarn is comparatively chunky so it has an interesting effect compared to the evenness of the commercial yarn. I enjoyed this cowl so much that I immediately cast on for another one.

Actually, I’ve been doing a lot of knitting. Turns out when you can see your stitches, your desire to knit might increase again.

I knit this pioneer braid scarf out of Miss Marja’s handspun yarn at the beginning of the month. It knit up super fast but I didn’t have the opportunity to block it and get a decent photo until just now. This is such an easy and pleasant knit that I may do another pretty soon.

Over the summer when I knew we were traveling to Idaho for a wilderness trip, I decided I needed a knitting project to take. I also knew I wanted something with the lightest weight yarn possible and a project that would take a good amount of time. I did not want to stress that I would be finished before the trip was done. And indeed, I did not have to stress about that.

Instead, it took me until last week to finally finish. To be fair, this got set down for multiple other projects since the trip. But I have finally pushed through to finish it up.

The yarn is handspun from a batt which I spun in a gradient. So I took photos of the scarf from both ends, plus one close up shot of the texture.

This is one of those knits where I am kind of like “Yep, good project, glad it’s done.” There’s not that much excitement over it, but I am glad it served its purpose this summer and provided me with a good deal of entertainment value.

I’ve always wanted to knit another find your fade shawl. I really enjoyed the first one I knit years ago and I wear it often to work in the winter. In June of this year I began another out of handspun I had in stash. I used 5 of my own handspun yarns and two of Miss Marja’s handspun yarns. The thing is, I finished the shawl ages ago but the final color I used was not tonally correct for the shawl and I hated it. After blocking the shawl, I couldn’t take a picture of it and blog about it or consider it finished because I couldn’t appreciate the way it looked.

Well, I’ve had this week off, and one of the tasks I put on my personal to do list was to sort out the find your fade shawl. I ripped out the final color that I hated and then picked up all the live stitches. Then I found a new yarn in my stash that I figured would look more tonally appropriate and knit it back in. I was thankful to really appreciate the final product.

I’ve been rearranging my craft room and decided that I needed a quick and fun knit that would use up yarn that I’d already wound into a ball but never knit with. Mostly because I wanted to reclaim the space. So, I decided on a very simple brioche knit scarf. 2 balls of yarn eliminated from my stash and a pretty nice scarf in the donate bin.

I often knit simple items and donate them to our dog rescue to use in raffles. This is the perfect item for that, it’s simple, lovely, squishy, and will likely be appreciated by someone. Both yarns are handspun. I’d do another right quick, but just can’t manage to bring myself to cast on another quite yet.

I had determined I’d do the westknits mystery shawl this fall. It started on the 8th. So, I’ve been working on that, though the first clue is not yet done.

Between the time I decided to do the mystery knit and the time the mystery knit started, I decided to focus on my quadri shawl (scarf) in progress. I had been feeling like I wasn’t actually making much progress and not doing much knitting, but then I looked at the previous photo. Most of the turquoise and all of the grey was not there before. So, I did make some good steady progress while waiting for the mystery knit to start.

Now it’s a bit on the back burner while I work on the mystery shawl, but I am super glad to have made forward movement with it!