Yes, I am still knitting...

An annoying thing called school (and work) has kept me from spending as much time as I might like to doing fun and relaxing things, like knitting! I have managed to do some knitting, however, so without further ado...

I started a scarf for a friend a while back, but by the time I finished it I had decided it wasn't the right colours nor the right pattern for her. It is a keyhole scarf in various browns and beiges - some leftovers and some novelty yarn I was playing with. It was a very fast knit and dead simple but I think I have satisfied any desire to knit with novelty yarn for quite a while! In the end, I was left with a nice scarf, but nobody to give it to...




Until I remembered that a previous scarf recipient had mentioned that his wife and daughter were eyeing his scarf. The homeless scarf is now gracing the neck of his wife. I've never met the lady in question, but I am sure she is lovely as she has EXCELLENT taste in thank-you chocolates. The only trouble is that she is apparently somewhat camera shy. This leaves me without a picture of the lovely couple in their new scarves. I will keep working on it, but in the meantime I suppose this will have to do:


Next came a scarf for my host mother in southern Japan. Her colour request was white and silver, so I picked out a lightweight yarn, and enjoyed the challenge of the more difficult lacy stitch pattern that this scarf entailed. It had to be ripped back a few times due to unforeseen accidents (like the button on my jacket wrist catching the needles and yanking out half of three rows), but once I got the hang of it it was great fun! Despite not quite knowing what I was doing, the scarf blocked surprisingly well and I'm rather pleased with the end result.




I had hoped to be able to send it to okaasan in time for Mother's Day, but I was finishing up the tasselling and doing the blocking on that day. She had to settle for a phone call and the parcel being sent to her a few days later.


She was quite happy with the scarf, but is still reminding me I haven't been down for a visit in over 2 years!

I am still working on that cable scarf, it has doubled in length! It isn't anywhere near actual scarf length yet, however, so I will keep going back to it. I had hoped to mail it out to the recipient in time for his mid-June birthday, but that isn't going to happen. Given the warmth of the season, however, I'm sure he'd prefer it as a Christmas present!

More exciting, however, is my birthday yarn. I had decided I would use both skeins to make myself a shawl. But when I took the yarn out to photograph it, I was forced to realize once again that while the two skeins are the same colourway, the dye lots are significantly different. This may not be a problem, but while I absolutely love one of the two skeins, the other one doesn't inspire the same feeling, and I know if I used it in the same project the orange would bother me... So, I picked up some yarn to complement the blues and greens, and will use those for my shawl. I even found a basic pattern online that I like, and I am ITCHING to get it on the needles. So that I can finish the shawl just in time for the muggy grossness that is summer in Tokyo - yup!

Skein #1





Skein #2




Then a week or so ago I got MORE yarn in the mail! Again, this yarn is my colours (ie GREEN!), a fun boucle in variegated greens.


Almost immediately I spent time researching patterns online, time I SHOULD have spent preparing for an oral presentation... sigh. Anyways, I may be ready to branch out (either that or scarves are starting to bore me) because I think I've decided this yarn (likely with the addition of a basic dark green or black) will be turned into a shrug or bolero (short sweater). We'll see... I'm discovering just how fickle and short-lived my attention to any given knitting project can be...!