WIP Wednesday - Woohoo! :)

I've been very dilligent this past week and have a lot of progress on a lot of different things! I even have a finished object! But let's start at the beginning, because my very oldest WIP is d-o-n-e DONE!!

I first started the Puzzle Piece Blanket back in August 2012 and quickly realized that this would take forever, so once I started my Cozy Memories blanket, I decided to downgrade the PPB severly, and turn it into a runner instead. I determined how many more pieces I needed to knit, and set myself the goal of finishing in 2015. Stashdash seemed as good a time as any for it, and this weekend I sewed the last seam, weaved in the last end, and yesterday I could finally take it off the blocking mats!
I. LOVE. It!!! It looks SO awesome :D Mind you, I've also discovered all the things I should have done differently, but find it highly unlikely that I'll ever care to do this again, so oh well.


I've cast on a new pair of socks! Because obviously I didn't have enough projects on the needles as it were. But I have a good excuse - I need some mindless knitting for next weekend, and my other socks were too close to being done. So what's a girl to do? She casts on a new pair, of course!

And I'm glad I did, because I'm totally in love with both the pattern, the yarn and the needles. I'm knitting the Adjoin Socks by Lara Neel (although I'm totally substituting the fish-lips-kiss heel!) with some Koigu yarn I bought in London. This is my first time knitting with Koigu, but it definitely won't be the last. It's SUCH a treat to knit with :)
In fact, I kinda have to limit myself, so I don't finish these prior to Saturday!


Fortunately that's not too much of a sacrifice, as I have plenty of other projects on the go. I had hoped to have my Spot Check socks finished by today, but forgot to bring my purse along yesterday, so I had no train knitting to and from work. Kicking myself for that, I assure you! I only have one toe left to knit though, so I'll definitely finish today!
I tried a new toe and don't altogether like how it looks. It feels alright on though, so I'm not bothered enough by it that I'm going to rip back and reknit it. It's a bit too tight as feared, but I'm blocking them more rigoursly than I usually do with socks, so I'm hoping that'll get the yarn to relax somewhat. Otherwise I've been told of several people who have small feet ;)


My 30 Valentines shawl is coming along nicely :) I'm at row 124 of the original 140 and have PLENTY of yarn left, so I've been driving myself crazy trying to figure out how many extra rows I can do, how to fit that with the repeats, and how on earth to calculate the rate of increase of yardage used per row, when I'm adding 4 extra stitches each row! No matter what I did, I couldn't seem to make it give me a useful result.

Then today it suddenly struck me - I should try counting stitches instead of trying to measure how much yarn I used per row, since that was changing constantly anyway! Excel to the rescue, and I quickly figured out that after 16226 stitches (the first 123 rows) I'd used up half the yarn! Adding the 40 rows of a full repeat would take me an extra 17416 stitches - not counting the bind off. No matter how I twist and turn it, I can't make that math work! So I have to find a way to fudge it and only add a half repeat. I don't have a lot of experience tweaking lace patterns, so that'll be fun :-P And it does make me kinda depressed to know I'm only 51% of the way through instead of almost done! But I tell myself that it'll be worth it in the end, having the much larger shawl and a lot more yardage for stashdash! ;)
Besides, as much hassle as it is for me to knit - I do think it's looking pretty awesome :) (IRL - doesn't really show up that well on the photo. Lace is impossible to show off until after it's been blocked!)