I didn't really knit that much this weekend in spite of the 3 day holiday. I spent part of it with the family and I just can't knit well when I'm around others. It's too distracting. I've been making an effort to work on the "Mountain Pines" shawl however. I really want to finish it so I can work on "The Spider Queen". I know, I know. The deals knitter/spinners make with themselves are often baroque and without real meaning to anyone but ourselves. I really must finish a shawl so I can start another shawl? What kind of whacked logic is that? Still that's the deal. I can swatch "Spider Queen" but not really knit it until I finish something. The yarn I spun for MP does not show to advantage in these flash shots. When It's done, I'll try to get an outdoors shot that shows the subtle nature of the colors. While I look at this shawl with a critical eye, I can see some parts of the yarn that are thinner than they should be, fatter than they should be in some locations. When I was younger this would have driven me crazy but now that I've exceeded the "half century" mark, I think I can live with the irregularity. I'm up to row 47 of the border (it's 99 rows total, then you knit on an edge) and I'm about to start the "Pine Trees" that are in the border of this pattern. It's silly to get off on that aspect of the knitting I know, but I get a kick out of seeing the motifs take shape.
I'm working on the second repeat of the WRS center panel and it's still something I can knit for only 1-4 rows before having to stop and do something else. It may be the fact that the row of stitches is quite long and each row of pattern itself is also quite long. This pattern differentiates between decreases that are left and right leaning decreases (darned dyslexia) so it takes me more time to read/knit each decrease stitch. In contrast I was swatching "Spider Queen" and it does a standard K2 tog for all decreases. Knitting this is very easy as a result. If anyone is considering making a Shetland Shawl, I'd suggest doing Hazel Carter's patterns first before trying Sharon Millers as a starting point because of this aspect of the knitting. Just my opinion of course! I check in on the Yahoo Group for knitters making Sharon Miller patterns and some of the others on that group suggested I just do K2 tog for all the decreases if it's that big a deal for me. Since the yarn I'm using is so fine, it might not be very noticeable that I'm doing left or right slanting decreases but it's hard to change what I'm doing now that I've started out one way.
Just a mention here about perspective. Once you start knitting with Gossamer weight yarn, all the other laceweight looks and feels like you are knitting with rope. I Swatched Spider Queen with some Zepher I had around the house using a US 3 needle. I just couldn't get into it at that weight. "Spider Queen" implies use of a pretty darned fine yarn. I will go through the stash and examine what I have for candidates.
