Fingerless gloves, lacey progress, knitting in public, and yarn lust.

I just finished a pair of Hooray For Me fingerless gloves, which were a nice fun little pattern, and which allowed me to use that forlorn single ball of sock yarn that I was semi-despairing of finding a use for. The pattern calls for 1.5 skeins of Regia Multi Effekt, but I was able to do it with less than one skein of Trekking. I was ready to do the fingers in another yarn if necessary, but I ended up having more Trekking left over than I had of my accent color (leftover Jawoll from the Bayerische Sock -- that pattern devours wool), so I just did them in MC. Action shot -- they're comin' to getcha!!!

Very cute I think! I am not much of a fingerless glove person, but I may get a bit of use out of these in the fall and early winter. I do appreciate fingerless gloves on an intellectual level -- how nice to be able to wear gloves and knit and text and work my iPod without having to use my nose on the clickwheel! -- but I this will be the first pair I've ever owned.

Still plugging away on the Hanami Shawl. I've finished the basketweave section and have moved on to the free-form falling-petal section, which is mostly stockinette really at the moment. I kept having to rip back towards the end of the basketweave section -- I had just turned my brain right off or something -- but I seem to be back on the right track now.

Behold, the glory of unblocked lace knitting:


Well, at least it's getting longer:

I got a lot of knitting done last week on the train. I went to Rockport to go ocean kayaking, which was great fun, and I knitted up a storm. On the way back there was a little girl (she said she was four) out with a big group of her relatives, who I think were visiting from China. She was being a bit of a hellion and running up and down the aisle and being very loud and boisterous. She saw me knitting and she stopped dead for a second and said, "What you doing?" and I said that I was knitting, and that I was making a shawl out of yarn. Then she showed me a picture of her with Chuck E. Cheese, and told me she wanted to be a ship when she grew up, and we had a nice conversation for much of the rest of the trip back to Boston. Once she calmed down a little she was super-cute.

I've decided I want to try to learn to knit continental-style; sometimes English feels too stressful on my wrists, and I'd like to have another way. When I first started knitting, I knit English and purled continental, but that didn't work once I progressed beyond stockinette and had to switch back and forth between knit and purl in the same row, and for whatever reason, I chose to go English.

Anyway, since I figure I'll need an easy but interesting project to work on while I retrain myself, I bought some Noro Silk Garden on Thursday to make me a purty scarf. And I got some boring old stitch markers and needle point covers, too. While I was checking out, I noticed the Malabrigo laceweight they had at the counter. Ooh! I had previously been unaware of the existence of Malabrigo laceweight! While they were running my credit card, I was fondling the yarn. I love the Malabrigo worsted anyhow, and I now I can't wait to make something out of the laceweight, possibly something like Lacey from Knitty. I couldn't resist, and I ended up going back the next day for the Malabrigo laceweight in the Loro Barranquero colorway (I looked it up, and apparently that is a kind of Patagonian burrowing parrot that has historically been considered a pest but which is now endangered or threatened or something). So, in closing -- yarn porn!
Aww, sookie sookie.