I find that when I work on projects I tend to work on three or so in parallel. And they often finish all around the same time. True to form, I have finished several projects in the past few days, and I just don’t have enough space to block them. One at a time, one at a time.
And then this phase of finishing projects is of course followed by a period of planning new ones and casting on like mad. The last of the batch for the wips that are being finished is a lace shawl in Nimbus Cloud from Slackford Studio. This one has actually been with me for a lot longer than usual. You see, sometimes designs just flow, and the yarn knits up into something amazing right away. And sometimes it doesn’t work that way. I think I originally cast on with this yarn in September. At the time I was planning on making a sister-shawl to my Eyjafjallajökull shawl, so I was calling it Katla for one of the smaller Icelandic volcanos. The True Blood coloruway could have been lava streams, and I was envisioning the lava flowing down towards the edge of the shawl. I knit a bit more than half the new design and decided I just didn’t like the way it turned out. So I frogged.
Then I decided to change the theme entirely and started working on a Raspberry Patch. Ripe raspberry vines peaking out through a diamond patterned fence. Because the True Blood colourway could also be sun-ripened raspberries on a warm summer day. I knit about three quarters of that design and…. well…. I’m picky. I didn’t like it. So I frogged.
And *then* I had a stroke of genius. Or something. 
In any case, I charted my new design, cast on for the third time on the very last day of November, and now I only have about 3 rows left to knit. I like it. Blocking should commence as soon as the current shawl being blocked is dry.
I also cast on for a square shawl using LouLou from Land O Lace. Square shawls are fun to make, but I have to admit that I find the first few rows very fiddly. Still, I’m past that now, and that means that I actually have a project that is at the beginning stages of the knitting again. I expect I’ll start a couple more within a week, and then I’ll have another blocking extravaganza in January sometime.
LouLou is a laceweight yarn in alpaca/cashmere/silk blend, and the colour I’m using is a pale lilac called Royalton. Coincidentally both LouLou and Nimbus Cloud are 70% alpaca, 10% cashmere, 20% silk, but of course the two yarns are different weights. Nimbus Cloud is a fingering weight, and LouLou a 2/24 laceweight. Both lovely yarns though – soft, and with a halo.
