First Linen Shawl

It was a sign of spring when I was looking at the linen yarn and thinking possibilities.
The yarn was Quince & Co. Sparrow, colors were Nannyberry and Sans.
The day was my first day of spring break.
It was a  perfect combo.

Top of the shawl was stockinette stitch and the bottom was very free-form lacy border.  I didn't plan any of the lace border stitches.  I had just a basic concept as my jump off point.  It was the beginning of spring, and I liked the feeling of being free. By the time I finished rows of free form knitting, I felt, OK, time to put in some regularity, so I improvised a pattern repeat.  It worked after coupla tries.

Paul said the lace border looks like dragonfly wings.  And I like that, a lot.  

Sunday Lace Shawl

I'm simply thrilled to have some time for knitting with the arrival of spring break.  It makes me very happy to have some lone time, away from people, away from dramas. Just me, my yarn, and my TV.  I really do prefer dramas coming from the TV than from people around me.

I started the motif swatching process over a week ago, and after a few tries, coupla rip back and some interruption, I finally got a result that I wanted for my shawl.

The shawl knitting was accompanied by marathon TV binge.  I just found a good series to watch Alpha House.  It's an Amazon original series with John Goodman, pretty funny.  This is a nice one to watch after watching the latest season of House of Cards on Netflix.  Both are about politicians in DC, but totally different tune.

So here is the shawl, in crescent shape.  The motif got stretched out due to the shape of shawl, I was waffling whether I should re-knit it in triangular shape to show off the motif closer to the original swatch, but nah.  I like crescent shape better.  With the motif stretched more sideways, it has more an relaxed feeling, which I do like.  So for now this will stay as a crescent shape shawl.

The yarn was madelinetosh Tosh Merino.  I used about 1.25 skeins.  And US #7 needles.

Now I just have to figure out what to knit next.

2 Patterns

I'd published 2 patterns lately.  Just got caught up with the my art and my work and didn't have a chance to post them. And here they are.

First one is a shawl with felted rocks as accent: Stones and Tides

Second one is a fairisle hoodie cardigan: In Mood for Maybe

My First Knitted Piece as Art

I have been participating in an art show called Works in Progress where few of us took over a gallery and used it as studio for 6 weeks. Today was the closing day.  I'd been painting on coupla paintings, and last week I decided for the first time, I will do a knitted piece as art.  I had some ideas in mind but they didn't work out.  But here is the, perhaps not final, result.

I don't feel the work was as successful as I'd like. I was trying to find a way to disassociate the immediate connection with sweater from the piece, even though I knew it would be a very tough challenge for me. The result was definitely not there. But it was a good thing for me to play with ideas different than what I usually think about in my paintings.