And Life Goes On

The olympics are over, my Kiri shawl is completed, and life goes on. My Mom graciously agreed to pose for the "bee-hind" pix of the shawl. The picture doesn't really do justice to the shawl, but Mom thought the contrast provided by her yellow house robe would enhance the view. Uh, well, I guess so. I'll have to try again later, maybe in the daylight in a room that doesn't have "Georgia Red Clay" paint on the walls. A red shawl does need a contrasting color in the background to be fully appreciated.

I spent most of yesterday cleaning. All the little things that I didn't do during the olympics once again captured my attention: things like vacuuming, dusting, and putting clean linens on the bed. Today I turned my attention back to schoolwork. I really *do* want to graduate this year! But not to worry, I haven't abandoned my knitting just yet. In fact, I'm so energized by my olympic success that I'm back at work on another shawl--this time it's Evelyn Clark's Flower Basket Shawl.

Actually, I started the FBS before the olympics, right around the 1st of February. The FBS was much easier to knit than I had anticipated and the first few repeats worked up rather quickly. My early success with the FBS really was the motivation for choosing Kiri as my olympic project. Of course I couldn't do the FBS for the olympics because I'd already started it. I wasn't about to frog the shawl when I had the beginning plus 3 repeats already done! I just tucked it away for a fortnight until after the olympics, and my olympic shawl were finished.

I'm knitting the FBS with 2 strands of Knit Picks Alpaca cloud (Peppermint pink) on size 7 Addis. I'm using the pattern published in the Fall 2004 Interweave Knits (or you can download the pdf file for free from the Interweave website) which is a small, shoulder shawl version of the original design published by FiberTrends. I finished the 7 repeats called for in the IK pattern, but after Kiri I think I want a bigger shawl. I certainly have more than enough yarn to do a full-sized version. I looked at the specs for the full-sized shawl, did a little math, and have deduced that the big version has 12 repeats of the lower basket chart (10 rows). I'm pretty sure I'll do at least 10 repeats, but I may just go for the whole thing. Who knows?

I even have my next lace project all planned out. The newest issue of IK (Spring 2006) has another Evelyn Clark design, this time it's the Trellis scarf. I bought the issue for this scarf pattern. It's that yummy! There's other good stuff in this issue, but the scarf is what made me whip out my wallet. I hit my LYS on Saturday and bought a ball of Jaggerspun Zephyr in a bright coral pink--one of my favorite shades and perfect for a spring scarf! I have some Zephyr in my stash, but it's red and after Kiri I needed something different. Yeah, yeah, just another excuse to buy more yarn, I know. After all, a woman has to have her projects all lined up so she has something to look forward to knitting next. Gotta keep at least one lace project and one pair of socks OTN at all times :-)