November Malabrigo Kit

Last Thursday, I received the latest installment of the Malabrigo Projects club from Eat Sleep Knit. There are 2 skeins of Lace in Applewood, beads and a shawl pattern that uses both. It is beautiful, and yet not a typical color choice for me. I am sure to use it and love it any way, though! I am rather excited to find something to knit with the yarn. I will probably not knit this pattern as I have already made 2-3 projects with the same or similar motif as the one the designer chose for the center panel. Frankly, I am tired of knitting it and I still have about one third of my current project left! (This current one uses a different stitch pattern of which half of it is the one in the new pattern.) I do love it, though, and know that ESK has created another big hit.

Silky Fan Shawl

Last Friday, I finished knitting the main body of the Malabrigo Shawl. I took all but around 2 yards of the 5 skeins of Silky that I had from Eat.Sleep.Knit's Malabrigo Projects Club. To knit the border, I dug into my stash and pulled out the remaining 1/2 ball of Silky from a club shipment earlier in the year. I love the raspberry color with the gray. Blocking this one was difficult and I am still not completely happy with the results. As you can see, there are points where it should be round. I may need to re-block it and not use blocking wires. However, I was trying to get some good stretch to it and felt like I needed the wires for that. The shawl is soft, lovely and warm. It will be a great addition to my fall wardrobe.

Another New Project!

Well, that was a short finishing streak! (Only 1 project...) On Monday evening, I returned home to find a package from Eat.Sleep.Knit. It was my April shipment for the Malabrigo Projects Club! Inside I found a skein of lovely sock yarn and a pattern. The yarn is so soft and silky that I just had to wind it and cast on. I finished most of the leg when I realized that it would never fit over my heel. I debated whether to add a pattern repeat or just switch patterns. The stitch pattern is rather unique, but in the end I decided to try Anni's April Sockamania pattern. It has been quite a while since I finished one of her lovely patterns and also many months since I finished a pair of socks. I like my socks to be firmer than she writes for and so I went down a needle size to 2.25 mm needles and then added a pattern repeat, taking the cast on stitch count from 63 to 72. This means that I will need to fudge it a bit when I come to the heel, but that's alright as I have knit enough socks to know what I am doing. :) After just a couple of days knitting, I have the first one almost completed!