Pincha!

It took 36 days, 97grams of Malabrigo Sock "Playa", one pair of 3,5 mm straight needles and a free pattern  Pincha shawl by Pinpilan Wangsai... But here it is. All ready, soft, warm and squishy!

With 24 feathers!

I'm such a lucky girl! It's really cold today, so I can wrap it around me without the danger of suffocation an overheating.  Also a dim light helps showing off the true color of this yarn.

Working on this shawl was really pleasant, and by 6th or 7th feather I memorized the entire sequence. Yes, I admit I had to go back few times and there is one mistake I know about...

...but I can't find it anymore, so that's good, right?

I had a bit of a problem with blocking it. Usually I block my items by soaking them in water with some mild detergent and letting them dry. But yesterday, of all days, a main water pipe was damaged few blocks away. We still get yellow-ish tap water, and I wouldn't dare to put my precious merino into it!

Therefore I just steamed it thoroughly, and I am really pleased with the effect. Here's how it looked pre-blocked:

Not a big difference there, except maybe for the feel of it.

I wanted to show you how good it looks when wrapped around my neck.

But SOMEONE photobombed this pic mercilessly!

I feel like I need to  take a rest from short rows for a while. Maybe I'l finally have time to finish the second pair of anle socks for my mom?

Or write down a pattern for a baby dress I made...

We'll see!

Have a nice afternoon!

Gosia.

Summer scarf knitting.

Can you think of a better activity for hot summer day than knitting a warm, snuggly, woolly scarf? I certainly cannot!

I started my Pincha Shawl back in June. At first I planned to use one of my Ciao Mondial skeins, but it turned out to have too long color repeats. So I dug into my Emergency Yarn Fund (also known as my bank account) and got myself a skein of Malabigo Sock in Playa colorway.
After almost a month of knitting, I'm down to 30 grams of yarn:

It's very hard to capture the true color on pictures! It seems my green garden table is the best background. Still, on every pictures shades are a bit different,

Here's the closest to natural look:

And current state of my work. 17 complete feathers. It would already make a nice scarf, but I couldn't bare to waste 30 grams of such wonderful merino.

Pattern  Pincha shawl by Pinpilan Wangsai  is available for free on Ravelry. At first all the turning and wrapping may seems overwhelming, but after several feathers I knew it by heart.
Short color repeats result in feather-like appearance.

Last week I started two other projects.
I want to keep the first one a secret, but I'll show you just a little bit:

Second one is a tunisian crochet doggie blanket for my buddy - Korek. He's already 8yrs old and recently he started to turn a bit grey lately. Also he's extremely fond of my knitting, and tried to steal my shawl few days ago.

I guess despite of not having holidays, July is still one of my craftiest months! :)

Have a nice aftrenoon!

Gosia.