Monday, what a lovely day

Seriously, it's a dreary day here in Nicholasville. Cloudy skies, it's threatening rain, perfect day for drinking coffee and knitting. I will work on the lace scarf today; my goal is to complete at least one full repeat of the pattern. I also want to cast on the lace socks with the lovely souvenir yarn that I brought home from Gatlinburg.
Work is going good. I must say that I have a beautiful view from my dining room at Keeneland. The room overlooks the track, right at the start/finish line. It doesn't suck at all.
I'm off today, and I should be cleaning the house and doing laundry. The dishwasher is running right now, so I'm well on my way to having a clean house before Donnie gets home this afternoon.
Easter was fantastic! Thomas had a fun time, and we had fun watching him play outside with his bubble mower. I love being able to spend time with my family.
It's time to start knitting for the day. I could probably dust, too, and pass the vacuum, but there's always tomorrow!

Lace Blocking and Why It's Fun

So I washed and blocked my first piece of lace. It's a shawl from a pattern I got from Creative Knitting magazine. The original pattern called for a silk ribbon yarn, but I used a plain red wool instead (I was stash-busting). It looked pretty good unblocked, and the pattern didn't call for blocking. But since I'm working on a more intricate lace scarf, I thought that this would be good practice! It looks even more amazing than I thought it would. The blocking has brought out the stitch definition, and you can see the pattern! You can also see some of the mistakes, but I don't think it's too bad for a first attempt at lace!

As to the other lace project I've got going on, it's still going great! I love the pattern. It's got enough variety that I'm not getting bored, and I'm absolutely charmed by the look of the yarn in pattern. I'm flying through it, which is good, because there are 17 repeats of the 28 row pattern. So far, I've completed 3 repeats of the pattern, and no mistakes yet! Bragging about that is inviting the wrath of the knitting fates, I know, but the pattern is easy enough to know where you are most of the time. Hopefully I will have this done soon, and have pictures posted of its charming loveliness.

What I've knit for me

These are two scarves that I made for myself after Christmas. It was a stash-busting exercise, since I have a lot of yarn, and wanted to use some of it before I could justify buying more. They are both the same pattern, just different yarn combinations. I used the one row scarf pattern from the Yarn Harlot, but I used two worsted weight yarns, knit together using US size 11 needles.

I used this same adapted pattern for Christmas gifts this past year, so if it looks familiar, then you probably got one!

The blue one is a variegated acrylic, combined with a fuzzy acrylic. The pink/brown one is a variegated wool, with pink, rose and brown, combined with a solid brown wool. I like that while they are the same pattern, they have different textures due to the different yarns.

I am currentl working on a lace scarf. The pattern is from 101 Designer one-skein Wonders, edited by Judith Durant. It is the Oriel Lace Scarf, and I'm knitting in Koigu KPM, in a gorgeous gray/brown color. I think that when I'm done I will get more of this yarn to make fingerless gloves to match.

Today I will be blocking a bigger piece of lace. It's a shawl, knit from a worsted weight wool. I'm excited but also a little nervous, as this will be my first lace-blocking attempt. If it works out, there will be pictures up tomorrow. If there aren't any pictures, then we all know that it ended up looking like scrunched up wet noodles.