Who knew knitting could be like skydiving??

Of course, I've never actually GONE skydiving, nor would I ever choose to do so. My idea of an intense adrenaline rush is trying to merge on the Deerfoot. If you live in Calgary, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

In the knitting adrenaline department, I'd have to say that lace knitting is right up there. Especially the last few rows of a shawl when you're knitting 400 stitches or more per row and you feel like the end is finally in sight... then you look at your yarn and realize that it's disappearing faster than you thought and maybe, just maybe, you won't have enough to finish the project as written...... Tonight was such a ride. I finally finished the third installment of Make One Yarn's Year of Lace for 2008 (the link is for 2009, but it's closed now so if you're interested you'll have to wait until 2010); Amy Swenson's Silver Birches shawl. It is a thing of loveliness, but it was a heart pounding adrenaline ride to the finish. It all started about half way through the shawl. I'd just started the second ball of yarn (there were 2, so I knew I had to be at least 50% finished) and was either just starting or halfway through the last of the body chart repeats and I thought to myself... "Wow, I only have the edging chart left and I've still got half my yarn.... yikes! I must be knitting tighter than I thought!.... I wonder if I should add another body repeat to make up for it??"... so I did.... and that decision set off the exciting finish that I just mentioned..... I knit the first portion of the edging chart and moved on to the second part when it struck me that my ball of yarn was looking rather thin..... VERY thin, in fact..... I knit another row and my thin ball got dramatically thinner.... I weighed my yarn... 3g. 3g is not a lot of yarn..... I knit a row and measured again... still 3 g, although the ball was noticebly smaller.... hmmmm... perhaps my scale isn't quite accurate enough for cashmere lace yarn, so I decided to bind off..... with 6 rows left of the chart..... It then occurred to me that I might not even have enough to bind off..... but I soldered on and with the tiniest amount of yarn left (enough for perhaps 3/4 of the next row or less) I finished the last bind off stitch. I finished this last stitch during Eli's Karate class and although I really wanted to run hooting and hollering through the gym, showing it to every man, woman and child there, I managed to somewhat control myself and only shove it in the face of the poor person next to me. I then calmly and politely folded it neatly and put it away to be blocked immediately on home entry.

Voila! Here it IS!!!!




On a rather less dramatic note, I also finished a hat that I designed. I have even written up the pattern and plan to test knit Chey's size and then I'm going to offer it (for free, I don't know what the heck I'm doing and I'm not charging for it) on Ravelry. Here is a picture of that.....




And on the spinning front. I think it's going well. I had a lesson from a friend (I hope I can call her that) who really helped me ease through the stuff I would have had to fight through on my own. I'm hoping to ply this stuff in the next day or so..... I'm going to test it as a 2ply and as a Navajo ply. I think 2 ply will be too thin. Using the spinner's gauge, it looks like a 2 ply will be a (thickish) laceweight and 3ply will be closer to sport... but we'll see




AND I made a new orifice hook. I wanted something pretty and this is, however I really need to remake it with a stronger wire with a longer hook section, but I'll have to order the wire to do it... in the meantime, this one works and it's pretty....