and now we have...

last weekend was a productive knitting weekend.

i finished my sweet friend's skirt...and panicked. the length was correct but the width seemed way off. then i put the elastic in and lo and behold, it all came together! and it fit her! and she thought it was cute, in the tone that said, "this is much cuter than i anticipated and i would even consider wearing it!", not the tone that said, "never in a million years."

the skirt is a mac and me pattern with the suggested knitting yarn being blue sky alpaca organic cotton in white. in an effort to support my LYS i substituted cascade's cotton yarn, sierra, in pink. in the meantime i have been exposed to blue sky alpaca's organic cotton and told my sweet friend if she ever wants another skirt, it will be knit out of this. but the sierra was a reasonable substitute.

when i first read the pattern it said the elastic could be woven into every other stitch after the skirt was finished or knitted in. i chose the former, which was fine. the trick being, elastic is white, the skirt is pink, so the elastic shows. and there was no way i could get it into every other stitch without feeling like i was wrecking the skirt. so i am thankful the style is longer tops, so they cover the elastic.

i also fixed the feathery lace stole. i have finally memorized the pattern and have been knitting two rows at a time whenever i can as a mini meditation because, though i have memorized the pattern, i still really have to concentrate on the stitch. yesh! i find if i don't concentrate on it completely, i mess up. which is what i did last thursday. i knitted 4 rows and discovered what looked like YO's in places where there should be no YO's. the thought of correcting the real YO's and SKP's for 4 rows was daunting to me, but i took it slowly, approached it with gobs of patience and humor, and, luckily, made it right again. whew! and now i am off and knitting, but with no distractions of any kind, no talking, no movies/tv, no ipod. just me, saying the memorized stitch, over and over again.

but the real fun of course was being able to start a new project. the goal was to use the much anticipated louisa harding sari ribbon. i have only 122 yds of the sari ribbon so whatever i made had to be relatively small. so i googled "ribbon yarn patterns" and found a simple drop stitch scarf pattern that i think will do nicely that is within the needed yardage requirements. except that i needed size 10.5 circulars; or size 13 circulars; or size 15 circulars. none of which i have. and it was 9:30pm on sunday night. and i HAD to start a new project right then. so after much shifting of stash, i settled on a french girl shawl pattern, oceane. i am knitting it in the suggested rowan linen print yarn, only in the smoky colorway instead of the blush. and knitting on size 17's instead of 19's because that is what i had.

so, i have gobs of knitting to do. yay.