Wow, the last few months have been madness with my work schedule. I had many weeks of 60-70 hours working and one week where I'm pretty sure I hit 80 hours. It's a nightmare; I do not recommend it.
I did finish the Calandra shawl but I have not blocked it yet. Below are pictures I took along the way. I didn't swatch at all so I have no idea how much it will grow when I block it out.
A skein of shiny purple yarn sits on a yarn scale. The yarn scale measures it to weigh 233.0 grams.
A crescent-shaped purple shawl is laying over a knitting chart. There are two lifelines in place and several stitch markers in place.
The purple shawl is laying over a white & pink fleece blanket. The zig-zag lines of the pattern are clearer here; there are also more lifelines in place.
Work has (hopefully) settled down - or, more realistically, I'm forcing myself to stick to a more reasonable schedule. I pulled out my sock yarn blanket after I finished Calandra. When I got frustrated trying to plan out my next row, I turned to Google Sheets to chart out what I've knit so far. I have a legend on a second tab so that I can use numbers on the chart. Having this information organized this way will help me plan future rows so that I can spread out the yarns and not have the same one right on top of itself. Identifying the yarns took a fair amount of time; for many of them, I had to refer to the project pages I had printed to PDFs before I deleted my projects from Rav*lry.
A chart of numbers: row 1 at the top through row 12 at the bottom. The contents of the table are numbers that won't make sense without referring to the legend in the next picture.
This table has numbered rows; the columns are yarn company, yarn, and color way. Rows 1-19 are visible.
Then I sorted out the yarns into separate sandwich bags with their numbers, and put the sandwich bags into gallon-sized bags by 10s (so yarns 1-9 in one bag; yarns 11-19 in another bag; yarns 20-29 in a third; and so on). I am pleased with the results - it is much easier now to plan my rows and I don't feel like I will end up with a haphazard, ugly mess.
My next knitting project will be for the Uplift Make Along that Ruth Brasch is organizing (her blog post is here - link opens in a new window). I did some searching last night on Instagram: I looked through the knitting designers I follow and eliminated anyone white, then anyone with more than 5k followers. I didn't find any patterns I particularly liked, so then I started going through the non-white/BIPOC knitting designers and looking at who they follow.
I found Sunnie (IG: @noodlyknits - link opens in new window) and her Ppo-Ppo Shawl, and that was it, the end, do not pass go, I love this pattern. I am going to knit this up in the Little Bay Blue Yarns Rose Petals Gradient set that I bought earlier this year. Their Etsy page is here - link opens in new window. I don't wear much pink at all, but certain pinks resonate with me: really vivid, rich pinks; rosy pinks; neon pinks. So I think this is an excellent match of yarn and pattern. Sunnie has fewer than 3k followers on IG, and a small number of sales on her Etsy page. I am avoiding Rav*lry as much as possible so did not check for her possible popularity there.
I haven't knit with Little Bay Blue yarns, so I am soaking each skein separately in cold water to be sure the dye does not bleed. The darker shades are very deep pink and I do not want them to bleed into the lighter skeins. So far, so good - I'm on the fourth skein of six, and the water is still rinsing clear. I will let the skeins rest on my drying rack for a day before I wind and swatch. I will have a LOT more yarn than what the pattern calls for, so I am considering using only half of each skein and saving the remainder for another project.
All right, time to go squeeze out that skein #4 and start skein #5 soaking. Happy crafting! Hopefully I will remember to come post again much sooner than ... four months from now :D
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