The Difference Between Liking Knitting and LOVING Knitting

When I wrote about the trip to the yarn store earlier this month, I did show the project I was working on, but I haven't written much, recently at least, about the project itself, and specifically, how much I loved working on it. That is, I did mention it back in mid-December, but who remembers that? (Not me, without searching for it.) Suffice it to say that I really loved working on it. Really-really.

One night at knitting group, I spread it out to see:

Another day, working on it through a meeting (that had nothing to do with my specific job, so I was listening but didn't need to pay heavy attention).

Just so pretty! I was weighing the yarn toward the end, to make sure I would have enough left for the second edging repeat and the bind-off, and the pinkish yarn you see there is where I put in a lifeline in case my calculations were wrong.

Happily, they were not, and I bound the shawl off and laid it out before blocking. Those matts are 2 feet wide, so it was maybe 3 feet wide as laid out here.

Then it went for a soak!

And got pinned out! Four-plus feet now.

And spread out off the matts.

It's so lovely, and I'm so happy with it. The one thing I would change is to have started with the blue end, instead of the red, because I had a small amount of blue yarn left and hate to not have used it. But that's okay. Live and learn. That's just one small piece of a project that I otherwise really loved--not just the end result, not just the yarn, not just that I was knitting, but specifically knitting exactly this pattern.

I loved the pattern so much, in fact, that I got another by the designer, Nim Teasdale, this one called Illumine. I have another long-color-change yarn, from Wendy's Wonders, and I wound it up to use.

A different rainbow this time!

It's growing along and I am just as happy with it. 

So far, so purple.

I picked it up the other day and was amused to watch it twisting on the needle like this:

So, on it goes, happily.