Okay, that’s better!

(Background to the left: Robert’s medicine blanket.  Here’s a shot that does a little more justice to the colors of my afghan.)

As for the black shawl.  I weighed my yarn carefully after my pattern repeats, wanting to make sure I didn’t launch into more than I could finish. It was so close; if I continue in pattern to do one more repeat, with the yarn at hand I should be able to get through about a third of the cast-off row.  Um.  That doesn’t work. I could add a different edging with fewer rows.  But it would break up the visual effect.  Jasmin offered to help me out, dye lot match and all, but I’ve been thinking the shawl is probably (hopefully) long enough now anyway.  But I wasn’t sure.

So while I was dithering, hey, what’s the best way to think a problem out?  Every knitter reading this is laughing that I should even ask.  Right.  So.

While I was at Stanford earlier this week, the charge nurse chose the dark teal Casbah scarf. I had enough left on the skein to make a second, and it leaped onto my needles this afternoon in a simple pattern–the one from the body of the Michelle pattern in my book, with an extra stitch knit plain each side, cast on 27–simple patterns making it easier to let the mind wander and figure out other problems. Like how to finish off the black shawl.

It’s so good to be back into knitting. And I mean really knitting. Finally!