Leaf Lace Shawl

Friends and family often comment on how much knitting I do. Maybe they think I sit around all day knitting while the kids tool around the house unsupervised. I’ll admit that I do knit a lot but usually not during the day. I’ll get up early, brew a pot of coffee and knit until the Mag wakes up. Sometimes I get twenty or thirty minutes of knitting time, sometimes on the very good days, over an hour.

Then I always knit at night for a while. Early bedtimes = more knitting time (and happier kids, but I digress). Sure, there are times during the day where I might sit and knit for a few minutes, but usually nothing more than a quick break between cleaning or washing or playing or reading or wiping.

Unless I’m this.close to finishing a big project. Then I’m the rule breaker.

It was last Tuesday when I spent the day knitting. Sure, I cleaned the house and read books to the kids, and prepared meals. But the focus was knitting. I knit every spare moment I could find.

I just had to get the lump of yarn…

…off the needles and pinned out…

…and call it done.

It’s a strange thing, isn’t it? You have been knitting on a fun project and the end is nearing so you speed up. You can’t wait to cast off that last stitch, grab the thing firmly with both hands, shake it a few times and hold it up for all to see. Glorious feeling. Finished!

But wait for the sadness, because surely it will come. Not groundbreaking sadness, but still. It’s a little tug in the back of your mind that tells you to pick up the thing, try it on a thousand times, show your husband again, squish it, fold it, take pictures of it for your blog, try it on a different way this time because you don’t want to be all done right yet.

I’m over it now. I knit it, enjoyed it, and now I don’t even know where the darned thing is. Something new will come and I’ll start the cycle over again. Man, I love knitting.

Pattern: Leaf Lace Shawl by Evelyn Clark for Fiber Trends (S-2010).
Yarn: Araucania Nature Wool, color 27. 2 skeins.
Needles: US 8.
Start: June 30, 2007.
Finish: July 11, 2007.
Finished size: 67″ across top, 28″ deep. I completed eight repeats of chart 2 to get this size on size 8 needles and used only 2 skeins of the Nature Wool.

And for the record, I am still not a shawl person.