Monday, June 30, 2014

Clair de Lune Cardigan

It's been a long time since I've posted in here, but I suddenly had the urge to share.  And as my life has been a whirlwind for the first half of this year with the divorce, moving, and re-settling, it's no wonder that my knitting got put on the backburner.  I had thought that when the divorce first started up that I might look to knitting as an ultimate relaxer to keep me calm.  But I didn't.  I think it allowed for too much introspection.. or it was as simple as I just didn't have time.  I spent a lot of my first months after the move getting OUT there, making friends, and keeping busy.  And it's been good for me.  But, now I'm starting to slow down again and take up my knitting again.  And remember that oh yeah I love knitting too!  Hehee.  Now it's a matter of finding a good balance of everything :)

Anyway, I've got two Major projects sitting on needles in my project bag.  The first one I've talked about previously - the In Dreams shawl.  I did work on that a lot while I was recovering from surgery (Appendectomy), but I never did take updated pictures on it.  So it's a bit further along than the prior pictures suggest.. and maybe I'll get around to pulling it back out for some updated pictures again soon.  I'm pretty much past the big beaded stage, and down to almost just straight lace knitting.  So, yeah, progress.

The other big project I'm working on is a lacy cardigan.  Clair de Lune. It is a very pretty pattern.  The floral section below will be the front portion that will hang down the front on one side.  The bars at the top will go horizontally across the back once it's completed.  The lacy edging/selvage will continue throughout the piece. I love the color and the pattern, and can't wait to complete it.  Now that I've gotten into just the bar-knitting, it's going Much faster.  The floral lace took me quite a while to get through, because it was just difficult to get the pattern down. It also took me a while to get used to this yarn, because it's pretty slippery.  But now that I'm working this portion of it, I almost don't have to think about the pattern itself (other than a quick glance for the selvage stitches). Benefit of the selvage pattern though is it makes it Real easy to count how much I've done!  I'd say that I did about a third of what you see here yesterday.  I doubt I'll have very many days where I devote that much time to it, but if I devote at least two hours to it every few days, I'll make serious progress on this thing really quickly.  And I really want to wear it. I can't wait.  I'm about 7 rows from starting on the shoulder work for it.