I have been wanting to knit Clementine’s Cardi for over a year. I finally wound off my big hunk of Briar Rose Fiber Legend into manageable sized balls. I swatched. I started knitting:

I decided to do a 3×3 beaded rib rather than 1×1 ribbing. There is very little pooling, and what little there is, is less obvious in person than taken with the flash. (On a side note, I can’t wait till winter takes a hike and I can take decent photographs in the evening again. Every time I want to take a photo, I lament that it must be done in artificial lighting. And weekends pass me by before I can blink, so it’s difficult.) The fabric is wonderful – it’s DK weight yarn knitted at an Aran gauge, so it’s quite loose and flexible which should make for a cuddly cardi without being bulky. I’m half way done with the second front now, and it’s my “brainless” project next to my new lace shawl.

Look at the pretty:

It’s the Flower Shawl from Couture Knit 11 (Ravelry Link). I can’t even BEGIN to explain what it took to get my hands on this book. Let’s just say, I’m extremely grateful to my friend Yukiko for helping me negotiate the Amazon.co.jp Marketplace. I have no idea why this issue is out of print, and many others before and after this one are available. But we appealed to one of the sellers to ask them to ship it outside of Japan, and thankfully they agreed. The pattern is entirely charted, so reading Japanese isn’t an issue (but of course, as a linguist, I had to learn to read it). I am loving how it’s coming out! The yarn is from Etsy’s NoTwoSnowflakes. It’s the thinnest laceweight I’ve ever seen – I need to do a comparison to some others that I have on hand.

Next up…the spinning update.