On the needles (and longarm)

Although I may not get a chance until late tonight to link this to the Patchwork Times “On the Needles” post for the day, I thought I’d take a few minutes and share with you what I’m working on currently. I’m not even sure all of these are in the “projects” listing in the sidebar that really needs to be completed; but they’re my current knitting projects.

First up, the never ending socks! Why am I calling them that? Because I decided to knit each skein to the end (or close to it) and they’re much longer than I normally make my socks and seem to be taking forever. Perhaps because, while I know they’ll wear like iron, I’m not particularly keen on the color combination. Yes, these are the SAME socks I attempted to finish for the pooling challenge way back when. But I’m almost done now:

I’m also currently working on a shawl for my mom (photos are okay since there’s no surprise there, she got to pick the yarn). This pic doesn’t do justice to the color, but I needed to use the flash so the pattern could be seen. I’m using the Zephyr Shawl pattern (one of my favorites) and the yarn is actually a deep denim blue, very dark, almost a black blue from a distance:

My last project “on the needles” are swatches! Simple little swatches. LOL I’ll be taking a finishing class later this month on seaming knitted projects together and our homework before the class is to knit several swatches. Makes sense, you can’t learn to seam knitted pieces without having knitted pieces to seam in class! So it’s a boring little mindless take with me project:

So are you asking why a person who learned to knit as a teenager and has been knitting steadily since the late 1980’s would be taking a finishing class? Well, it’s because I truly believe a person can always learn a tip or trick or another way to do something that might result in a nicer end product. And since I rarely do sweaters, in part due to seaming the pieces together and in part due to getting gauge, I thought this might be a good class to improve my skills.

On the longarm this week is a large, really large, Christmas quilt for a customer. The customer requested a freehand holly meander for the background, then custom work in the piecing. I’m on my 3rd day now of holly fill and getting better at it with every new holly leaf. It’s not a feather, but there is a rhythm to it, or would be if certain things didn’t interrupt me, but then again, life here is never boring so disruptions exist! 😉