WIPWed #25: Knitting All The Things

I hope your weeks are going well! I had an unpleasant dentist visit yesterday and consoled myself by knitting whatever I wanted for the rest of the evening. Turns out, what I wanted to knit was everything, as I made quite a bit of progress on a variety of projects. Here's what I've been working on lately.

Tiny Turn-A-Square:

SG Bugga, colorways Box Jellyfish and Common Emerald Moth

Technically, my baby-sized adaptation of Jared Flood's Turn A Square hat is finished (and adorable!), however, I'm not counting the project as done until I complete the matching socks:

Because why not?

Itty bitty socks are just too cute.

Budding Lintilla:

BMFA Socks That Rock Mediumweight, colorway Budding Twig

My socks-that-rock-tastic Lintilla shawl is growing slowly longer and wider. I wish I could show you how it looks dangling from the needles, it twists and curls in a long ringlet of colorful wool quite charmingly. Very pretty.

Spring-y Socks:

Play At Life gradient dyed sock yarn

I made a tiny bit of progress on my spring crocus socks. The pattern defies memorization so this is a sit-and-concentrate kind of knit that I only get a chance to work on sparingly.

Beautiful Briny Sea:

SG and CY Bugga, colorways Box Jellyfish and Blue Ringed Octopus

I'm happy to have finally resurrected one of my ancient WIPs, Stephen West's Flamboyan shawl, although I must admit it is an exceedingly tedious knit. It's a simple, attractive, striking design but there's no getting around how much I dislike actually knitting it. For half the shawl you're juggling three balls of yarn and switching back and forth between garter and stockinette, so you never develop a good rhythym. Then you finally get through all that and are like "yes, one color, simple ribbing!" exscept it turns out it's not so simple as all that. The first row is ribbing with increases every few stitches with lots of stitches on the needle already. That is a recipe for a miscount and I had gotten off by one stitch... and then the shawl sat for months and months, waiting for me to find the patience to tink back stitch by stitch and pick them all up again. Apparently, a side effect of novocaine is lots of patience? Not sure if that's true, but either way I fixed the mistake and even progressed through 2 more rows of ribbing. I feel like I'm in the homestretch but looking at the size of the ball of yarn left over, I think this ribbing is going to be endless. Just 3 more inches to go!

Purple Squishy:

Lots and lots of scraps.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in with opinions on my big idea, I decided to go ahead and cast on this big squishy blanket, craziness be damned! I was highly amused by the number of comments that went along the lines of "I think it's great but don't listen to me, I'm crazy, too". :) I went through my stash and pulled out all the little bits and bobs I plan to use up throughout the course of this monster. Don't worry, there are no deadlines for this and I won't let myself stress out too much about planning where every single colors goes. The goals of this project are to have 1) fun with colors, 2) soothing knitting, and 3) a big cozy blanket at the end. The one thing I did decide, though, was to use up some extra-soft, fuzzy skeins of an angora mix (the blue and white balls in plastic) by knitting them with the purple mystery wool (on the left) that will serve as the alternate to the purple malabrigo (to the right). The mystery wool is a bit scratchy so pairing it with the angora blend should soften it right up as well as ensure some larger areas of consistent color, so it's not too stripey crazy.

Phew, that's enough out of me, I think! Check out some other WIPs by clicking the image below.