Long time no post!

Wow, its been a long time. No, I haven't stopped knitting. Nor have I stopped doing all sorts of other fibery activities either. Lets just blame the lack of blogging on Rhinebeck recovery and Ravelry addiction.

Where to start? The most recent, I suppose. Last night, I'm knitting along on my Mystic Waters Shawl (more to say later), and I don't even feel it, but suddenly there is a collection of stitches in my lap, instead of on the cable of my circular needle. Darn it, its Knit Picks Harmony failure. I wasn't shocked, after all I've read about it on Ravelry quite a bit. But how annoying. The wood simply came out of the metal sleeve on one of the size 4 tips, so the needle is no longer connected to the cable.

Thank goodness I'm no lace newbie. I pulled out my binder, found the size 4 Options tip, and put it on the cable. Now, I have to reconstruct the 20 or so stitches that have fallen. Only 3 or 4 of them had run really far down, so after some quiet cursing, I was able to save it and re-knit it correctly. Why is it always a lace project when the needle fails?

My hubby says the only thing that will hold metal and wood is epoxy. The failure is nice and clean, no trace of any glue in there, so perhaps he'll get the opportunity to glue it all back together. In the meantime, customer service was efficient this morning when I called and a new one is being sent.

So, that brings us to Mystic Waters. No, I'm not keeping up on this KAL - I'm trying to stay on track with the Secret of the Stole KAL, and thats plenty. But having finished SotS on Tuesday this week, I had a few days to get going on Mystic Waters. I have the cone of Wool Crepe in a nice medium blue that I bought just a bit back at the Silk City Fibers Outlet. As with most stuff there, its pretty thin, just perfect for a lace project. So, I start knitting. After a day, I just know it isn't working. Its got such a tight twist, it feels so rough when you knit it. And its got a lot of spring from the twist, I don't know if it will hold a block. The sample I knit back in the summer has a definite bias to it. I've got the sample re-blocking, all pinned and stretched, but the yarn was just making me too nervous. Its time to dive into the stash. Not much in laceweight there, but then I find the Mountain Colors Wool Crepe that I picked up for half price at my LYS about 1.5 years ago. Its dark blue, with streaks of copper, green, purple, etc. Bumpy in texture, but a whole lot softer than the coned yarn. So, here are the two yarns taking shape.....