It's pretty rare that I knit for other people. As a rule, I don't have enough time to finish the projects I want to make for myself and don't care to add to the pile by promising friends and family members handknits. However, I sometimes find myself with yarn that isn't suitable for something for me, and that's when I designate it "present yarn."
This is Malabrigo sock yarn in eggplant. I originally intended to use it in a
gigantic stole of doom, but wound up unraveling it because the color differences between the skeins were too big and caused the pattern to disappear. I decided to repurpose it, and used about 2/3 of a skein on the
clockwork scarf I made a few months ago. The remainder of that skein will be used for some matching mitts, which I'll start sometime in the near future.
That still left me with one untouched skein, and I didn't want to use it on something else for me. Lately, I've been trying to branch out with the colors I knit with, and I do not need another dark blue/purple
anything. So, I decided to make a shawl from it and give it to a classmate who 1) really likes to wear purple and 2) admires my shawls.
I'm not really in a hurry to finish this as I won't be seeing her again until August. That's probably for the best, as my knitting mojo tends to crawl into a hole and die when it's warm out. So far, I've completed the first chart (pictured) and have sort of started the second, but haven't made a whole lot of progress on it just yet.
I've wanted to make a Catkin forever, but could never find the right yarn for it. A few months ago, while I was picking out yarn for that giant green baby blanket that took forever, I stumbled across a sale on JoJoland Ballad, a solid, fingering-weight yarn. I picked up two skeins each of lavendar and navy, and cast on a few weeks ago. So far, it's going quite nicely, though I imagine it's going to take me a pretty long time to finish. It's knit at a much tighter gauge than I typically use, which means more stitches, more yarn, and more time.
