Yarnification

Finished a thread bookmark yesterday and another one today.

I was sure I did something terribly wrong while I was following this pattern, but once it was blocked it looked like it was supposed to, so maybe I did it right after all.

This one might need some starch. So far I’d gotten away without doing much starching of the thread bookmarks I’ve made, but this one seems to need it. I blocked it, and it looked great for an hour, then started going a little wonky. Or maybe I need to press it a bit—I blocked it with the steamer, not the iron.

I finally finished stringing the beads for the shawl—couldn’t remember if I mentioned that before or not. Can you tell I’m scared to death of starting the shawl and churning out bookmarks instead? There’s no getting around it, though. I have about 3-4 weeks to get this shawl finished and I have no idea how long it’s going to take me, so I’m starting it either tonight or tomorrow.

In other news, I flaked out on the In Your Shoes sock pattern (couldn’t get the gauge right), so I’m trying these toe-up socks instead. Socks are turning out to be harder than I thought, I tell you. I’ve frogged three times since starting this pattern. I eventually decided I must have been making the starting chain too long. Last night I picked it up to have another go at it, but decided I needed something different and picked up the knitting book again instead. I may or may not have figured out how to purl. I thought I was doing ok trying to make a swatch in stockinette stitch since the first few rows looked like the picture in the book, but after that it started looking like garter stitch even though I would swear I was making the purl stitches the same way as I was in the rows that looked right. Go figure. Sooner or later I’ll get it right…