Frankly, I'm in shock that a single line of a pattern can take as long to knit as it's taking me to do the repeats of the first chart of the Icarus shawl. I think the line says "Repeat rows 19-41 5 times". That's all. But maaaaaaan, it's slow knitting. Slow and not really challenging knitting. Also, I'm happy that I've read that lace looks like total asshat before blocking, otherwise I'd be worried.

See?

I'm actually a little further than this now, I finished the next repeat. But still, so much to go. I'm leaving my little lifelines in for a while, this whole lace thing makes me nervous.

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The magical land of colorwork

I finished knitting the cashmere lining section of the pirate hat at knitting on Tuesday and then I went ahead and blocked it yesterday. The instructions say to tack the lining in place before blocking, but my cast off edge was too rolled and so I decided to block first. I really need to get one of those head forms from the beauty supply place (you know, the head that you'd store a wig on? David says it works well for blocking hats). Instead, I'm using my lame-o blocking tool - the bottom of my craft room trash can.

I had a huge debate with myself on how to block the hat. Here at Crafty Kim headquarters, we're all about a good wash and full wet blocking. No steam irons or spray blocking for me!!! This clearly comes from too much working with sturdy wool yarn. I did a little poking around on the internet and definitely got the impression that cashmere might need a little more babying. I got the hat all set on my trash can and sprayed it down with water. I'm going to go ahead and tack the lining in place and then possibly reblock.

In other colorwork news, Tim & I stopped off at Borders last night where I fondled two books on colorwork that I'm milliseconds away from ordering, Traditional Fair Isle Knitting and Traditional Scandinavian Knitting. I've currently got The Art of Fair Isle Knitting checked out from the Nashville library and it's a really interesting book, but what I really want is a book with scads of color charts so I can just start throwing fair isle motifs into everything. I'm not really into it because of the historical value (although WOW there's a lot of interesting history behind these sweaters) or even because of the finished product, it's all about the process of colorwork for me. Right this minute, I totally can't get enough of it, I just want to leap into my next colorwork project.