I have finished Clapotis. 
See the nice drape of it?
I've got to make a full size version. It will be a fantastic shawl.
And this morning, I'm working on hemming 
and doing finishing details on the wee blankie. Not my favourite kind of work, but I do love the way it is when it is all done. I shall persevere.
Update: More info on the sheep video. It is real. cute and real is almost too much for this time of the day.
I came home a little late so I am not as far along as I had hoped, but it is progressing rather nicely. I am pleased with everything about this shawl to the point that it was painful to come down to the computer to blog.
Its that kind of project. Its very simple, but there is lots to keep you going. Just when you are about to get bored, you have to switch something, changing the balls you are working from, or the changing from garter to stockinette. If those are not enough to entertain you, then wait a minute, something about the colour will change in the way only a Noro yarn can.
It shows how distressingly little it takes to keep me entertained but I take some consolation that not everything has to be complicated to teach me a thing or two. (This one is teaching me how distressingly little it takes to keep me entertained.)
I did rip it back to the beginning last evening. I wondered if I would get a better effect if colours on both balls were more sequential. That might very well have been the goal of splitting it into two balls. If you did that, just imagine how long the colourways would be as you worked this up. I wound both colours up on the ball winder, one from the outside strand and one from the inside strand, so imagine the difference if I had wound them up in a regular ball, so that the ball wound from the outside would be worked from what was the inside of the yarn from the original skein. I can see all kinds of interesting ways to play with the look of the shawl just by making small changes.
I did play around with it, and decided, that nope, this shawl, fate and Mr. Noro are in the drivers seat. The colours are going to be just as they come.
At just 450 yards, this is going to be more of a shawlette, than a full sized shawl. I can see another long colourway version in the future, using two balls of yarn softly waving these gorgeous tones across my shoulders.
I can also see this yarn worked up in a feather and fan pattern, Shetland style, or maybe a la Shoalwater Shawl. I'm going to get a lot of dreaming mileage out of this shawl.
OK, back to knitting. That is enough of this blogging thing. I have an obsession to work with.
Knitting backwards sounds like a good idea for those little projects where you are knitting and purling over just a few stitches. I cast on 10 stitches, and played around with it for a while and got something like this video from the Knitwitch. (Here is hoping the video thing works)
Remember how I said sort of?
Because I hold my yarn in my other hand, a holdover from being gauge comfortable with crochet technique, I had to sort it out by myself. The results look the same, a perfectly knit stitch, only the placement of needles and possibly the direction I need to wrap change. If I was a smart videophile, I would have video of myself knitting backwards. Then even I could see what the heck I did to get there.
Please note the lack of such video. I am no videophile. Search the net. someone will be demonstrating it.
There are dozens of how to videos on YouTube, 17 if you search using knitting backwards. Some of them don't seem to be knitting, but the search results in enough that surely some of this is going to help.
If you can't find a teacher or a friend who knows how to knit, you can have someone show you via the Internet. Knitwitch is a video maker I particularly like. She has a very long list of things on knitting over at YouTube.
Now I just have to come up with a reason to use the thing so I can become smooth and speedy with it. Though, before I worry about smooth and speedy backwards knitting, I should probably figure out the speedy part going the regular direction.
Had it been proper, I could have absolutely knit while they played. I was not much of a Schubert fan, but have to admit, his Symphony No. 5 was lyrical. There is just something about sitting in the lovely Winspear Centre, 
with its perfect acoustics that makes you fall in love with what you hear. It was like sitting inside the music. I have gone but once to a live orchestral concert, but intend to make sure this was not the last time it happens.
Watching the Orchestra play, watching the violinists bow their instruments, I was struck by how very much knitting looks like their playing. Tuesdays at knitting circle look a lot like a symphony of knitters.
Without a conductor, we arrange ourselves around a centre table, often in a sort of oval grouping, so we can see each other work. Our elbows bow in time, our hands dance lightly along the strings. Even simple knitting is beautiful to watch. We are a lot more noisy than an orchestra, we drink coffee and other things while we play, we dress a lot more casually than the average orchestra. If you went by dress, we'd look a lot more like the orchestra's cousin musician who was playing outside the theatre. ('Everybody loves somebody sometime' sung just for the pure joy of singing and pennies. I wouldn't have minded hearing him inside the concert hall on that stage. He was very good.) Luckily, we don't have to dress up to play. We can just arrive as we are, and get to the heart of the matter. The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra has music rhythm, and we have knitting rhythm.
In music they teach you to just keep on playing, but in knitting, no matter how strong your urge to just keep knitting is, you absolutely must go back and make it right. You can want to believe that one little oops is not going to matter, and on very rare occasions it might not, but most of the time, you will come to the end of a 7000 row project and realise that you had a tiny error in row 12, compounded and continued through every other row and nothing looks right because of it. Music played live is ephemeral and lives on in memories, but knitting is solid, tangible, and what you end up seeing relies on how well you played.
Knitting might not be music but, they come from the same heart. I got rhythm, so I knit.
I'm playing with Blogger's new scheduling feature. If things seem out of order this week, it is just me.
From flickr. Excellent speed, if I do say so myself, and a nice pair of socks.
And from a paperdoll page. If you are interested, search by the doll name, and you will a person with an amazing page of these dolls. My thanks to the collector. Wonderful fun on a cold and dull afternoon.I have no idea what an widget does, but I'll try anything once.
Updated. hmmmm that didn't do what I thought it would do, but I seem to have it figured out. See the cool new Achenblog Widget on the sidebar.
