An Afternoon Quickie - Quick Posting That Is

I figured there was time for a quick post this afternoon. I myself slept in this morning, walked my monsters then hit the stores (Let's just pretend you care about my daily schedule, okay?).

The first thing on my list were new needles. You see, I've been working on this Echo Flower Shawl with a pair of the square knitting needles in the circular style.

This is supposed to be a quarter turn counter clockwise. I have no idea why this thing sometimes won't keep picture formatting.

As for the needles themselves, I have no qualms. To be honest a size four is small enough that the fingers don't really notice a big difference with it being a squared off needle. But the cable... Simply put, it sucks. It's like knitting with a limp noodle. It turns itself out between your stitches, doesn't want to feed through the stitches as you work. In general, it's just a pain in the tookus. Unfortunately, the yarn store didn't have what I was needing. The good thing is the more I get on the needle as this shawl grows, the better behaved the cable is. But if it were up to me the whole darn thing would go away.

It's actually a very good pattern. If you decide to look into it, read the pattern carefully as you review your charts. Once they all fit together in your head it's quite simple. I am finding it a bit tedious but I think that's largely due to the needles and the fact that I haven't been allowed to work on it as much as I would want to. Truly, any frustration I'm having towards it is mostly self derived. I would recommend this pattern to anyone who wants to give it a shot. You can get it free on Ravelry.com. I'm making the larger full size shawl version myself.

The yarn in use is the replacement bamboo fingering I was sent from the Great Andirondak Yarn Co to replace the yarn I had previously had disintegrating problems with. It is truly a soft and beautiful yarn to work with, even if I'm not caring for the way the color is knitting up. Once again though, that's due to my own OCD issues with variegates. Many people have petted it and cooed over it so I think the recipient will adore it.

The other items on my shopping lists are simply because I'm a bad uncle. I didn't realize the youngest of my nephews birthday was on Monday until last night while plotting out my schedule on the calendar. Then while talking to my Mom I discovered the older nephews birthday was in August, not October like I was thinking. Like I said, bad uncle. So I scrambled to get a couple more things for the items I had already accrued for birthday boxes so I could pack them up and ship them.

Now... I get to knit!