Stinky Malabrigo

I had planned to attend the Woodstock Fleece Festival last weekend with Jennifer but I had to alter my plans when Skip and I learned of the death of the mother of a dear friend. She had been battling cancer for a couple of years and when she entered hospice care a few weeks ago, we knew the end was near and had discussed making the trip to Indiana for her funeral and to support our friend and his family.

Hopefully next year I'll be attending the NY Sheep and Wool Festival again in Rhinebeck but if not, I'll definitely try to attend the WFF which is held the same weekend.

Since we had about 20 hours in the car over the weekend, I drove about half of them so had lots of time to knit when I wasn't driving. I started a SKYP sock to take with me and got about 4 inches done on the leg of the first sock.

The night before we left, while attending the Trillium Embroidery Guild meeting, I admired Margo's Holden Shawlette and the nifty shawl pin she had. I knew that would be an excellent project for the road because the first half of it is stocking stitch - not something I would have to concentrate hard on. I had a skein of Malabrigo Sock yarn in the 138 Ivy colourway that would be perfect for this project. I wanted to make it as big as I could so decided to use 4.5mm needles and, if possible, an extra pattern repeat.

After the stocking stitch and one pattern repeat of the feather and fan pattern, I still had 40g of the 100g skein left so I was pretty confident that I'd be able to comfortably knit one extra pattern repeat than the three and a half called for in the pattern.

I finished the shawl last night with 7g of yarn to spare, and have it blocking. When I took it out of the water, it had a very farm-like smell. More than just a sheepy smell, I believe. Pee-you! Maybe the dye that was used added the extra barnyard smell. What a stink!

Anyway, it pinned out to the size that I wanted without having to pull too hard.

Off the blocking wires.

I'm not sure what projects I'll take with me on the upcoming Irish knitting tour. We leave next Tuesday evening - wheee!!! We won't be doing an inordinate amount of sitting in the bus but I want something that will be interesting to knit as I'll be in that rarefied knitting environment for ten days.

I tracked down the seller of the shawl pin that I had admired on Margo's shawl. Francine (tofino14 on Etsy) has a couple of designs with have the pin attached to the circle. The package will be arriving in the mail in the next week or so.