Presenting...

the Brandywine Shawl

In at the deep end...

I haven't managed a lot of knitting this first week of school (no surprise, really), so I decided to focus my limited time on the Brandywine shawl.  I would like to finish it soon and get it to its patient recipient.

According to the pattern I have one and a half more 16-row repeats to do, and then the top edge, which is basically two rows, with some short rows worked at the tips.  I'm thinking that I'll probably work at least one or two extra repeats (even though I'm getting bored with these 16 rows!), because I've only used half of the yarn so far.  I think I'll end up with the dimensions listed in the pattern after the recommended number of repeats, but the pictured shawl looks bigger.  Also, this yarn is lovely and smooshy, so I don't think it will be unwieldy if I make the finished item a bit bigger.  I'll see how it looks in a repeat and a half.

Here is something pretty to show you.  In the summer I'd mentioned to my friend Annemarie that I like the little boxy project bags, and when I gave her the laptop cover I'd made her she gave me this lovely little bag.  Well-fitting zippers always impress me, as I am more of a straight-line sewer, and the appliqued and embroidered birds are just too sweet.  Thank you, Annemarie!

Summer's End

As well as the quilt I've completed a couple of other, smaller, sewing projects this summer.  At the beginning of July I made a laptop cover for our new laptop, and this past week I made another one for a friend.  I made them using 2 fat quarters each, and a bit of extra fabric for binding, and kind of made up the pattern as I went along on the first one.  For mine I used a couple of fabrics that I liked but that didn't really go with any others that I had, and so this was a perfect use for them.  The binding is leftover fabric from a jellyroll quilt I made for one of our nieces last year when she went off to college.

I made Annemarie's using 2 fat quarters that she gave me for the purpose.  I happened to have exactly enough of a matching fabric to do the binding left over from my first ever quilt. 

I have also had time to do some knitting this past week.  Surprising, really, because since we got home from the Okanagan a week ago we've canned 16 jars of peaches, 24 jars of tomatoes, and 24 jars of dill pickles, as well as dealing with fresh produce in various other creative ways!  I also had a day at school, and have slowly been wrapping my head around starting a new year tomorrow.

I finished the first Bubblegum sock, and I'm about halfway up the Brandywine shawl in terms of number of rows (though only about a quarter of the way through the number of stitches.  As you can see, it now stretches across the length of a 24" circular needle, so it's coming along.

I think I'll actually have more time to knit once I'm back to work, because the summer canning and other projects will be out of my way, and my 'leisure time' will be mainly devoted to knitting once again.