Rain rain go away...

It's still raining. Even I, who enjoys a good grey rainy day, is finding this near constant rain a bit much now. I have been getting to wear a lot of hand knits, as wool does such a good job of keeping the dampness out. And there has been much dampness.
There has been a lot of flooding over much of southern Qc and Ontario, but thankfully, no one has died from the flooding, and hopefully it stays that way as we head into another couple of days of rain.

I finished the Aperture shawl. It was a reasonably quick knit, and really enjoyable. I've knit two Ambah O'Brien patterns now and I have to say I am definitely a fan! Nifty construction, very well written pattern, and yet the shawl comes out looking like it was complicated. In fact, before I knit the Nereid Shawl, I was actually intimidated by her patterns thinking that there was no way I could knit one because they looked beyond my skill level.
Full disclosure, I did have some trouble in the second section but, the errors were on my part and had nothing to do with the pattern. I had to tink back several times to fix mistakes that I just could not live with, like missing a yarn over, or forgetting to do a SSK or K2tog. Thankfully, by the second section, it's very easy to read the knitting, so I was able to find every mistake very quickly and fix them.
Also going to heap some serious praise on Miss Babs Killington yarn, it held up amazingly well to repeated tinking and blocked beautifully. One of my favourite things about this shawl was the bind off! I just adore the I-Cord bind off!

 I've gotten quite a few compliments on my Aperture by random people, which is always nice.

I finished my ScrumptiousPurl Business Casual socks.

Finished them in a reasonable amount of time despite my needle breaking. Like, actually snapping in half. I don't even know how it happened! I'm a monster with monster hands.

*sad face* I love the wooden chiaogoo circs, but they certainly don't like me. I think I've gone through 3 or 4 pairs at this point? I ordered some more Karbonz in 2.25mm after that little incident, but I'm still waiting for them to arrive in the mail.

 I'm much happier with how these socks washed up, no where near as much bleeding as my Baby Beluga socks. The sock base is one of the softest socks I have worn, and yet they wear really well and maintain their shape.
Instead of doing a three needle bind off on the toes, I decided to go with kitchener stitch to close the toes. Just felt like switching it up a little. Kitchener is a pain in the ass to do, I can NEVER remember the steps, but it really is such a neat little bind off, and the toes do look a smidge nicer.

In between the socks and Aperture shawl, I got a bee in my bonnet about fixing my Not Your Boyfriend Sweater. I was sick of the sweater constantly falling off my shoulders so I decided to rip out the neckline and redo it. It sounded simple at first, but I had a hard time undoing the bind off, because the ends were weaved in so well. So well, that I ended up having to cut off the whole bind off, which was a huge pain in the ass, but I managed to get the stitches back on the needles and make the neckline better. I was lucky enough to still have the leftover yarn from the neckline (caked up even!), so I was able to Russian join the yarn, and I didn't even need to cake up the last skein to finish it! One of the things I did to fix the neckline was to decrease the number of stitches. I decreased a total of about 20 stitches, and instead of the neckline only being about half an inch, I knit until it was almost 2.5 inches long. Of course, after fixing the neckline, I had to undo the bind off on the hem of the sweater, because now the sweater was definitely too short...since it no longer slipped off my shoulders, it didn't hang down as low, losing about an inch and a half of sweater. And it was already on the shorter side to begin with.
Undoing the bind off on the hem was much easier than the neckline. I did have to cake up the last skein of Malabrigo, but it was worth it because now the sweater is perfect. It's a great pullover, warm, comfy and relaxed.  I'm really glad I decided to fix it instead of just leaving it in the drawer and being slightly dissatisfied every time I wore it.

Now i'm working on another pair of socks and another shawl. I'm knitting a pair of vanilla socks made with Turtle Purl Turtle Toes yarn in the colourway Bah Hambug.

I was thinking about doing an afterthought heel with these socks.

The shawl I'm working on is the Spindrift shawl by Helen Stewart and while I have vowed many times to NEVER knit a fingering weight shawl again, I am actually knitting this fingering weight shawl with fingering weight yarn, or more accurately, sock yarn. I'm using that skein of Bis-sock that I won several months ago from Biscotte yarns. It didn't come with a name (argh) but it's very spring like; yellows, greens and purples with speckles. It's very pretty and I had actually caked it up into two cakes for socks at some point, cast on and knit a few rows, which I then frogged so I could knit the shawl instead.

 Anywhoo,  I'm about 50% of the way through the shawl and it's been a very pleasant knit. The pattern is very simple, very easy to memorize and is perfect for watching tv (I've started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer; which I never really watched when it first aired, because it sounded so lame) Also? I love that the pattern is written row by row, with a box at the end of the row, that you can check off the ass you knit it, and also tells you the percentage as you go. (it's one of the reasons I adored Noora Laviola's Reyna pattern so much!)

But once I'm finished with this shawl, I'm going to need to chill on the shawl knitting for a while, because I've just been knitting shawl after shawl...how many shawls does one person need? How many shawls can one person wear?*
Socks on the other hand, a person always needs socks. I have a lot of hand knit socks at this point, enough that I can wear a different pair of socks every day for two weeks, but some of the first pairs I knit are starting to show some wear, so new ones are always going to be needed.

And with this post finally done,  I'm going to go get dressed (I'm totally wearing my NYBS today) and get ready to meet mah knitter for some tea and knitting and possibly some yarn purchasing at Maison Tricote!

Bonus cat picture! Libby!

 (You can't tell but she's totally staring at my needles and wanting to swipe them)

*As I write this I'm thinking that I should make a fingering weight Reyna, because I have some gorgeous grey sock yarn, but I already have a pair of grey socks, knitting grey socks is terribly boring, and a lighter weight Reyna would be nice for spring/summer...