Exordium - Making Progress

I've completed another big swath of garter stitch and have just started working another textural stitch section.  I'm not completely sold on the shawl shape, it is a little too rectilinear for me, but I'm not going to rip back and change it at this point.  I may do a project with just the textural stitch.  I have two sets of Unique Sheep gradiance leftovers that would go well together

Pattern:  Exordium by Rebecca Picoult
Yarn:  Zen Yarn Garden Superfine Fingering in Botanical and Limes
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Remnants Shawl - Cast On

Of course, once I started knitting my Adventuresome Wrap with my Sunshine Yarns set I had the problem of what to do with the leftovers.  I could just throw them in a bag, but then I would lose the order, so I decided to knit them up right away into another one of my simple garter stitch boomerang shawls.  I've knit up the first color and have actually started the second.  I think when I'm done with this set, I will take the leftovers from last year's set and do a knit on border.  The pattern is improvised.  I start out with 3 stitches and work a couple of rows where I increase without decreasing until I get to enough stitches where I can work both the increase and the decrease.  The basic pattern is as follows:

Right sides:  k2, (k, yo, k) into the next stitch, knit across to the last 4 stitches, k2tog, k2.
Wrong sides:  knit

Once I cast on, I work the right side row without the decrease until I have enough stitches to work the full pattern.

Pattern:  improvised
Yarn:  Sunshine Yarns Classic Sock
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm).

Adventuresome Wrap - Cast On

Last year I purchased a Sunshine Yarns Advent kit for my Ambah O'Brien Advent project.  I purchased another one this year.  The colorway is Night Sky.  Once again I opened all of them this past weekend.  Unlike last year, the yarns came in little paper bags with the number on the bag and no identification on the skein itself, which meant that after I unwrapped them I had to be careful to keep them in the proper order.  I decided the best way to do that was to knit them up quickly, so yesterday I cast on.  I cast on 202 stitches to make the shawl wider and to use up more yarn.  It's a good thing I did, too, as I'm still only using up about 2/3 of each of the mini skeins.

When Ambah announced her 2019 patterns, Sunshine Yarns suggested some neutral skein colors for the main color on the Adventuresome Wrap.  I picked up a skein of gray.  But then I saw that someone on Ravelry was using red as their main color and that got me thinking.  So I looked at my colors and decided that a bold blue might be a good color to go with my set.  I had what I thought would be the perfect color lurking in my stash, I just had to find it.  It was catalogued on Ravelry, but the location information was incorrect.  I finally found it hiding in a project bag for one of my many WIPs.  The gray will go to good use, however, the main color in the Jimmy Beans Craftvent calendar this year is a gray fuzzy alpaca, and I just don't do fuzzy yarns, plus I have to be a little careful with alpaca as it can make my hands itch.

The colors are (from top to bottom and left to right):
1.  Outer Space
2.  Black Hole
3.  Dark Nebula
4.  Asteroid
5.  Horizons
6.  Blue Moon
7.  Aurora Borealis
8.  Equinox
9.  Orbit
10.  Crater
11.  Ursa Major
12.  Galaxy
13.  Neutron
14.  Constellations
15.  Orion Nebula
16.  Pink Sky
17.  Star Cluster
18.  Starburst
19.  Lyra
20.  False Dawn
21.  Satellite
22.  Comet Tail
23.  Heat Lightning
24.  Polaris
25.  Light Year

Pattern:  ADVENTuresome Wrap by Ambah O'Brien
Yarn:  Sunshine Yarns Classic Sock, 2019 Night Sky Advent
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

The Unique Sheep - Christmas Advent Calendars

For the past three years The Unique Sheep has been creating Christmas Advent Yarn Calendars.  They are a lot of dyers out there creating Advent calendars now, partly driven by Ambah O'Brien's ADVENT patterns.  The first year I purchased one calendar - the Bright and Bold colorway.  The second and third years I purchased both colorways.  This year I was on travel for work the first two weeks of December, first to Norway and then to California, so I was not able to open my Advent calendars every day.  Instead I waited and opened them all this past weekend.  The inspiration for this year was A Christmas Carol and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Here is the complete set of A Christmas Carol.  The top picture shows how they were boxed and the bottom picture puts them in numerical order, which forms a circular gradiance.  The boxing order was:  8, 20, 7, 9, 19, 18, 5, 4, 3, 2, 16, 17, 15, 1, 24, 14, 15, 12, 11, 23, 22, 10, 21, 9

Here is the complete set for A Nightmare Before Christmas,  The top photo shows how they were boxed, and the bottom picture shows them grouped into their four sets.

The four sets are:  Lock, Stock & Barrel (top left, gradiance), The Electric Oogie Boogie (top right, gradiance), Sally (bottom left) and Speckle (bottom right).

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep

Botanical Exordium - Cast On

I had originally picked out these two skeins, which came as a pair, for Anna Dalvi's 2019 Advent Shawl, but I didn't like the way they were working up together for that pattern, as you can see from the picture below.  I will come back to Anna Dalvi's shawl later, and I have yarn in my stash in mind for it - yellow and red (Butter and Sin).

Then Exordium came out, and I scored a free copy during the introductory period (it hit number 1 on Ravelry).  I like the textural quality of the shawl, and thought it just might tame the variegated skein.  I like how it is coming out so far.

I really like the section that I'm working now, even if that stitch is a little bit of a pain to work.

Pattern:  Exordium by Rebecca Picoult
Yarn:  Zen Yarn Garden Superfine Fingering in Botanical and Limes
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Sunshower Shawl - Five through Eleven

Steady work this past week on this shawl has seen me through the rest of the little boxes that have been stacking up all year on the floor of my piano room (which also holds the latest yarn acquisitions and general yarn overflow).  All of the little boxes have been broken down and placed in the recycle bin, although I was tempted to keep them, they are really nice boxes.  I did make a modification to the pattern once I got to the lace section.  I recognize this lace motif from Ambah's 2018 Advent shawl.  This time I decided to maintain they symmetry and only worked 4 (ssk, yo) instead of 5, and then k3, continuing on with the 4 (yo, k2tog).  On the right side rows I maintained the m1l, k1, m1r.  I am left with a bag of leftovers.  I think all of the boxes had a little ball of additional yarn in them, which I have gathered up along with the leftovers.  I will probably lay them out in a pleasing color scheme and make a simple garter stitch boomerang shawl out of them - just to use them up.

The colors in the shawl so far:
Ceremony
Winter's Rest
Silver Fox
Constellation
Antler
Star Scatter
Hosta Blue
Dopamine
Coquette Deux
Beautiful Liar

I don't have the 11th color list yet, as I still have one more row to go with that color.  I have been joining the new yarn to the old to avoid weaving in a lot of ends when I'm done.  The final box will be mailed after Christmas.

Pattern:  Sunshower Shawl by Ambah O'Brien
Yarn:  Tosh Merino Light
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Sunshower Shawl - Two, Three & Four

I've been working on this shawl yesterday and today and have made it through three more mini skeins and am about to start the fifth.  This is easy knitting, read while I knit knitting.  I finished a marvelous science fiction novel - The Last Dance by Martin Shoemaker.  Old fashioned science fiction, with solid science behind the fiction.

The colors so far:
Ceremony
Winter's Rest
Silver Fox
Constellation

Pattern:  Sunshower Shawl by Ambah O'Brien
Yarn:  Tosh Merino Light
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Sunshower Shawl - One

This shawl is from the Jimmy Beans shawl club for 2019.  Every month a cute little box came with a portion of the the pattern on a card and a pre-wound ball of yarn (or yarns).  You're supposed to work a little each month, but I didn't do that.  I've been stacking the little boxes all year and this morning I decided to cast on.  The yarn is a single, which is not my favorite kind of yarn - it's isn't very strong or pill resistant, but it is soft and squishy.

Pattern:  Sunshower Shawl by Ambah O'Brien
Yarn:  Tosh Merino Light in Ceremony
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Linger Later Brioche Cowl - Finished!

I've been wanting to try out Brioche for a while now and this afternoon I finally did.  The yarn is from the Space Cadet Space Monsters club, a yarn club that features heavier weight yarns.  I don't usually knit with the heavier weight yarns, but decided I wanted to stretch myself some so I joined.  This was the August 2019 yarn, Linger and Later.  One was the club shipment and the other was the complementary colorway that they dyed to go with it.  I ordered the complementary color right away, but then they sat in my stash while I tried to figure out what to make with them.  I knew that I wanted a cowl, and I wanted something that would show case the yarn.  This afternoon I finally realized that a Brioche cowl would be perfect.  I searched Ravelry for a simple Brioche Cowl and found this.  Super easy, super fast, very addicting.  Here is the other side.  I love that Brioche is completely reversible.

Pattern:  Beginners Brioche Cowl by Lavanya Patricella
Yarn:  SpaceCadet Elara
Needle:  US 9 (5.5 mm)

Dreamy Adalia - Blocked!

I trimmed all of the ends and tried it on this morning.  The fit is good.  I also ordered some pewter Celtic Knot buttons for it, as opposed to the crochet buttons called for in the pattern.  When I picked up the collar I did not pick up the stitch count indicated in the pattern, but simply picked up evenly along the neck.  Then I worked two complete rows in pattern.  The first row (which is a wrong side row) I decreased, in pattern, to get the correct number of stitches as called for in the pattern.  Then I worked a right side row to get back to the starting point for the short rows, which I worked as called for in the pattern.  I picked up the wraps as I came to them on the succeeding row.  I bound off knitwise, as there was no indication in the pattern directions to bind off in pattern (as had been given for the sleeves).  From the pictures it looked like a knitwise bind off.

Pattern:  Adalia by Jennifer Wood
Yarn:  Spirit Trail Fiberworks Verdande in Daydream
Needles:  US 6 (4 mm)