I am sad to report that two out of the three shawl WIPs I wrote about two weeks ago look pretty much the same. The Zombie Shawl is still awaiting about half the lace section and all of the picot edging. My Deep Dark Stellaria has been frogged and restarted to fix the weird twist in the beginning and is just a few inches deep. I have (at least) made a little progress on my Lime Mixer shawl!

I have two main thoughts that run through my head whenever I look at this shawl:

1. I love it!
2. NEVER AGAIN.

The texture in this shawl is fabulous: for the solid sections Shibui Knits Silk Cloud (silk/mohair laceweight) is held double with Shibui Knits Staccato (Merino / silk fingering weight) to produce a fabric that can accurately be described as heaven-for-your-hands. Seriously, it feels amazing. It’s silky and hefty with a wonderful fuzz from the mohair.

But it’s that same fuzz that is making me vow never to knit with a laceweight silk/mohair again. I am maybe a third of the way through this shawl and have spent HOURS untangling the balls of yarn. The problem comes in during the airy section when you knit the laceweight on its own. Since you’re pulling yarn out at different rates, the strands seem to get stuck on each other and all those grabby little mohair fiber wreak their fuzzy havoc. I’ve had to break the strand twice so far just to save my sanity. Not good. At least I think the end product will be worth it!

I’ve also been making some spinning progress! This purple Polwarth wool has been in progress for over a year but that’s the last of it. Once I get it off the spindle it will be ready to be rolled into a plying ball and then plied. I didn’t particularly like this fiber (hence why it took so long). It was kind of compacted and perhaps the heavy Golding spindle was a bad match for it because I had lots of trouble drafting, especially as the spindle filled up.  Whatever, it should still make a pretty 2-ply when it’s done! Click the image below to find more lovely WIPs.

AND DON’T FORGET: You still have until 11:59 pm on Friday (US eastern time) to enter my blog-warming giveaway! Thanks for all the love so far, it’s made my blogging heart happy. 😉