When I cast off a shawl last night - more on that later - I noticed that my left wrist was acting up. I have hyper-mobile joints and sometimes I forget that I have to "stiffen" my wrist when pushing against or carrying things. These past few days I have been doing a lot of pushing and shoving at work - and now my left wrist is acting up as a result. I'll need to uncover some bandages later and perhaps even scale down my knitting activities. Woe.
But, yes, I have cast off my third shawl of 2010. After finishing this Feather and Fan Comfort Shawl and knowing that I would wear it, I cast on for another F&F shawl in Marks & Kattens Fame Trend in colour 651 (a sage-brown-red combo). Again, a very straightforward knit and I really love the colours. I much preferred Fame Trend to the very disappointing Drops Delight - Fame Trend is softer, the colour combinations are better and I much prefer the evenness of the resulting fabric to the substandard faux-Noro-esque Delight.
But I think I am definitely ready to move away from knitting multi-coloured shawls out of sock yarn.
My next project is a pullover from the new Rowan magazine - the Spring Summer 2010 one. Relax is a casual lacy jumper designed by Sarah Hatton and knitted out of Summer Tweed, a silk/cotton yarn, in a lovely red shade. I'm slightly concerned about how my wrist will cope with the yarn as I know from experience that knitting will cotton will hurt my hands. Hopefully the 30% content of cotton won't tax my hands too much. I'm excited about this one as I tend to knit mostly big, woolly garments and I'd love to have a pretty red jumper that I can wear throughout the year. I plan on wearing it with layers - long-sleeves black tops for spring and autumn and a little black camisole during the three days of summer we'll get. In my head I can also see it working with a teal corduroy skirt I have. Fingers crossed.
Thanks to the lovely girls at Go Fug Yourself, I spent the morning looking at ice-skating routines. Having watched Johnny Weir skating to Lady Gaga, I can die a happy woman. Growing up in Scandinavia, I watched lot of ice-skating and have always loved its mad combination of gymnastics, showmanship, and ever-looming possibility of bone fractures. Oh, the Winter Olympics cannot come soon enough.. (and I am planning to knit my very first pair of socks for the Ravelympics).