The Shawl Surprise Gauntlet

I am taking this up again today, and I'm going to get some good circles on that first part of the design if it kills me (and it just might).

I'm also moving up to a bigger size needle. I think it will give me a lacier effect and not shrink in size, because my knitting gets tighter the further I get into clue one.

Knitting is growing on me

Now that I've relaxed a little, I'm starting to enjoy knitting more and recognizing that there really are benefits.


1. It gets my mind off things that are bugging me.
2. It apparently keeps me from strangling people.
3. I never run out of things I would like to knit.
4. I've met some pretty nice people in the process.
5. I don't have anybody breathing down my neck and telling me how to do it.
6. It has started going a lot faster.


One of these days, I'm going to make a pair of fingerless gloves. I have plenty of yarn to do it with, too. I don't know if I'll be sharing a pattern or not though. There are people on Ravelry saying that not just their original patterns, but their entire blogs, have been stolen by people, links, pictures, text and all. Why would you do something like that? You know you'll get caught. And when you do, people will lose all respect for you. What do you possibly get out of that?

More poncho news

I made the larger size and it is fitting better and looking better, too.

Here's what it looks like so far. I think I'm going to have to buy another 2 bundles of yarn, one light brown and one ecru.

It has been smooth sailing on getting a large part of the knitting done in the evenings. I watched Pride and Prejudice about 6 times in the past two weeks to give me good stuff to knit by.

Since the first attempt at the poncho, I have come up with some new ways of finishing yarn strands. I quit weaving them in so much because they were affecting the tightness of the material. Plus there were too many of them, even for me tying off as I went.

So I basically cut the strands less, and where I have to add on another strand, I would use a surgical tie to attach a new strand, leaving about 1/2 inch of excess. Then I would square knot the rest of the excess until they got too short to work with.

I also carried threads up to the next row where they're needed if they're about 14 rows away or less, making sure there's a lot of slack so it will drape properly.

The excess strands wind up looking like the picture below. Using this method, I don't worry about the thread breaking off as much, and the cut ends quit working their way through the material to the poncho's right side. I only hope they continue to work that well after it's washed and worn.