Don't hate me because I knit lace in my sleep.

Remember, all I did for the first ten years of my knitting 'career' was knit lace just like this; I call it my Early Doily Phase. In the year after I got my hand fixed, I knit like fourteen of these suckers, and used to randomly mail them out to people who I thought would like one. (Trish in the comments has had one for quite a few years, as I recall.) Now with my discovery of Herbert Niebling, I fear I am descending into an Intermediate Doily Phase, though this time around I'm going to knit many of them with something snuggly and call them shawls. (Is it a shrub, or a small tree?) Very small-gauge knitting like this (yesterday's doily was knit on size twos with #10 crochet cotton) is also very light, which means it doesn't tire my hands out like larger-gauge knitting does. (I may never knit with regular-weight lopi again, I don't care how warm it is. Bulky weight anything? Forget it.) So I can knit on these things for hours a day and not wind up on painkillers. So I do.

Before you go thinking I actually know what I'm doing, I will share the sad fact that the silk I got from Habu Textiles isn't going to work for my mother-in-law's shawl. If I were to knit it up on the needles it needs, it would not be a shawl. It would be a very elaborate and beautiful coaster. However, it is going to be PERFECT for an experiment I've been wanting to try - buying very thin weaving thread and chain-plying it on my wheel into something thicker. If it works, my mother-in-law may get two gifts this year. Or I may keep it. Bwahahaha.

It also occurred to me that I had no friggin' idea how big this shawl would be, or how much yarn it would use, or even how the beads would work out, seeing as I've never worked with beads and knitting at the same time, before. So last night I cast on ANOTHER shawl that I've owed a friend of mine for about three years. It's a round doily pattern from Niebling, "Aster". I'm using size three needles and this yarn, an alpaca-silk blend in color cognac, with some judiciously applied turquoise beads. (Said freind loves the brown/turquoise combo; I knit to please.) I'm going to see how big this thing turns out, then adjust as needed for my mother-in-law's shawl. I will probably wind up using the same yarn, too (it's yummy), but in black. Assuming I can get black. They're out of stock at the moment. ARGH.

So that's the current level of adventure in knitting.


Last weekend, when I went to the craft stores? There was a sale on stickers.

We're gonna be picking stickers out of the lint trap in the dryer for WEEKS.