I started a new job last fall/winter and really enjoy it. One of the many things I appreciate is that it is remote so I have freed up 2 hours of my day due to lack of commute. This gives me more time for leisure pursuits and in the effort to maintain some work/life balance I have picked up my knitting. As witnessed by the finally finished 2 years later pair of socks I posted earlier this week.

I still have most of my yarn in bins and boxes from my move since I wasn’t knitting but now that I am I am trying to sort through things and organize. There is still the cubby system acting as a divider wall for my office but right now there are more books than yarn housed within the Kallex. And I think I won’t be adding any more yarn to it until I clear out a cube but who knows how I will feel about this a month from now. Anyway one of the boxes I opened had the lovely teal Istex Einband aka Istex Looband aka Schoolhouse Press Icelandic Laceweight. 2 balls and a huge nostpinned looking ball that was made up of my ripped up Birita Faroe Shawl I had given up on way back in October of 2019. Basically I had 4 balls worth of yarn for a pattern that calls for 2-tho my blog post lets me know I didn’t believe I had enough.

I honestly cannot think of anything else I want to knit with this yarn. It is a rustic thick and thin single ply with a pleasing woolly hand. A bit scratchy to be honest–more so than Lopi or Plotulopi aka Schoolhouse Press’ Unspun Icelandic. So I spent some time thinking about this pattern. We start off with 479 stitches, decrease 4 stitches EOR throughout charted portion {which I hadn’t completed}, then do some additional shaping going forward. The instructions end with row 197 then repeat a couple of rows until you are down to 10 stitches. Which I assume happens shortly thereafter. Also, upon closer inspection of completed shawls on Ravelry, it appears as if the plain garter section is significantly less deep than the charted lace portion which ends on row 97. Even tho there are at least 100 rows over and beyond the lace portion-which will be opened up via blocking and therefore deeper- the fact that we are ending with 10 stitches instead of 479 means the 2 balls worth of yarn I have not yet touched might just be enough to cover the garter stitch portion of pattern.

As of the 17th, I am playing Yarn Chicken.

yarny days and knitterly evenings~ Elka