Knit in public!

Today is World Wide Knit in Public day. And, in due course, I will be knitting in public at the event hosted by my very favorite LYS in the whole world, Yarning For You.

I've actually done a ton of knitting this week, one way and another, but have had no time to share it. Most of the knitting has been done at events that have been taking up a lot of my time. It was Older Daughter's last week of school, and she had her big cumulative final presentation on Tuesday (twenty minutes -- that's a long time), and it went very well (whew!). Wednesday night was Knit Night at my LYS, which could have felt like just one more thing to do, but was really exactly what I needed in a busy week. Younger Daughter's school's Spring Concert was on Thursday, which entailed not only the concert itself, but also the driving to and fro for the rehearsal (which lasted nearly four hours), then the return for the concert itself. That was a lot of knitting time. Yesterday was my friend and colleague's baby shower; she got the baby sweater I recently finished plus a pair of booties. And then this morning was Older Daughter's last soccer game; the rest of the day will be taken up with knitting in public, and Older Daughter's soccer team's pizza party. Craziness.

Unfortunately, Rick currently has the camera, but as this will probably be my only chance to post this weekend, I thought it would be better to take some not-so-good photobooth pictures to share than to not post at all. So, without further ado, I give you Hillflowers:
I'm seven repeats into the first half, which should be 15 repeats long, but I'm thinking that 14 will get me to where I need to be, length-wise. This is for the booth at Sock Summit, so I'm knitting it out of Briar Rose Harmony, which Chris dyed up in the most gorgeous stormy blue colorway.
It's currently in full-fledged crumpled-lace mode, but I have faith that blocking will work its usual magic. I love how intuitive this pattern is; for once in my life, I have actually memorized it and don't need a chart. However, I have found in the past that knitting lace in the dark is a sure recipe for disaster (not to mention knitting lace during soccer games), so I also cast on for Shawl That Jazz (Rav link), and made some significant progress during Thursday's 2 1/2 hour performance.
I'm about 1/3 of the way through the short row section, if I'm calculating right (meaning that what you see there should be about a third of the eventual total depth of the shawl, minus edging). I love the construction of this shawl, it's very clever. All of the depth comes from short rows. For knitting in the pitch black of the theater on Thursday (we're talking really dark -- no lights on the steps, even, which strikes me as some kind of violation of some fire code, but there it is), I put stitch markers in after I slipped the first stitch of each short row turn (the slipped stitches don't get wrapped in this pattern), which involved a bit of finagling at the end of each row to move the markers, but which meant I could knit this without having to look to see whether I'd come to the last slipped stitch or not. So I could just come to the marker, turn the work, take the marker out, slip the first stitch, put the marker back in, and merrily knit my way back down the row to the other side. Rinse and repeat.
You can see a little of the short-row shaping there. I'm knitting this out of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Twist, in the Azure Malachite colorway. You all know I was feeling a little dithery about whether I was going to like it or not, but it turns out that I do. The way the colors are working up in the shawl, they remind me a little bit of a Monet painting, which can't be a bad thing, right?

So, that's my week in knitting. I did one other thing this week:
Yup. I cut it all off (forgive the bad picture). I figured I really didn't need any more complications in my life right now, and the only thing I could easily get rid of was the hair. And I tell you, I'm very happy with it this short, especially on the days that I swim.

So, off and running again. Tomorrow we're going to the Wild Animal Park on a special tour for Younger Daughter's big birthday present. Rhinos or bust!