Knitting at last

I finally got to spend some quality knitting time yesterday -- we watched the second half of the extended version of The Two Towers last night, which is a solid several hours of knitting (yay! extended versions!). Before that, I also managed to update my Ravelry page, as well as (necessarily) some of my Flickr photos, so I'm feeling very on top of things here (of course, there are a few small pending matters at work that I'm not so on top of, but hey, you can't do everything!).

I've been working on the Hanami stole for a while, and I'm still just charmed by how it's turning out. I'm in the middle of the fifth repeat of the basketweave part of the stole, with two more to go, at which point I'll have to decide whether I'm truly feeling halfway done, or whether I want to commit to one more repeat. The handpainted Claudia yarn that I'm using has 1100 yards in the skein, so I think that I should have plenty. The yarn is the silk lace, and the 1100 yards only weighs 100 grams, so this is going to be a very light, very lacy stole -- it's amazing just how light the entire ball of yarn is:
(note the cat fur sticking out there on the side) This really doesn't do justice to the colors, which range from a fairly dark olive-y green through to shades of bronze and silver. I found very small beads for the end (smaller than the ones called for in the pattern, but I like these better):
And I think I'll bead the other end, instead of doing the ruffle, as the pattern calls for. I love the weight of the beads at the ends, and I'll want that to be even (I tend to be somewhat lopsided around the shoulders anyway, so that everything falls off of my left shoulder, since I carry everything on my right shoulder and keep it hitched up; beads on one side just seems to be asking for trouble, y'know?). Here's how the basketweave is looking:
(these pictures somehow aren't nearly so sharp as they are on my computer; I'll retake and post again soon) I can't wait to see how this blocks out -- I think it's going to grow quite a lot. I'm actually somewhat farther along than that, since I finished most of another repeat last night. I got myself a project bag to carry it in (those are the new lace Addis I'm using, size 3 -- I absolutely love them for a project like this; the points are pointy enough for the K2togs without being too point -- needle damage to my body is a very real risk in my world):
I love these little Lantern Moon bags! They're the perfect size for a project like this, or for a pair of socks, along with a row counter and a small pair of scissors. Alas, it doesn't fit my chart holder (seen in the background here, from KnitPicks -- why, oh why, did I take so long to get one of these?!), but for most socks I don't need a chart, so it's generally not an issue. And the bag is soft and squoonchy enough that it fits into a bigger project bag if I need to carry multiple projects around (no laughing -- I know that I'm not the only one who carries around multiple projects in case I have a mood swing and need a different knit than the one I'd planned).

This is one of three, no wait four, projects on the needles right now. I'll get them up in a list on the blog at some point, but right now, they're all on Ravelry (except the one I just remembered), so if you have a login name, you can go over there to see them -- if you don't, I know that they're working overtime to send out invitations, so sit tight! I'll write about the socks tomorrow -- I might even manage to finish the first one while the girls have swim lessons today! Of course, I should be working on Hanami, since it's the only project with a deadline, but somehow sitting by the pool at the YMCA just seems to call for more durable knitting... I'm always afraid that if I look up suddenly (which happens a lot when I hear "Mama! Look!"), I'll miss a stitch, and with this silk, a dropped stitch goes far.