Knitting Plans for September

I'm back home (which is kind of strange, after being gone for a week), but still picture-less. However, Kevin and I took pictures of everything we ate at the fair (not including beverages, although we decided floats count as food because of the ice cream), so there's that to look forward to! Looking at them should be enough to convince me to eat more healthily for the next little while! (As much as I joke about eating only dessert, I don't really think my food choices are that bad, most of the time, but the 8 hours or so we spent as the fair are definitely a huge exception. Deep friend veggies and a sno-cone stand out as comparatively healthy selections!)

Knitting-wise, have I mentioned that I joined the Hanami knit-along? It started last week, although it's a less official knit-along, so some people had actually started before the start date. I'm using Schaefer Andrea (100% silk) in the Lillian Gilbreth colorway. I've knit about a repeat and a half of the lattice pattern that makes up about half of the shawl (I think we're meant to knit seven repeats before starting the next pattern). Lillian Gilbreth looks green, blue, yellow and cream (that sounds awful, but they're all very pale, so it's lovely) online, but in real live my shawl appears to be an antique cream. I think it's because the colors are very close and the lace pattern is very dramatic, so the lace overwhelms the color and makes it look like a blend of all of them--because in the skein you can still see the different colors! This sounds negative, but I really like how it's turning out--I usually have the opposite problem, and am unhappy because the lace pattern disappears into the color. (Alternatively, it's just that I haven't looked at the lace in natural light!)

I actually have two other Schaefer yarns in this colorway right now: Laurel (worsted-weight cotton) and Susan (sport-weight cotton). I used one skein of Laurel quite suddenly, when I knit Coachella in an (unblogged) flurry Sunday, Monday and Tuesday last week. I'd been thinking about knitting it all summer, then realized summer was just about over and sprung into action. I'll take pictures soon, but in the meantime you'll just have to believe me that in stockinette stitch you can definitely see the blue, green and yellow of the colorway! I made the second smallest size but lengthened it by a couple of inches and made a hem in the lower edge, rather than just letting the fabric roll.

I've gotten completely off track here--what I set out to write was that I'm planning to work on Hanami, finish up the Pomatomus socks I started at the conference, and work on a couple of designs for Schaefer during September. The sport-weight cotton is for one design, and I also have more yarn for stuffed animals and some for socks. I was thinking about trying to knit a sweater for one of my sisters for her birthday (in mid-September), but I regained my senses and will make it for Christmas instead. Just because it's sometimes fun to knit a sleeveless tank from worsted weight cotton for oneself in three days does not meant it's also fun to knit two long-sleeved sport-weight sweaters (one of which you're also designing) for other people in a hurry!