In with a shot

I have realised that there is a chance I may finish 11 shawls in 2011. I haven't posted any of my FOs in the group, and I am pretty sure that I am counting one they wouldn't count on yardage, which was 198 yrds of heaven,  but in my on mind, and for my own challenge, I may actually finish it.

Revolouti is finished, and what a fun knit it was. Excuse the state of the carpet. It was stained when I first started living here, and I haven't yet steam cleaned it.
I like it very much, but I am currently a little irritated by it. The pattern and the yarn combined come out as really striking, and I have had a load of complements. I feel a little bit like a fraud though, because the pattern wasn't very complicated, and the skill level used wasn't so great. It was, dare I say it, pretty mindless knitting when I got started. And as such, I don't really feel I deserve the praise that it's been getting.
I also chose not to knit it as large as I had intended. My good friend K is a fairly new knitter, and I thought this pattern would be perfect for her, so I passed the second ball of the zauberball to her. I think that this is a great pattern for fairly new knitters - it's simple, it's logical, and once the set up is done it knits up really really easily.
I bet I'll get over that soon enough :)

Batik is going really well. I'm up to about row 114 (of 168 for the large size), and because the rows are getting smaller all the time, I am feeling hopeful that I will finish it this week. Then of course is the big decision about which shawl to wear to the WI Christmas party on Friday. Usually I give my shawls away so fast that I don't get a chance to wear them.

Then, if that is finished, I am determined to pick up Ethereal once again. I have started the border charts and so the end is in sight. And I have 21 days of knitting to get them done in.

Let us ignore the Christmas knitting I am supposed to be doing, please.

Reading rav I came across a tip for blocking beanie style hats. I had knitted the other half a lovely hat, but it was slightly too tight for his head. I knew a good blocking would rectify the whole situation, but had utterly no idea how to block a hat that wasn't a slouchy beret (tip, block the berets over a plate). And rav, as always, came through. So I bought balloons, and blocked the hat over a balloon. It came out well.
There will be pictures at some point.

Speaking of pictures, it occurs to me that in my first post I promised pictures of my Winterfell shawl (pattern not yet published, it was a test knit), and then never got round to posting them. So without further ado, here there are.