Have you heard of the Swallowtail Shawl

I stayed up



so freakin late



last night



to finish this shawl. As of yesterday morning, I had eighteen rows of chart and three rows of bindoff prep and bindoff to do. I made a few little mistakes here and there, but nothing so major I had to frog, and I went to bed with it pinned out to block on the floor. As of this writing, I haven't spotted a mistake, so if you see one, please don't tell me.

I love how it turned out. In the middle of the semester I'd thought about making a gift of it to the person who has been my supervisor this year, but the project fell by the wayside and I kind of by default decided not to. Then our last lab meeting fell through because of a horrible tragedy for my supervisor and we postponed a week, which turned out to be enough time to get it done -- I wrapped it up and gave it to her tonight. The firm and close deadline was a big motivator, and I feel very much like the finished object is in the right place.

Also, it turns out I love nupps. I've got another skein of Malabrigo Lace, in cognac, from a swap, and it may be in line to be another Swallowtail.

Focusing so intensely on a single project and finishing it has actually recharged my knitting batteries a bit. The internet was down today, so I finished the cuffs of two of my April SKA KAL socks. My Socks that Rawk Q2 KAL socks are moving along as well, but those aren't due to be finished until June-ish or something maybe, and the April ones need to be done by May 30. My plain socks otn at the moment (out of Regia surf cotton) have a deadline of "I want to wear them now," so those are moving quickly too.

I frogged Wicked because I was pretty certain that I wouldn't have enough yarn for it. Instead, I'm working it up into a Two-Tone Shrug from Fitted Knits that might end up only being one-tone. We'll see. I might mash that up with Wicked, actually, and do a couple repeats of the cabled rib instead of the big dramatic double ribbing cuffs. It's meant to be something to pull on when the air conditioning gets ridiculous during the summer, but really, I don't think it will match a single other article of clothing that I have, much less look good over it, so I don't really know how that's going to work. Hmm. This seems ill-fated in at least three different ways. Oh well!

Our new semester starts tomorrow. The last one ended Thursday, and also totally sucked from end to end. So I'm going to try to get enough sleep for once, if I can tear myself away from this heel flap.