FO: Leaf Peeper Shawl

This is turning into the year of Knitalongs. First we had the Savory Knitalong, with Amy Christoffers’s designs, and I also participated in the Sweatshop of Love Delancey Knitalong. Both of those qualified for two other Ravelry group knitalongs, one of which is Maria’s Subway Knits Queue-A-Long. My Live Oak Shawlette was part of the Fresh from the Cauldron knitalong on Ravelry, and so is this, my Leaf Peeper Shawl.

This was also knit with someone else in mind. The colorway is “Toot Toot Mother Effer” (who knows what sort of spam I’d get if I spelled that out), based around a saying made famous by two of my friends. I knew one of them loved this colorway but was unable to procure it for herself, so I wanted to knit her a special something in this yarn. I found the Leaf Peeper Bandit pattern in her queue, or her favorites, I can’t remember, and decided to knit this shawl for her.

This has to be one of the best shawl patterns for variegated yarns that I’ve come across. The slipped stitches help break up the wild variation in colors, and the simple stockinette background makes it super easy to knit on the go.

Live Oak and Leaf Peeper both qualify for the Queue-A-Long, and Apothecary Yarns just announced a Knitalong using their yarns, which starts April 15 (next Sunday!) and runs through June 15. I was hoping to take some time off from knitting in April and get some sewing projects done, but that doesn’t seem likely to happen. Why is it that something that generally takes a lot less time than knitting never seems to make it high enough on my priority list? I could easily sew a couple of projects in a weekend and then get back to knitting. (Well, partly because my sewing machine is a bit persnickety and makes every project take twice as long as it should.) I need some sort of crafty time manager. Or to miraculously become independently wealthy.