Sometimes, I become enamored. A particular skein of yarn, a swatch of fabric, even a pattern, sometimes I get the thing in my head. When that happens, other projects can fall by the wayside in my quest to make something with the object of my affection. My most recent love affair has been with this yarn:

This is Underwater Princess on Merino DK by Suburban Stitcher. I purchased this yarn for a brioche project, but I love it so much that I didn’t want another yarn to compete with it.

I thought a hat would be a good project for it. You may recall, I had recently cast on the Fleesensee Hat by Verena Cohrs. I knit almost all of the rib and was looking through some of the project pages for the hat and noticed that a fair number of people were saying the hat knit up too small. I am generally a loose knitter but I have a big head, so I was curious. I pulled some waste yarn through the stitches and tried it on. Too small. Definitely too small.

I was discouraged about having to rip out inches and inches of twisted rib but I did it. And then I tried to figure out what on earth to do with the yarn. I noticed that the Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief only takes one skein of DK weight yarn to make a cute little shawlette. Sold! I had to order needles though, since I couldn’t wait until I finished my Marled Magic to free up my 6 mm needles.

The needles came last Friday night and I had had a really rough evening. To cheer myself up, I cast on the shawl. Since it’s DK and a fairly simple pattern, it started showing progress pretty quickly that night:

The next morning I knit a few rows on it and then came back to it that Saturday night. I knit and knit, and then woke up and knit on it with my Sunday morning coffee and…

I bound the thing off before I made lunch. It absolutely flew. I gave the shawl a bath and blocked it fairly aggressively and it came out beautifully.

It’s a great size for a small shawl. Enough to put over your shoulders or throw around your neck, but not so small that it falls off all the time.

A quick FO like that can be so gratifying, not to mention a great way to satisfy that drive to work with a particular material. It is so fun to go from loving a yarn to wearing a finished piece knit with it.

I’m in a weird place of wanting to cast on a million things–still!–and getting completely addicted to my knits and wanting to finish things. A weekend knit like this shawlette was just the ticket.

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YoM Day 286-288: Shawl and sock knitting

YoM Day 289-292: Cowl knitting

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Happy making!