River revisited

The past several days have reminded me how much I despise summer. It's fucking hot, people. I grew up in Nigeria where every day is either rainy or oppressively hot and even I am wilting in this heat. Besides being uncomfortable the constant heat makes it very difficult to do anything that requires being more than 5 feet away from an air conditioner for over 10 minutes, which eliminates any activity that requires leaving our apartment (working and exercising excluded). Bad for my social life, wonderful for my knitting. So wonderful, that I've resumed work on a project I abandoned 5 1/2 months ago:



The name of the pattern is River and it's one of the many lovely patterns featured in Rowan Magazine Issue 38. I'm knitting this in Kidsilk Haze which despite it's ethereal beauty, is a total bitch to work with. It is 70% mohair, which makes it very delicate and the resulting stitches are so thin that I sometimes knit into two stitches instead of one. And forget making a mistake: I learned the hard way that unravelling Kidsilk Haze is an exercise in futility. When I first began work on River I made a mistake and tried to unravel my work so I could fix it. I unravelled for several rows only to have the yarn snag and break. I repeated this stupid behavior every time I made a mistake because I foolishly thought if I was extra careful and ripped it very s-l-o-o-o-o-w-l-y I could unravel it successfully. Ha! After I found myself holding a little ball of wasted yarn for the fourth time, I gave up and decided to keep trudging along no matter how many mistakes I made. Some more photos:







My River is going to be more of a scarf than a shawl because I'm not the shawl-wearing kind of gal. Hopefully it'll be done in time for fall.