Leap day

Here's the yarn that got me fired up to begin my scarf. My plans for doing a lot of knitting today didn't work out. This may be an extra day on the calendar, but it's been used for catching up on work that needs to be done, not as a free twenty-four hours to indulge my whims.

I was able to steal a half hour to freak out the general populace by knitting in public, but that's been it so far today. We'll see what progress I make this weekend. If I had my druthers, I'd already be finished with it.

The nice thing is that I have the pattern memorized, so if I have the project with me while in a situation where I'll allow myself to knit, I can do a few rows to utilize available minutes. That will make it ideal for the film festival next weekend. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get it done when I'm in Cleveland.

Switching gears... I've learned a small lesson about shaping thanks to a woman who was knitting at a LYS I was in a couple weeks ago. I showed her what I was working on, and she talked about the sweater she made. She was wearing it but was less than thrilled because she shrunk it some. She explained that stretching it after a pass in the washing machine can help get it back to its original length, but not always. I've inadvertently shrunk some sweaters in recent weeks, so I thought I'd try this shaping thing that I've read, and now heard, about.

It seems to have worked! There were two sweaters I had stopped wearing because they were a little short after (gasp) putting them in the dryer more times than I should have, but shaping appears to have done the trick. How about that?