new project: another shawl

The last shawl I made made me so happy that I want to make another one with different yarn.  I’m using this:

Two balls of Cascade Yarns Heritage Hand Painted Sock Yarn, 75% Merino Superwash, 25% Nylon, 437 yards each (or 400 meters each)

The pattern, again, is here.  Here’s what I’ve got so far:

It’s a little blurry but the color came through surprisingly well.

The hook I’m using is the G/6 hook from a Susan Bates set.  The set is really special because it belonged to my great grandmother:

The G/6 is in the top right corner of the picture.

My grandma gave the set to me, along with a set of steel hooks for lace work, but I don’t really use those because I don’t work with thread much.  I’m really glad she gave them to me — they mean a lot.

On another subject, everybody else is blogging about their beautiful fall weather and sharing their beautiful fall pictures.  I’m so jealous!  We’re having weather in the 70s every day, but that just started recently, and the foliage isn’t looking so great.  Much of it is just brown so far, with pretty colors occasionally interspersed.  I really hope this winter is colder than last winter (during which I mostly wore my usual t-shirts with a coat, and maybe a scarf).  That’s what happens when you live in South Carolina, I guess.  Winters in Oklahoma, where I lived until I was 15, were actually colder than they are here.

Also, I was asked to mention how I like the new JKR book, The Casual Vacancy.  Honestly, I’m still only about halfway through.  It’s dramatically different from the Harry Potter books, and not just because it’s written for adults.  It’s not a fantasy book, there aren’t really distinctions between good and bad people, and there’s a lot of depressing subject matter (i.e. horrid parents, awful relationships, rebellious teens, and drug users, to name a few).  I think the biggest difference, though, is that I haven’t laughed once.  The Harry Potter books made me laugh a lot, just because of funny/witty comments or situations.  This new book feels much different because there isn’t really any humor, although there is some irony.  Also, there are many points of view to follow, which is a little confusing sometimes.  I think it’s well written but it’s such a different kind of book than what I would usually read.

That’s all for today.  I’ll probably have an update on the shawl soon, and my Stylecraft Special DK should arrive within the next week or so.  Thanks for stopping by!