Chart, swatch, rip & repeat

Arthur helping out

I swear that my cat, Arthur, must have been a knitter or designer in a past life. He loves cuddling up with me when I'm looking at stitch pattern books or working on charting out patterns.  Note that there is no yarn involved at this stage unless of course I am testing out the chart.   Our other cat could care less about my knitting designing.  In fact, Merlin (other cat) often tries to prevent me from working.  He will come over and meow (or scream as I like to call it) until I give him my undivided attention or feed him or clear my lap of everything for him only to have him walk away.  Good thing I have Arthur to encourage me to keep  working. 

Yarn for new shawl design

Speaking of designing - I've had this design stuck in my head from when I finished Chincoteague shawl and I think I've figured it out.  I became obsessed with the leaves down the spine of Chincoteague shawl and tried working them into an all over lace pattern.  However, I couldn't get it work out and decided I needed a break from that design and went on to something else.   Well, I've now finished up that second shawl design (En Fuego Shawl), but those leaves from Chincoteague were still in my mind.  I've also been thinking about a shawl with a stockinette section and suddenly it dawned on me to make the leaves into a panel with stockinette on the sides!  So, that is what I've been working on.  The good news is that I figured out the panel part fairly quickly, but I've been hemming and hawing over what stitch pattern to use for the border.  This has involved putting time in with stitch pattern books which leads to cycle of charting, swatching, & ripping.  I am very excited to knit this shawl; I even wound the yarn yesterday as motivation to get the border pattern finalized.  The yarn winding motivation worked because I'm very close to finalizing the border and hope to start knitting it this weekend.  Oh!  I must mention that more people are knitting Chincoteague shawl and it's really exciting to see other people knit it.  I mean, I can't even say how cool it is to see other people knitting it.  Okay, that is all for now.