Knitting Balance

A couple of months ago, Kelley of the Knitpicks podcast talked about having a variety of projects going at the same time. One that is portable,one that is very simple for knit gatherings, and the project that you keep at home and work on by yourself.

Here is my current knit gathering project, which started life as a mitered square blanket,but is now a mitered square edged blanket:



And I'm beginning the Hanami stole in some beautiful Malabrigo lace. The basketweave pattern was not happening. Now, could it be that I was tempting fate by: a. not using stitch markers on an unfamiliar charted lace pattern; b. going down a needle size with lace yarn, and c. not skeining the lace-weight but putting it over my knees because I wanted to start NOW? Yeah, doh. I got back on the sanity train, put away the lace weight,got out some cotton that someone gave me from a UFO in worsted weight, broke out the size 7 needles, and got this:



And I didn't use stitch markers. I can be stubborn that way. I decided to do the full pattern twice,and I think it'll turn into a market bag! Last night I skeined the lace yarn without a swift or a ball-winder (a pain!) and got back to swatching in Size 3 needles (MUCH better):



Yeah, those are stitch markers in there. I do learn, just slowly!
Now I need to go buy the seed beads for the cast on!