A Visit to the Frog Pond

Well, after struggling gamely on with my striped hap shawl design, I finally decided it just wasn't working since a) the colors were godawful, and b) it was so oversized that had I continued, by the end it would have been big enough to cover the whole house and everyone in it. I therefore made the painful decision to take it down to the frog pond and rip-it, rip-it, rip-it.

The good news: I've already re-knit one of the skeins of yarn into the center of a half-sized hap shawl which will eventually become a baby blanket for Fletcher, my cousins' second (adopted) son, who is due to arrive from Korea in March. The re-knit center is black garter stitch done on the diagonal; the lace border (which I just started on this evening) is royal blue, and the edging (which I hope to start by the end of the weekend) will a very, very pale grey. I was originally planning to make Fletcher a handknit sweater instead of a blanket, but when I had to frog my hap shawl I immediately started re-knitting it without really thinking through what I would do with what by necessity (due to shortage of non-godawful yarn colors) would never be a full-sized shawl. I briefly toyed with having my 9-month-old wear a mini-shawl, but a quick reality check took care of that idea (it's all I can do to wrestle my little free spirit into normal baby clothes like onesies -- no WAY she'd keep a shawl on her back for more than a nanosecond). Then I hit on Fletcher and my need for a gift for him. Since the hap was calling me much more loudly than a sweater, I decided to call it a hap blanket and continued to knit on it guilt-free.

I'm really enjoying knitting Fletcher's blanket far more now that it actually IS Fletcher's blanket and not Splindarella's GINORMOUS Shawl-from-the-Bowels-of-Hell. If I can get myself together enough I might even post some on-the-needle pics. Stay tuned....