havra shawl & summer bucket list update

Can't believe that it is already the middle of July! This summer is just cruising along too fast. There are still a couple of items to be checked off from the summer bucket list. We have yet to go camping but hopefully that will be in the stars soon. Unfortunately for my waistline, I have managed to eat ice cream everyday (high priority item on the list as far as the little guy is concerned) and grilling up a storm (tonight's dinner of grilled lime coconut chicken with coconut rice and grilled pineapple was particularly delicious). And happily, the beach knitting this summer has been pretty productive. I even finished the shawl for the Shetland Trader MKAL, now named Havra, in a reasonable amount of time.

I am completely thrilled with how it turned out. Gudrun Johnston is such a wonderful designer with a great sense of style. With any MKAL, one has to have a lot of trust and confidence in the designer. It can be both thrilling and scary, depending on your knitting personality. The knitting on this was pure pleasure. The pattern was very intuitive and I love the strong lines created by the combination of garter and twisted stitches. The only hiccup was running out of yarn in the middle of the last clue. Luckily, I was able to get my hands on another skein. I knitted the small size but the shawl blocked out to be a little larger, which was a happy accident in gauge.

Ending this post with some knitting eyecandy of the highest order. I was lucky to have won a pair of mittens handknitted by Chrisknits which arrived on Monday.

Aren't they gorgeous!!! Can't wait to wear them this winter.