Needlework Tuesday - Projects and New Toy!

Needlework Tuesday is an occasional post detailing my needlework and/or crafting projects.

Wow! Time has certainly flown since I last posted. I could swear it was only two weeks ago, not two months. I've been busy, busy, busy. I've done lots of knitting, a bit of reading, and oodles of workouts, but the biggest time suck has been our kitchen renovation. On top of that, my husband, who's did lots of work to get ready for the reno, but who's been neglecting his physio exercises, hurt his back again. Not good. He's quite a bit better now, but still has to take it a little easy. Oy vey.

Don't worry...I'm going to confine this post to my knitting projects...it is Needlework Tuesday after all.

Since I last posted, a couple of projects from the Mary Maxim's Knit Club of the Month showed up.

Here's the first one:

Here's the second one:

While neither of them is really to my taste, I made one of them "as is" and made something else with the yarn from the other. You'll have to wait until next time to see what happened with each kit.

I also completed this ultra luxurious shawl from Shibui Knits, called Spectrum on ravelry.com. It uses two yarns in two different weights, Rain and Silk Cloud. The majority of the piece is knit with the two yarns held together, while the see-through stripes are knit with just the Silk Cloud, the thinner of the two yarns. It was quite easy to knit, all in stocking stitch. However, the thin yarn was a bit of a pain to work with. It's about as thin and strong as ordinary sewing thread, just a little fuzzier. It definitely kept me on my toes. Here's me and my I-absolutely-adore-this-piece-but-I-can't-believe-how-expensive-it-was-to-make shawl:

Here's another teaser for next time: While I already have lots of knitting needles, for one reason or another I've had to buy several new ones in the past few months. This was getting to be expensive and frustrating. So, I purchased this:

I haven't used it yet, but I'm really hoping it's going to useful and turn out to be a "bargain" in the long run.  I'll write more about it next time!!

Not sure what this coming week is going to bring, but you can be sure I'll be knitting something.

Needlework Tuesday is hosted by Heather over at Books and Quilts.    If you'd done any crafting this week that you'd like to share with others, please head over to Heather's blog and use the Mr. Linky to link up your post, so others can enjoy your creations.