Back Online (with fingers crossed)

So, I've been having these weirdly predictable problems with my Internet connection for a while now. Every afternoon, sometime between 1:30 and 2:30 I would simply lose my connection -- then it would return anywhere from 5:30 to 7:00. Strange. ISP had no problems on their end, so finally on Friday a very nice tech came and, finding nothing wrong with the lines, etc here at the house, suggested just swapping out our old modem (which we own) for a leased one and seeing if that fixes the problem. If it does, I can go buy a new modem and return the leased one.

Well, I can say the Internet did not cut out Friday afternoon. The real test will be this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon. Fingers crossed that it works because I kinda rely on my Internet connection to make a living.

In the meantime, Enchanted Daybreak is done! And I love it. The interplay of the colors is just great; it's just the right size to keep a chill off; and the shape means it stays on my shoulders without a pin. It's just great.


Pattern: Daybreak Shawl by Stephen West -- I made the largest size
Yarn: Brown Sheep Nature Spun Fingering "Orange You Glad" and Noro Kureyon Sock #185, 1 ball each
Needle: Addi 32" #4
Mods: Well, to avoid running out of yarn halfway through the bindoff, I actually bound this off on the last wrong side knit row.

As I mentioned, when I saw Stefanie's blog post about her Daybreak Shawl, I wandered over to Rav to see what others had done, and knew immediately that I had to make this shawl and that I had to make it with this Kureyon Sock.

The knitting of the shawl was pretty straightforward, and I needed to refer to the pattern for only the first couple of rows of each section. And I only used a row counter for the first (solid) section. After that it was simply a matter of counting stripes and/or "purl" rows to keep track of where I was. By then end, each row was taking 12-15 minutes to knit and the needle was pretty full of stitches (I have deliberately not done the math to figure out just how many stitches were on the needles by the end -- it was a lot).

We had company coming for the weekend, so instead of wet-blocking or pinning out and steam blocking (both of which require the guest room to be free of guests for at least a day and a half), I simply gave the shawl a good ironing. I like the results very much.

And just because I love this shawl so, more pix (of course, clicking will take you to full size image at Flickr):





Color is probably most accurate in the pictures of it resting on the bird of paradise.

And remember the two skeins of Indigo Moon I needed to do something with? Well, what do you think?



This is #1 of a pair of Cookie A's Sunshine Socks from Sock Innovation. Loving the color; loving the yarn; and loving how the yarn shows off the texture of the stitch pattern. Now on to sock #2.