I never promised you a rose garden

But I did promise some non-sock knitting.

First off, my long-term-early-morning-full-concentration-lace-project:

It's the Three Cornered Shawl in Clover Pattern from Victorian Lace Today, knit in Hello Yarn's BFL lace (and of course it's impossible to photograph well since it's very fine yarn, I lack a macro lens, and it's winter, but...). The pattern's fairly simple, but it's slow going because the yarn is so tiny. It's a single-ply lace (strengthened with a little nylon) and it tends to get caught on itself and the stitches hide under each other. I had to switch from my original choice of pattern because it was a true lace and had many areas where there was a single strand of yarn stretching over a great hole, which didn't seem like the best of plans for such a fine yarn! Still, the color is fabulous, and I think I'll actually wear this triangle shawl in it.

This is my semi-endless boring knitting:

As I mentioned ages ago, this is the first sweater I've made in a long time because I've been so disappointed with my efforts in the past. I've just been too lazy to modify the pattern to fit, and so (unsurprisingly), it doesn't. This one (the Olive Branch Yoga Hoodie from Webs), I've been trying on at every step, and measuring constantly, and it's very promising. (More on this pattern (and yarn) later! or, What I've Learned about Cheap Downloaded Patterns.) It's also very boring - all stockinette. But I do have a solution for that:

This is the view of my knitting-while-reading setup (with a quick stockinette cap for myself, in Malabrigo (mmmm!)). It's just a cookbook holder, but I can read while I knit this way - get some fun reading done while getting through the dull bits of my knitting. It's perfect. So perfect, once I'm ensconced with it, that's the end, nothing else is getting done that day!