WIP Wednesday: I vant to slip your stitches...

I had a terrible shock on Friday afternoon when I was about to head out to my usual Friday froyo and knitting session with nothing on my needles.  Not that I had actually completed any FOs that I could blog about that day, but all of my WIPs were at a stage where progress could not be achieved while sitting in the froyo shop.

Because it would have been weird to try and block my fingerless mitts with thumbs there on the table.  Although despite having had the whole rest of the weekend to block, I still haven't quite gotten around to it.  Why is it that sometimes the easiest things take the longest to get done?  Then again, I kind of deserve a break after fiddling with the DPNs and few stitches for the thumbs, so I don't feel too bad about that.

I've also handed off responsibility for sewing the mini fox's head to my mom, so that remains in the same state as before.  But here's a picture of the first ear I knit up which ended up too big for my fox's head, so it's become an impromptu hat for a wooden duck:

So for Friday's crafting, I had to quickly grab something form my Ravelry queue, and I cast on my Vlad Helsing Shawlette:

The pattern comes from the What Would Madame Defarge Knit? collection, and this shawl is inspired by Wilhelmina from Dracula.  Since my yarn (a gradient from Heavenly Fiber that goes from red to black with sparkles!) is called Vlad, I decided to go with a Van Helsing reference from the same novel.  It feels like it's been a while since I've done a lacy shawl, but it was comforting to go back to what I think is probably my favorite type of project.

I did have a bit of an issue today while knitting because I thought I had an extra stitch somewhere.  Let's see if I can describe this...so, the 10-stitch repeat in the chart ended on 2 knit stitches and started back again with a slip 1, k2tog, psso (represented by a single icon at the start).  But when I reached the end of the 2 knit stitches, instead of meeting with my stitch marker, I found another stitch.  After much (and I do mean much) hemming and hawing, I believe I have determined that, in fact, that last stitch is meant to be the initial slipped stitch, but because it's something that happens over 3 stitches represented by a single icon, the chart has issues making that clear.  It took me so long to come to this conclusion and mentally knit the row that I haven't been able to actually knit it and be sure, but I think that's it.  It was, at least, a good exercise for me in reading lace and understanding what is going on beyond just blindly following the directions.

So, crisis averted, I have an active WIP to take along with me wherever I go, along with other WIPs I still need to make progress on.  For more WIP Wednesday posts, go to Tami's Amis.