WIP Wednesday

This past week I experienced a knitting problem that I had hoped I would never have to encounter. I broke a pair of irreplaceable interchangeable, wooden needles that I borrowed from Lauren. I'm still so devastated and feel horrible about it. I wasn't doing anything different with the needles, but was simply knitting my blanket when all of a sudden, one of the needles snapped. The break was pretty clean and I may be able to glue the pieces together, but they will never be the same. The worst part is that they completely stopped the production of these particular needles, so I can't even replace them. Lauren decided to try Northern Light aluminum needles  also made by DyakCraft (since she likes the quality of their products) as replacements. This also allows me to continue to use the super long, custom size cable. I've been using them for a few days now, and although they're not as slick or as pretty looking as their wooden counterparts, I think metal needles are the only thing this heavy, bulky blanket can handle at this point. Plus, now I'm so afraid of breaking more needles that I currently refuse to use any wooden ones.

The new aluminum needles shipped pretty quickly, and I managed to finish the dark green stripe on my blanket last night. I have the next color already picked out and ready to be added, which I'm most likely going to later today.

This past Sunday was the final day of the Melodia KAL and I finished just in time. I timed my knitting perfectly, so that I had one more row and the bind off to finish that afternoon at Loop. I even won a free pattern from Janina; I picked Passeggiata!

Loop's next KAL starts this Sunday, so I spent some time this past week going through my stash and finding yarn for this next project. I'm going to use leftover Dream in Color Jilly in Bitter (from Lauren's Three Color Cowl), and I purchased Madelinetosh's Tosh Merino Light in Antique Lace from Loop (I love this color!). Both skeins are all wound up and ready to go now!

I also wound yarn for another new project that has been on my to-do list for what seems like forever now. I've been admiring Lauren's Color Affection shawl for a while because the fabric and size are so perfect. I'll be using Plucky Knitter in Modern Vintage, Stay Outta the Hay, and Petal Pusher. All three skeins are from the "one hit wonders" bin at Plucky Knitters' Stitches West booth, so I'm not exactly sure which base(s) they are.

I've made a little bit of progress with my sweater plan. I'm still at the very beginning stages of selecting a pattern. I narrowed it down to four options, but am still considering every little detail of each one. I want the first sweater I knit to be one that gets a lot of use and love. 

I wish I was able to share my current reading material to fully participate in Ginny's YAL this week, but oddly enough, I won't be going to the library until this afternoon where I'll be picking up three books to carry me through the next few weeks. I did however recently finish reading "Not That Kind of Girl", which was a very interesting and mind opening memoir.