Epidemic

I don't have any knitted things to show off today, but I have a few things that are almost as good.  One of my favourite webcomics, Girls with Slingshots, is currently featuring guest strips.  Yesterday's guest comic was created by a couple of people who do their own comic, which is called Worsted for Wear, which if you hadn't guessed already, is a comic about knitting.  That's right, knitting.  I strongly suggest you go to their site and read all of them.  There aren't that many yet so it doesn't take that long, but they are super funny.  One of my favourites is this one, as it combines my love of knitting as well as my love of Harry Potter.  I don't actually feel that way about crocheters and I have been known to crochet things from time to time, but it's still funny!

A pattern that seems to be sweeping the knitting world lately is the Color Affection Shawl.  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the prolific knitter and writer of Yarn Harlot recently described the "virus" of the "Color Infection" shawl in this post.  I loved looking at all of the colour combinations that all these people have chosen to knit it.  I'd been wanting to knit this for awhile, as I wear my Daybreak/Sunset shawl quite often and obviously I can use another crescent shaped, striped, colourful shawl.  Obviously.  So then my LYS announced a knit-along for the Color Affection Shawl in May and I knew that it was time.

I had quite the time trying to pick out the right colours for this, as I knew I wanted to knit it with yarn that wasn't quite solid but wasn't quite variegated either.  The sample knit up in the store was knit with malabrigo Arroyo which is wonderful and I was pretty sure that was what I wanted to use as well.  I found two colours in Arroyo that I for sure knew I wanted, but couldn't find the right colour to tie it together and give it some life.

058 Borrajas

870 Candombe

Fortunately, a stray skein of madelinetosh pashmina was just lying there, neglected... on its own I would have never picked it, but with the other two colours it was just right.

glazed pecan

They look better all together than they do on their own...  Although the colours in Candombe are pretty incredible.  Candombe was the one I knew I wanted immediately and the other two yarns pull colours out of that one.  Now to decide what order they should go in...

While I was looking at the yarn for me, the Enabler was also looking at the same yarn for him.  I can't recall if I have mentioned his desire for Earth and Sky by Stephen West, but in about 5 minutes he had picked out these.  Can you see why I call him the Enabler?

It's too bad that he'll just have to wait for me to finish the Color Affection for myself.  The KAL does dictate that I do have to have it finished by the end of May which means I have no choice but to start it immediately, right?

Right.