Sucker Punched

My friend Jonathan made the speculation today that "It seems like winter was just hiding until it could jump out and sucker punch us in February." True, true. I don't think I turned on the heat at all during January and I know for sure I wore short sleeves at least once last month. But now it's game over. The temperatures have been hovering around freezing and the wind has been gusting at 35 miles per hour all weekend. I came home on Saturday night from a baby-sitting job/visit with friends and immediately went to turn on the heat. The heater ran for 2 hours with no change in temperature. I called maintenance and I'm running on "emergency heat" (yes, that's an actually setting on my thermostat) until they can come look at it tomorrow. At least I have this magical "emergency heat" or this would have been a very unpleasant weekend.

I've really been loving the Year of Knit Alongs that I'm hosting on the Eastern European and Russian Orphanages Project's Ravelry page. Every month I've managed to pick some designs that people are actually pumped to do. Of course I like them, I picked them! I finished the Mossy Ridge Socks (sadly no picture). And started a Citron Shawl. As per my last post I decided to make this using worsted weight wool because the thought of actual lace kind of gives me hives. So I picked out a light purple yarn and some size 6 needles and started plugging away.

I knit the whole first section and started the second. But something was bothering me. The yarn is acrylic (don't shoot me, I have a lot that needs to be used up and I'm broke). The needles are kind of small for any worsted weight. The combination of the small-ish needles and the unforgiving acrylic was too much. My hands were killing me. So, I did the only sensible thing to do and ripped the whole thing out. I didn't want to do it but I knew I would have been miserable if I didn't. There was a whole episode with the ball winder and the skein tangling and me cursing and then cutting up bits of acrylic yarn and threatening to burn it and then I was done and I had this:

3 decent sized balls and a tangled mess which I promptly threw in the trash. One thing I will not do is cry over tangled acrylic. Then I grabbed up a pair of size 10.5 needles and started once again. Much better. In 13 days I now have this to show for it:

I nearly completed shawl. I'm on the edging right now as we speak. Just 5 more rows to go and this bad boy will be finished. I'd love to do some more charity knitting but I think that the rest of this month will be devoted to projects for other people. I've set a goal to finish my sister in law's socks this month.

Which means I better get going. And I also want to finish at least a square and half of the wedding blanket.

Which might actually be do-able since I'm already almost half way through the next block (the black one on the right in the picture above). The blanket will be easy because it's mindless and I can work on it while I read articles for school online. The socks are another thing. I kind of have to pay a little more attention to them. Either way just these two projects are coming with me when I go on a little road trip for school next week. Stay tuned to see if I can meet my goals!

Project count up:
Charity: 3 completed, 1 on the needles
Self: 0
Family and friends: 2 on the needles