I Blame Ravelry

For those who may not know, Ravelry is an online community for knitters and crocheters. There are discussion forums, interest groups, and places to share your finished projects and works-in-progress, your yarn stash, your knitting/crochet book collection and more. The place I hang out most is the Patterns section. There are thousands and thousands of patterns on Ravelry; many are free, and others can be downloaded for a reasonable fee. The Patterns database is searchable, so if my niece in Jerusalem wants a scarf in black and pale turquoise (which she does), I can search scarf patterns for designs using two colors, and so on.

The guilty secret alluded to yesterday isn't that I ate all the Swiss chocolate stashed in the fridge, or that I splurged on new stamps, ink pads and the like. No, the truth is, the yarn you see in the photo above was calling to me, and I spent many enjoyable minutes browsing through the patterns at Ravelry, until I happened upon the one that shouted: "I'm the one you've been looking for!" Of course I got started right away. Couldn't make myself wait until I had finished one of the eight (8) projects already on my needles (one of which is a sweater for me, for Pete's sake).

I love the way this very simple design (it's the mara shawl from Madeline Tosh, for those who are interested) showcases the gorgeous yarn, which is Fiesta Boomerang in the Rain Forest colorway, purchased two years ago while we were in Oklahoma City. Another fun thing about Ravelry is that you can view the knitting of others who have made your project, read their raves and/or complaints about a pattern and any problems or innovations they had along the way. More than a couple complained that this was a boring knit, but I don't think that will bother me. So far, I am finding it fun and yet soothing to work on. The color changes in the yarn amuse me, and it's fun to watch the shawl gradually grow on my needles.

So there you have it; my guilty secret. I'll bet at least some of you were expecting something like this.