Sockapalooza 4 commemorative bag

Look! A commemorative Sockapalooza 4 bag! I ordered this one (for my Sockapalooza pal) here from Allena at Knitting Ewe On The Go. OK… I ordered a second one for myself, because isn’t this just the cutest thing?

Allena has several different fabrics in different colors and the completely-reversible bags can be ordered in any of the choices. You can even have the inside different from the outside and the tops different from the bottoms. I ordered my pal’s bag with the spotted fabric on one side, just in case someone isn’t wild about little monkeys. My bag is three different monkey fabrics, because I’m a monkey lover.

There’s not a lot of time until Sockapalooza Mail Date, but Allena was great about getting mine out really quickly.

And… you can always order one just for you! Heck… order one even if you’re not a Sockapaloozer, because they’re just so dang cute!

Daisy (who was gypped out of an entire hour of her birthday and thus legitimately gets to forgo aging this year) asks:

I am looking to try knitting a shawl this winter, do you think the “Great Green Glob” would be a good pattern to try as a first lace shawl project? Yours is looking wonderful.

Thank you, Daisy!

I had to think about this one for awhile. But I think I would not recommend this particular project for a first lace shawl project unless you already had at least some lace under your belt (so to speak).

Except for the plain garter rows between motifs, every single row in this pattern is different. That means that I always have to haul the charts around with me because there’s no way to memorize the pattern. And because the pattern can’t be memorized, it’s hard to get into the rhythm. It doesn’t make a very good traveling companion. Also, there is a knit-on border, and that’s tougher than having the border part of the shawl pattern itself. And when you finish that, there’s still the I-cord edging to do. A lot of it, because it’s a fairly big shawl.

All that being said, however, the stitches themselves aren’t terribly difficult. The motifs are mostly YO’s for increases (with a few M1s), and SSK and K2tog for the decreases. There’s also a Slip 2, K1, psso that the pattern abbreviates sskp. And that’s as tough as it gets.

But if all that doesn’t scare you off, I’d say go for it!