Fifteen rows

I'm fifteen rows away from finishing my World Cup shawl. Excuse the picture, I know it looks as if I just threw that thing on the floor, but it's a bit bulky to say the least. I kept thinking I'd get longer circs for it, but it never happened. However, the days of not having the right circs on hand might be numbered. Odd behaviour and weird questions from a friend and a whisper in the breeze ... Denise. Hee.

Anyway, it was touch and go for the WC shawl for a while there. Last Friday night, I abandoned the shawl on my bed at my parents' house for the hair-raising end of the Germany: Argentina game. My parents have a cat. He's smart, because he wasn't seen anywhere near the house until I left on Saturday. Apparently he likes alpaca. Or hates my shawl. He tore into one of the panels and ripped it out to the second to last batch of "roses". (I tried to get a detail shot of the traces - see bulkiness above - but I'll get one in about fifteen rows.) And me without lifelines - foolishly, I didn't think to put lifelines in, because, y'know, this isn't REAL lace. Neither do I have even the slightest clue how to repair things that involve multiple yarnovers and three kinds of double decreases. I did my best to pick up the stitches of a knit row below the damage, but the angles of the four panels kept throwing me off. In the end, I didn't do a very good job, but the upside is that I learned a lot about lace and shawl construction (while plotting felinicide). I'm going to live with my mistakes, and I'm still really proud of this thing, because real or not real, it is my first lace project.

I have taken drastic steps to combat my Second Sock Syndrome.

Nothing like figuring out two toe-ups on two circs to make you feel really clever. This is what I did during processing times on a raaather tedious collating job. Please note that I made the decision not to bother with stripe alignment. To be honest, I'm not too obsessed about it. As long as my socks are fraternal twins, I'm satisfied.
I'm going to miss dpns, because I like knitting the traditional way - I like straight needles for the same reason - but this is sure going to take care of my SSS.