Let’s just say that I’m not the world’s most patient person, generally.
Then there’s the pregnancy (officially reached: the bloated cranky stage), the upcoming move (omg omg 2.5 weeks omg omg), nervousness about a thousand things big and small that aren’t done yet (eek preschool waiting lists for crying out loud)…
…well, to nobody’s surprise, these things aren’t magically combining into a relaxed, summery, stress-free mood around here. It’s even starting to affect my knitting.

To be fair, it’s not only the stress that’s making me obsessively check my progress on the little kitchen scale. (40% done.) (Not that I’ve checked within the last hour of knitting time.) (Twice.) The stress plays a part, I’m sure, but so does the fabric slowwwly coming from my needles. In a perfect world, lace would not look like fiber vomit right up until the moment it’s pinned out. Since this world isn’t perfect, I occasionally get glimpses of texture that make me long for an FO.

The rest of the time, this gorgeous yarn looks like total crap. Seriously. I don’t know how it’s possible, either.
The knitting is going well, though. Now that I’m past the edging, the lace is so easy I can do it anywhere: Next to Jacob while he builds yet another train track, in front of the tv at night, talking with other knitters. It’s really nice to know that I can just knit and knit and knit, basically until I run out of yarn, without a care. Like toe-up socks on a larger scale. As a reminder, this is the construction allowing that:

Knit edging 1, knit edging 2 and then the body of the stole, graft. Also, remember what I said about the pinning giving the lace grace and fluidity? This is what I meant by that–the bottom edging isn’t pinned out at all–it’s what the stole looks like hanging from the needles. (More or less, anyway.) Oh, and the size difference there is lying more than a bit–the spare needle I have the first edging on is quite a bit longer and gives the stole more space to spread out.
Relaxing knitting though it is, and as impatient as I am to get the shawl done, I still feel like I need something else on the needles. Preferably socks.

I might make faster progress if I could make up my mind about the pattern. Or the yarn. At least I’ve narrowed the latter down to a particular brand?