Red Ruffles

During the last opera season, I convinced my HLM to go see Carmen (under the mistaken impression that we were actually going to see Carmina Burana, which goes to show just how friggin' cultured I am) and we both enjoyed it a lot. While watching the sexy spanish siren do her thing, I quickly realized that I needed a hot red shawl like the one she had.

Do you know how hard it is to find yarn in just the perfect shade of red? I have been trolling around online yarn shops for months, squinting at all shades from poppy to cherry to magenta to wine... trying to find the shade in my imagination. I stumbled upon it (some decadent alpaca laceweight) on etsy one opportune day, and fortunately it arrived here the same shade as it was on my computer screen. Gorgeous.

The shawl pattern I chose is lacy, romantic, and has a sexy ruffle that apparently moves "enticingly" as you move. Sounds very 'Carmen' to me. I am really loving knitting it, even though it's the first time in a long while that I really have to concentrate on every single stitch in a knitting project (like, did I mention that I made four mistakes just knitting the gauge swatch?) Honestly, though, I forgot how much fun it is to knit lace.

On an unrelated topic, have you seen the Sock Summit website is up? Talk about enticing.