Change is the only constant

I have just turned in the last final exam of my graduate career. It's strangely... mellow. A sort of lovely, mellow joy, with just the slightest touch of melancholy. Last Friday I turned in my Master's Project, the culminating experience of my graduate experience. All that's left between me and graduation is Western Field Trip, a week-long class trip to Washington State -- not a particularly stressful class. I celebrated with a very indulgent weekend that involved little time at the computer, dinner parties, quite a bit of cheese-eating, wine-drinking, BBC-miniseries-watching (six wonderful hours of it), and of course, knitting.

At a celebratory barbecue, a rare fellow knitter and I met up to discuss the Urban Aran, and picking up stitches for the collar. My poor Urban Aran! It's been so lonely, but now I'm ready to go at that collar and seam it up. Exciting!

This turning point in my semester happily coincides with another exciting time. It's time to pick a new project! With the Jaywalkers nearly complete, I'm looking for another project to bring on WFT for the round-trip flight and a fair amount of time in vans. So -- socks, or shawl? Socks may be more mindless, and better for travel, but I'm itching to do lace...

The contenders

Socks:
Monkey
Hedera
Toe-up of my own design

Shawls:
Kiri (pattern here, better pictures here)

Yarns:
I'm falling more and more in love with this yarn I bought at the Carrboro Farmer's Market from Three Waters Farm. A 50/50 merino tencel blend, the shiny tencel lends the purple and green colorway an iridescent sheen. I knit up small gauge swatch yesterday and the short color repeats look just lovely. I bought the skein for socks, but I'm thinking about picking up another and making a shawl.

Also up for socks, Emerald from RubySapphire Yarns, and Marrakesh or Brick House from Fearless Fibers.

A new skein showed up (with excellent timing) on Thursday, and spent the night reposing next to my computer at school while I pulled a nearly-all-nighter. Isn't it lovely? It's Laughing Rat Studio's silk/wool laceweight in the twilight colorway. I've already begun to knit this up into the Kiri shawl, my first real lace-with-laceweight project.

Most recent podcast: Wow, I can't even remember.
Currently listening to: Cloud Cult, The Meaning of 8
What I should be doing: Returning three weeks of email.