Entrelac <> Speed

So, I spent the entire weekend knitting my Lady Eleanor Stole and this is all I have to show for it -- a 21 x 12 inch rectangle. It seems like I should have made more progress, but I guess speed and entrelac really don't go hand in hand.

All of this knitting was done in (or en route to) lovely Woodstock, Vermont, where I spent the weekend at a family gathering. There was much eating of great food, playing of games, and general sitting about and chatting. Oh, and knitting. There was quite a lot of knitting, but that was mostly just me, I guess.

I am really enjoying knitting this stole. Yeah, it's certainly slower than straight knitting, but entrelac is so much fun. I have been continuing to practice my new backward knitting skills on this project and I can report that my speed has greatly increased. I really like this technique now. I love not having to turn the whole project around to knit back and forth on those little 8-stitch-wide sections. Without backward knitting I think this project would probably be a nightmare.

I have used up two balls of yarn and the stole currently measures 12" long. So, I guess that means that the 10 balls I have will give me a total length of about 60" with no fringe. I'm thinking that may not be quite long enough (plus I would like some fringe). I may need another 2 or 3 balls. I guess I should have thought this out before buying, but I was operating in the haze of a yarn swoon. I saw other people's posts that said they used 10 balls, so I bought 10 balls -- not thinking that I would really want more of a wrap, and less of a 'big scarf'. Hopefully there will be more of this dye lot.

Abrupt Change of Topic: I recently read a great roundup (part 1 and part 2) of all the various knitting-related podcasts that are currently out there. It's by Anne of knitspot. Go check it out. It introduced me to a few I'd never heard of.

If you haven't listened to any knitting podcasts yet, I would recommend you try out Cast On first. You don't need an iPod or mp3 player to listen to a podcast, you can just download the audio file and play it on your computer. However, they do tend to be big files, so you may only want to do that if you have a high-speed internet connection.