It’s been quite some time since I’ve worked on a major knitting project. I suppose this isn’t surprising… it’s pretty hard to convince oneself to sit indoors and play with yarn when you’ve got the beautiful sun shining outside and a deck begging to be built or a lawn crying out to be mowed. But, the time has come again for knitting and purling, hence my newest project (yes, another one… and yes, my Squeak project is still ever so slowly rolling along :).

But, before I tell you what it is, I must first warn Jori not to read any further or even glance down the page! Not that she’s likely to be reading my blog, but I’d hate for her to spoil the surprise. See, I needed an excuse to knit something. I mean, Lenore and I only need so many hats and scarves and so forth. And I’m not quite ready to start on a sweater project (or better yet, my Jump Suit). So I wanted a project I could foist on someone else, but something that was complicated enough to be interesting. Hence the Mountain Laurel Crib Counterpane (aka, neato baby blanket).

Pretty nice, eh? It will be a challenge, though. I have to make 25 hex motifs, 6 half hexes and 6 edge triangles, and then sigh sew them all together. Good times! I figure it’ll take me two solid months of work. And my progress? Currently, I have two hex motifs done, one of which you can see below (note, it hasn’t been blocked, yet, thus the details aren’t fully visible and the stitching is a little more cramped than in the final piece):

I think it turned out fairly well. It’s a very fun pattern to work on… lots of variation to keep me focused. :) And the beauty of it is I can work on it while riding the bus, as it’s composed of lots of small pieces that are easily transported.