In this installment of sporadic knit blogging, we play catch up and introduce some new members of the Through the Back Loop family. Wheee!

When last we visited the TBL laboratories, lace was in the works. YOs, K3togs and M1s were standard operating procedure, producing this lovely, silken landscape. I'm happy to report that much progress was made and an FO came into being. The Blue Jeans Lace Shawl was the first successfully completed large-ish scale lace project undertaken by yours truly. I've always admired those beautifully rendered sweet silk nothings but never ventured to try one of my own. What would I do with it? Would I ever actually wear it, you know, in public? The answer: who cares? I enjoyed making it and will make others. It looks quite nice folded up, in a heap or around my shoulders. I half-assedly blocked it - not because I'm lazy (really!), but because I don't have a big enough blocking surface (or should I say a cat-free blocking surface,
as those furry little jerks sat on it and generally got in the way, but I digress). Still, I'm pretty happy with it.

Lace aside, there have been other projects on the needles. I've been knitting up some sea

creatures for the International Oceans Day that will be displayed at The Loop in early June. I bought the patterns online from hansigurumi's Etsy store. I heart these patterns. These little critters are hilarious and fun to knit. They could, in theory, become the new sock, they are that diverting. I have vague plans to knit myself a herd (?) of sock yarn seahorses and train them to do my bidding. Seriously, the directions are clearly written and clever - though not for those with a phobia of grafting. I have never Kitchener-stitched so much in my life as I have with these. Time consuming? Well, yeah, but the results are worth well worth it.

To knit these, I've been using up left overs from various worsted-weight projects (with the exception of the red, as it isn't one of "my" colours). I plan on making another hermit crab (I do have all that red after all), and I have plans to make a snail as well. With all that Kitchener stitch ahead of me, I better get to work.

Happy Knitting!