FO and WIPs- The Good Stuff

I have been making good progress on my projects of late. I have a great stack of FO to show off! You can see that I have been focusing on smaller items lately.

Top row: Frukttradgard, Cabled Canuk, Squall Hat
Middle row: Cascade baby, Dream in Lime, Tangerine Sunnyside
Bottom row: Emperor's New Socks, Knotty Baby Hat, DK socks

Most of these items are gifts for specific people. Some are future gifts for special people. Babies are definitely special people!

These were for Brody. His mother likes monkeys!

Ziyah was also gifted with an extra special sweater.

Georgia's Dream in Lime is a bit of a conundrum. Georgia picked the yarn and the Boathouse Mini pattern.  Both are lovely but only the colour suited Georgia. As you can see below the combination of a disproportionally wide sweater, a boatneck neckline and very stretchy fabric combine to make an unwearable sweater.

I need to fix this but I am not just sure how. I have a couple of ideas... Plan A: I am contemplating ripping out or cutting off the neckline and knitting a more fitted yoke upwards from there. Short rows will be involved and I will be completely winging it. The thought of cutting the sweater is giving me the shakes.

Plan B involves leaving the neckline intact and picking up stitches on the inside of the collar and making rectangular inserts that will come up over her shoulders and help the sweater stay in place. This is the much easier plan; however I am concerned that the stretchy fabric will still fall off her shoulders.

Plan C- and I REALLY don't like this plan- is to rip it all and start over. Sigh.  The yarn is too nice to waste.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I have one WIP to show you.

I told you about the mystery lace shawl project with beads, right? It is going fairly well but I am WAY behind schedule. (Had I really expected to be able to stay on track with this one?) I am only mid way through Clue #2 with the last clue, #4, coming out on Tuesday.  Here is my progress so far:

I like it so far.

I finished Clue #1 twice. I frogged my first attempt because I was using lace weight yarn and was making way too many mistakes due to the fine gauge. (Note to self: stop buying lace weight yarn- I do not like knitting with this!) So I restarted with some fingering weight, Tanis Fiber Arts, Blue Label in the Dove colourway,  from my stash.  The yarn is gray with hints of pink, purple and blue. It is hard to tell in these pictures but the beads are both silver and a muted purple- so I think it works well all together.

I like the beads in the yarn. They add a very subtle sparkle that I think is pretty.  I'm still on the fence on whether I am enjoying the making lace. Beading is a lot more simple than I had expected. I am enjoying the results but this seems like very fussy work.

I'll continue and see what the final project looks like.  It's a process, Knitter.