Check It Out

Chocolate and Raspberries has told me that my baby hats will be featured for Worldless Wednesday. Check it out tomorrow.

I am now on Row 59 of the Faux Russian Shawl. That is Row 59 of 96 of the first repeat. The pattern has 5 1/2 repeats. This shawl is going to take a looooong time to finish. It's not all that difficult a pattern, but I only seem to find time of a row here and a row there, and, even with an enlarged chart and total silence, I am having keeping track of where I am. New glasses are in order, I think.

But it is a really gorgeous pattern, and I love the way the edging moves around the corners and up the sides.

Detail of the center (sorry for the blur, this is the best version I had).

Gratitude is Gone

Gratitude is now gone from the page. It took up a lot of room, and it irks me to look at it when I am not in a good or grateful mood. Now to imply that I am not grateful, no, not at all. Maybe it is just a gut reaction to visiting a friend last night. We have known each other for more than 30 years. We were neighbors in Berkeley. Our husbands were close friends, too. Our children were born at the same times. We shared baby clothes, recipes, sewing patterns, knitting yarn. Her son and my oldest daughter have been best friends since birth. She was a gifted textile artist, distance runner, spelunker. Tall, blond goddess-type. She has MS. Progressive. Relentless. It robbed her of her balance, muscles, speech, and much of her good sense (and sense of humor). It left her with seizures. Her extremely dear husband cared for her at home until his death this last May. Because she needs 24-hour nursing, her children moved her to a care facility close to them so that they could see her every day. She is now in the hospital -- urinary tract infection that became septic, increasing and difficult to control seizures, and an antibiotic-resistant infection in the lungs.

Spring

Not much more to say except that the cashmere scarf is finished (will post a photo after it is blocked). My next project is the Faux Russian Shawl from Gathering of Lace. I am using Knitpicks lace-weight Shadow in Sunset. This was my last purchase before going on the stash diet. The construction is interesting -- knit the bottom edging, then pick up all the way across to begin the body and continue on up, doing both side edgings as you go along. There are no seams in this shawl. Unfortunately the row numbering for the edging (16 row repeat) is different from that of the body (95 row repeat), which makes for a little headache, and, even though I am only on row 5, I think that I made a mistake on row 1.

Good Intentions

Every day I have this really good intention. Every day I tell myself that I am going to blog. Every day I look up and find that it is 10PM, and nothing has been done.

Some knitting has been going on. I used up most of the remaining Bernat Denim from my seamless pullover to make another hat in the same style as the orange and blue ones knitted earlier. I can safely say that there is too little leftover yarn to worry about and plan to toss it. Out of sight, out of stash.





Since we are getting some fine spring weather, I finally blocked the Snowdrop shawl from Yarn Harlot. Lovely bit of lace and really not difficult at all. Crappy picture, I know. The only place big enough to spread this out is the carpet, and I am not tall enough to do a decent aerial view.





The edging (optional) is particularly lovely and worth the extra time and effort. It really does make the shawl.



The cashmere lace scarf is almost finished, just one more repeat to go (if the yarn holds out).

I have got to get a ball winder. This winding by hand is for the birds.


In preparation for the near future I have freed from their skeins and wound into balls some laceweight from stash --


-- 900 yards of Knitpicks laceweight is the Autumn colorway

-- close to 3000 yards of Lorna's Laces merino/silk blend in a lovely forest green/black color.

This was bought years ago as millends. It took hours to wind this stuff up (three movies, actually). There is enough to knit a cozy for Mount Shasta.

The Gratitude sidebar has been virtuously sitting there, finished more than a month ago, for all the world to see. Time to move on, enough with the gratitude stuff. I meant to replace it with a list of Things I Cannot Live Without, a meme from Chocolate and Raspberries. So far I have 3. Hmmmmm.......I may have to reconsider this idea. Perhaps the Top 10...books? movies? colors? beverages? To say that I will give this some thought is just a chickenshit way of putting this off for another month.