I think I'm going to have to have this shawl blessed when I finish it. It's so full of 4-letter words! This has been
painful challenging but I keep telling myself it's worth it. I AM gaining on it!
Using the magnets as I posted in the PSA post, makes a wonderful difference. This has just been a very challenging design. There are some places where you can check yourself by the way the stitches line up in previous rows. At other times, there are no such places. Sometimes, I start looking at it and doubt myself and then tink out. Then, I decide there's nothing wrong and knit the stitches back in.
This has been a very difficult color to photograph. It's so subtle with its shades of pink/lavender, cream, yellow, and green. The yarn is Lorna's Laces - Helen's Lace in the Yellowstone colorway and is 50% Wool and 50% Silk. It's light as a feather.
I took the shawl outside this morning - it's very gray and overcast here today. I hung it over one of the huge boxwood bushes that line the back sidewalk. These bushes are simply great for holding my knitty stuff for pictures!! That is, as long as the stuff isn't too heavy that it falls down into the bush. I think these are the best photos I've taken of the shawl in that it shows the design and captured the color. I still think the color appears a bit paler in the pictures than in real life. I switched the cables on my Knit Picks Harmony needles last night to the longer one so I'm now able to stretch the shawl all the way out to its full width with no danger of the stitches falling off the ends of the needles - at least not yet.
I started on Clue 4 last night and hope to get a major part of it done this weekend. Then, it will be on to Clue 5 and the finish line!!!! Just in time to start the Spring Shawl Surprise with BEADS! Lord, help me!
Have you received your Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival catalog??? Are you going????? I have never taken a class there and have only attended during the weekend before. This year, I have taken three days vacation and plan on staying with Jane in Edgewater, MD. My friend Sally is planning on joining us, also. I can hardly wait!!!! If you've never been -- it is a MUST go! Huge, fibery, hundreds and hundreds of vendors, and tons of stuff going on all day every day. There is free admission but it's not so free to exit!!!
The festival is always held the first full weekend in May - this year May 3rd and 4th. The show is open Saturday and Sunday but they offer one-day and three-day classes starting on Wednesday. They also offer classes during the weekend. I mailed my registration off this morning for the 3-day comprehensive spinning class with Judith MacKenzie McCuin this morning. There's a class size limit of 15 and they choose by a lottery system from the hundreds (I'm sure) of applications they receive. I hope I get in. I'm ready to take a comprehensive spinning class and I hear Judith is fantastic. I have her book, Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning, and need to sit down and spend more time with it.
Varmint Report - George continues to be quite the hunter! He daily catches voles (YEAH, George!) with an occasional mole. We won't talk about the birds - although he prefers voles (YEAH, George!). The other night, I peeped through the window by the backdoor to check on the kitties before I went to bed. There was George - right at the window in the kitty bed. I could tell he was patting something but couldn't see what it was. I didn't want to open the door - it was late, all three kitties would have raced inside, I would have had to haul out the treats to get them back outside, etc.
Well, the next morning ---- there was George's playmate --- coiled up in the kitty bed --- dead --- thank goodness. It was a snake! A little bitty snake but little bitty snakes grow up to be BIG snakes so oooooooooh. This one was probably a harmless snake (brown with a pink belly) but, to me, as I pull weeds in the garden and work around the stacks of terra cotta pots stacked up along the side of my studio, etc., no snake is a good snake. My system doesn't know the difference. When I see one, every hair on my body stands on end with goosebumps all up and down my arms. My heart skips a beat and then proceeds like the percussion section at a Blue Man Group concert. The extension agent once told us to check the shape of the snake's eyes. Excuse me, you can check its eyes --- I'll be long gone!
Everytime I see a snake, I have a flashback to the summer a couple of years ago. I had just finished doing some repotting at the porch of my studio when all of a sudden, there was a large and bumpy copperhead snake within feet of me. Where had he come from?????? Had he been curled up in the very pots I had been using?????? Anyway, to make a long story short --- Andy killed it and the snake contained five eggs. The thought that there would have soon been not just one copperhead snake, but SIX copperheads around my shop, still gives me the heebie-geebies.
Leaving you with a sight of Spring and wishes for a wonderfully fibery snakefree weekend!