Good news & Updates

Good news: My friend finally received her wristwarmers that I had mailed a couple of weeks ago! and she loves them! :) I'm so happy that they made it. I was getting worried that Canada Post had lost them on the way.

I'm swatching for the summer shawlette I spoke of in this post. I'm not sure what to think of the swatch at this point. I will have to wash it, block it and see how the fabric holds up under use. I'm a little unsure of the fuzziness of the yarn. It's a 2-ply and I'm holding it double to give the fabric some consistency as well as drape and lightness since it is supposed to be a summer shawl. I may have to use a different yarn if the one I'm experimenting with doesn't perform as expected.

I've got one mitt completed for the test knit I'm doing on a pattern for a fellow raveler. I'm not entirely happy with the yarn I chose to use and will likely reknit with a different yarn this weekend to see if it will look better to me.

I have discovered the joys of our local library. They have an online catalogue and it feels like I'm Christmas shopping every time I use it to find knitting books and place them on my order list for pickup. I love this system. It's so much easier than trying to find a specific book amongst 1000's shelved row upon row. It's a huge library (4 floors) so there are tons of books. What's fun with the online catalogue is that it expands the selection by including all the area libraries and not just the one nearest me. What a joy to just sit at my computer, search for specific titles, put them on order and a few days later pick them up. No fuss, no muss.

I picked up Minnowknits Too from the library last week. What a wonderful little book of children's knits. I especially love the skating cardi and plan on knitting it for my nieces. I've also been looking at other books from the library,">Lace style : traditional to innovative, 21 inspired designs to knit which has a lovely feather & fan cardigan in it that I like.

Friendship

I have a really incredible friend who lives in Chicago. She is a very special lady, one of the Red Hat Lady society members. We've never met except across the internet but we feel as if we've known each other for years. We've shared happy times, sad times and life changing moments along the way.


All this to say that she sent me these lovely books out of the blue. I really enjoy the television show True Blood and after finding out that the series is based on books written by Charlaine Harris, I wanted to get them. Financially unable to follow through with this, my friend undertook the task of sending me the series by mail 2 books at a time.


In the last shipment, she included a very special bookmark made by the people of her tribe. That is one more thing we have in common, we are both Metis. It is so nice to have friends who care enough to give you the little things in life that mean so much. One way or another, I will be able to do something for her in return. And hopefully, we'll meet face to face one day.

The Frog Pond

Well, the Not Quite Straight Scarf has hit a bad curve that's sent it to the frog pond. I actually hit the curve and it went this way.

1. I lost track of what pattern row I was on and got this weird wave effect again.
2. I couldn't find where I'd veered off the pattern row count.
   
3. As I worked with the chosen yarn (Sears Sayelle) I got more and more dissatisfied with the results. The scarf felt rough instead of soft and pliable. Not good.
   

So it went to the big ole frog pond in the sky. I'm reserving the yarn for knitting cat toys. At least Gambit won't care if it's rough. He likes it rough...

I am in the process of paging through my Complete Encyclopedia of Stitchery by Mildred Graves Ryan that I purchased 25 or so years ago. You can tell I've used it a lot. It has coffee stains on some pages, turned down pages, bookmarks with notes written on them and paper clips where I ran out of bookmarks. It's a fantastic book with hundreds of stitch patterns to choose from.

I'm looking for a reversible stitch pattern that will look good on either side of the scarf. I'm picky though; since I want to finish the scarf asap, I don't want to do anything that has cables in it since it takes me too long to do cable work but I want something more than just a plain stockinette stitch. I may have found something.... just need to figure it out. More to come