Rose's shawl redux

In October 2010, I knit a shawl for Rose. About a month ago, when I was visiting, she told me that the dog had made a hole in it. So I brought it home to see if I could repair it.

If the tear had been in the middle, I probably could have done a reasonably good repair, but since it was on the edge, I decided to reknit the whole thing. I dug out the end from where I had worked it into the fabric, and started knitting as I unraveled. I lost very little yarn to the hole, but I must have used  smaller needle before, because I needed more yarn this time. At first I couldn't find more in my stash, but just when I thought I'd need to unravel and make it smaller, I remembered another basket I hadn't looked in. There was what I needed. So it's done!

 
Good Thursday:
I don't often have two good meals with good company on the same day - living alone, I usually eat alone. But yesterday was different. Since it was the fourth Thursday of the month, I went to the 'Vintage Grace' luncheon at church (for those of us who are vintage). Good food, good conversation, and an interesting speaker.

After that I went to Alyssa's obstetrician's office to witness the full-body ultrasound of little Brady. His heart has the four segments it is supposed to have, he has two kidneys, and a full complement of arms, legs, fingers and toes, even though they estimate his weight at 11 ounces. They gave Alyssa a printout of three pictures and a disk with several others.

Then I went to Alyssa's for supper. Stephen's parents were there too. We looked at the pictures on the disk. Stephen's mother is a little disappointed that the baby is a boy - she wanted granddaughter. I guess she'll need to be satisfied with a half-grown one (Lexi). Supper was again good food and good conversation.

Lexi packed a bag and I dropped her off at Sara's house. Sara plans to take Lexi and Rose to the fair in Mayfield today, then I'll meet her somewhere to bring Lexi to my house for the next week or so. She'll keep me company after my cataract surgery on Tuesday.

Baby Shower

This afternoon was the baby shower for Sara. Her sister Alyssa and Reggie's grandmother Jane were the hostesses. They did a wonderful job. It was held in the parish hall (not their term, but I'm Episcopalian) at June's church. Here are a few pictures of the food and decorations.
Food:

Decorations:

The baby in the watermelon cradle, the diaper cake and the washcloth cupcakes (I think they're washcloths) are all Alyssa's work. I'm very proud of her! I think she's been spending time on Pinterest.

And here is what Sara looks like now.

That's Alyssa behind her. Facing the camera, you can't see her 'baby bump' (I hate that term).

Lily's blanket

It may be finished - or maybe not.

This is what it looks like now, except that I have worked a crocheted border around it in the pumpkin color - one round of single crochet and one of crab stitch (single crochet worked left to right). I had planned to put some lilies-of-the-valley on it, but the white doesn't show up well on the yellow. I know there are also pink lilies-of-the-valley, but that just doesn't seem right. I think I need to add a couple more tiger lilies, but I'm taking it to the shower tomorrow as is. I'll discuss additions with Sara then.

I'm proud of my tiger lily design. I did not find any charts for it, either in my books or online, but I printed out a couple of pictures onto knitter's graph paper. I worked one, but didn't like it, so I picked it out. I finally decided that I could draw my own tiger lily. I know the flowers have more than four petals, but sometimes you need to simplify.

I've also completed another shawl recently.

When I started, I didn't know what I was going to do - just wanted to use the variegated yarn (Waterscape colorway) and the turquoise together. The beginning turquoise id simply stockinette stitch. When I switched to the Waterscape, I used part of one of my favorite stitch patterns (snowdrop lace from an old Mon Tricot stitch library). When I ran out of Waterscape and picked up the turquoise again, I used the body pattern of 'Kathy's Clover-Chain Shawl' from Alison Hyde's Wrapped in Comfort book. I ran out of turquoise as I finished one repeat of that pattern. In my stash, I found a small ball of brown that matched the brown in Waterscape. With that I did three or four repeats of the bottom pattern of Alison's shawl. I'm very please with the way this shawl turned out.

Two Hats and a Blanket

I've knitted two hats recently (and have another one on the needles) because I needed a project to carry with me that I didn't need to think too much about as I worked on it.

This one is actually all knit 2, purl 2, but at the top of the ribbing, I decreased one stitch to change the appearance. When I got to the crown, I did the decreases just however seemed good at the time. Some of my knitting friends don't understand how I 'fudge' so much stuff, and a couple of them swear that I knit in my sleep.

I used three different size needles on this one. I started with size 6 for two inches, then switched to size 8 for three inches. Looking closely I could tell that the stitches became bigger, but couldn't see the difference in the way the colors fell. Looking at this picture, I'm amazed - that difference is quite obvious! They're slanting to the right on the bottom, but to the left in the middle. After working three or four rounds on the size 10's. I could see a spiral starting. Variegated yarns are fun to work with!

The blanket is for great-granddaughter Lily, who is due in a few weeks. The knitting part of it is done, with her name worked in shadow knitting. Looking straight on, all you see is pin-stripes, but at an angle, the design appears. I still need to duplicate stitch (a special kind of embroidery for knits) some tiger lilies and lilies-of-the-valley on that center section. Here's another picture, showing the rest of her name.

She has an older sister whose name is Rose. I did a similar blanket for her in shades of pink, with roses in the center. I've told my granddaughter that the next one will need to be named Iris.

Little storm

After knitting on the back porch for a while this morning, I decided to mow the fenced area, since they were forecasting showers. I only got about half of it done before I ran out of gas. (And I didn't feel like going to get more.) I had planned to  mow a bit more of it, but leave the patch of fleabane that is growing there. I know that is generally considered to be a weed, but for now, in my yard, it is a wild flower, which I am enjoying watching wave in the breeze. I will mow it down eventually.

After that little bit of mowing, I fixed my lunch and ate it on the back porch. When I sat back down to do more knitting, I started hearing thunder to the west of me, and finally rain on the tin roof of the porch. Then the wind picked up and I started getting a little wet, so I moved to the front porch. It faces east, and the wind was from the west, so it was dry. The storm only lasted a few minutes and then moved on to the east, but it cooled things off a few degrees. When I moved to the front porch, I was glad I had left a sweater in my chair there yesterday.

It's a good thing I did the mowing when I did. I'll have to take the gas can along with me tomorrow and buy another gallon so I can do more mowing on Thursday or Friday.

Two more shawls

In the past week I have finished two more shawls, both of which I at least started with someone else's pattern. The first one was called passion summer shawl; I liked the stitch pattern. 

I had three balls of yarn in the same colorway, but one was a different dye lot. I put that one in the middle just in case it was obviously different. As you can see, the lengths of the color changes is different, making it 'pool' in that section. Trust me - the other end looks like this one.





For the second shawl: I was intrigued by the shape of one I saw online named Kwoosh. It is an asymetrical triangle, and was designed as a scarf or small shawlette, using sock-weight yarn and size 4 needles. I wanted it bigger, so I took an orphaned ball of worsted-weight yarn and used size 9 needles. When I finished, it was still quite small, so I decided to add a border. The stitch pattern I used for that is called snowdrop lace, but if turned upside down, it looks like tulips to me, especially since I added two extra rows to each repeat of the pattern.

 No, I've never seen tan tulips either, but they were beautiful in red on the shawl I gave my aunt last year.

Working Outdoors

I pulled up about a hundred black walnut trees this morning and threw them in my neighbor's burn pit. They'll help fuel his next bonfire. Of course, none of them were more than a foot high. All that pulling brought some nice, long worms to the surface. I'm really glad to see them there.

I also did three sessions of mowing. Two of them were no more than half an hour each, but the other one lasted until the mower ran out of gas, which usually takes about 45 minutes. There's always more mowing to do, of course, but I was tired, even though I took fairly long knitting breaks between sessions. It was overcast and only got into the low 70's today, and with a breeze it felt cool. While mowing, I got warm, but not really sweaty; while sitting on the porch, I needed a sweater. They are predicting rain for tonight, so it's good I got a little bit mowed.