No new pics of the Feather and Fan shawl today, as DH has the camera with him. But it’s getting bigger, I’m up to row 50, and it’s on a 40cm circ now. I’ve never knit with a 40cm circ before this, but it’s not as bad as I was expecting. I thought it’d be hard to hold and manoeuver, but it’s been good.
The Feather and Fan patterning starts on round 61, so I’m nearly through the big flower in the centre bit.
I could take a picture with my mobile phone, but for some reason, I can’t download pics to my computer, it only works on DH’s computer.
So, seeing as there are no knitting pics, I thought I’d show you some of the silly pictures Em took on the mobile phone a few weeks ago, while we were waiting to pick up Pizza.

Well, Emily made her confirmation last night. She chose Judith as her confirmation name. (That was my mother’s name and is actually already one of her middle names).

Our Church is very small, so there were only nine children making their confirmation, but it was a lovely service.
Of course, no event would be complete without a drama around here. My older sister was supposed to be Em’s sponsor, but about 2 hours before the service, my 6 year old nephew fell off a fence, and broke his arm in two places. So my sister ended up spending the night at the hospital, and my mother stood in for her. My nephew had surgery this morning, and will be fine, but he apparently has a cast all the way up to his underarm.
Still, we are all far, far better off than many people in the world tonight.
The mystery shawl is blocked.

I am not happy with it 🙁
I love the yarn, I love the colours, I love the shawl pattern. Just not all together. The lace pattern is totally swallowed up by the colours. However, I did wrap it around myself while I sat at the computer last night, and it was quite nice, so all is not lost.
And the next project has been started! It will indeed be the Feather and Fan shawl from A Gathering of Lace.

Here is the start.

Not too far to go! 😉

A long overdue blog post, but it’s back to the knitting!
Shawls don’t make good blogging do they? They look like crap on the needles, they seem to grow so slowly and they don’t give you an awful lot to say!
Anyway, the Mystery Shawl is off the needles.

Doesn’t look like much, does it? The lace pattern is lost, and it looks all lumpy and yuck. Well, it’s had it’s bath and is blocking right now. However, silly me has pinned it out on red and pink beach towels, so you still can’t see it very well 🙂
So, no pics yet. You’ll have to come back tomorrow! 😉
The shawl has not been very portable, and Nat reminded me (in a roundabout way) that I hadn’t worked on a sock in quite some time, and seeing as the Sick Sock Stash is not shrinking (quite the opposite!), I thought a sock was long overdue.

A sock for Em, in Lorna’s “Girly Stripe”. She wants the socks l-o-n-g, so I’m working toe-up, and I’ll just keep going until I use up the whole ball!
Twinkie has taken every opportunity to be naughty this week. She got under my bed again, and Em caught her in the act.

Doesn’t look concerned at all, does she?
Em is making her Confirmation tomorrow night, lots of pics then, I promise!

The monkey has been named Darwin 🙂
Hooray for Ailsa, who suggested the name, a lovely skein of Artisan laceweight yarn and a scarf pattern will be on their way to her very soon.
Em would like to tell you all that she had a very hard time selecting a name from so many wonderful suggestions. She had no idea who had nominated each name, I just gave her the list of names, and she went through them until she finally decided on one.
The sickness appears to be spreading, regular blogging will resume shortly, we hope!

Well, the Mystery Shawl and I had a falling out yesterday. The Shimmer decided that it wanted to pool. I had two big yellow blobs, one either side of the shawl.
I was Not Happy.
So, after dithering about for a while, I decided that it had to be fixed. The only way to fix it would be to rip it back. I don’t use lifelines.
Boy, do I wish I freakin’ had used a lifeline. I’m just too lazy. Sooner or later, I will learn that it is less work to put in a lifeline than it is to try to pick up lace stitches without one.
So, I decided it had to be ripped back, and I yanked out the needle.
See the pooling bits? I’ve marked them out. They don’t look so bad off the needles as they did on, but I couldn’t live with it. There is another one a it further back, as you can see. I’m not ripping back that far, however.

Here’s the lovely little pile of markers that I had to get back in, too!

Here’s a close up of the yellow bits. I had started the next row, and the yellow was going to fall in the same spot again. I should have been working from two balls right from the start. Another thing I know, but am too lazy to put into action!


So then I ripped back. I had planned to go back maybe 4 rows. I ended up back 8 rows, and had to tink the last row to find all the stitches. I hate finding YO’s!
However, this morning she is back on the needles!

And here are the yellow bits, fixed.


After I ripped it back, I started knitting with two skeins, which I should have done from the start. Now I’m worried that the new part will look odd, because the first part was knit from one skein. Here’s how the shawl looks now.

I have a sinking feeling that the part knitted with two skeins is going to have the colours more mixed, and will look totally different from the start. The sinking feeling I have tells me that it’s going to be ripped back to the start and started over. Please reassure me! Reassure me lots!!
Em has been sick since Thursday night 🙁
It’s just a flu bug, which has been going around. A lot of kids from school and dancing have had it, and now it’s Em’s turn. High fevers, sore throat, headache and coughing. She’s feeling better today though, and is back to picking out monkey names. Competition closes tonight, get your entries in!!