Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Whew!

I finished the Swallowtail shawl I started on April 11 yesterday. Yes, that's 9 days later. Here are some pictures:







The day I started the Swallowtail shawl is the day I finished and blocked my Cherry Leaf shawl:




I just started the Queen Silvia shawl from the book, "Knitted Lace of Estonia". I tried the Swallowtail shawl to get experience doing "nupps", the little bobbly things that look like lilies of the valley in the Swallowtail. The Queen Silvia has many, many nupps in the pattern. I don't think that it will be done in 9 days. I am using a silk/merino laceweight blend from Blackberry Ridge in Wisconsin. It is a lovely shade of aqua/minty green.
For those of you who are knitters who read this, the Queen Silvia uses a provisional cast on. Here's my favorite method when it calls for one to crochet a chain and then pick up stitches through the back loops. Much easier than the picking up and there is less chance of getting a strand of the crocheted chain entwined with the first row of knitted stitches, which I have done.
On other subjects, it's raining a cold rain here. At least for now. This morning there were big snowflakes mixed in. The grass and daffodils, hyacinths, lilacs and all my perennials are loving the rain. The front garden is getting quite pretty.
Churchill, inadvertantly on his part, helped me to block my shawl this morning. His blood sugar was heading in a direction it should not go rather quickly. Sigh. And of course, I didn't have any shaved turkey in the house to give him when his blood sugar drops. So, I had to call in to work and then go to the grocery store. I really didn't want to leave him alone, but I had no choice. Paulette had an important meeting at work, so I was on my own until her meeting was done. With Paulette's and my intervention (Paulette gave him a syringe full of Karo syrup before she had to leave), his sugar level only dropped to 93. It was on it's way to badness. While I was home with him this morning, I got the chance to weave in the ends and wash and block my shawl. So all turned out well.

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