Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Knitting Lace

I'm back in lace knitting mode! Yippee! My shawls can stop being WIPs and become FOs (in time). I decided to sign up for the Summer 2011 Seasons of Lace blog. I hoped I would find inspiration and encouragement there for my efforts to re-enter the lace knitting world. ; )

I plan to knit one of the two shawls voted in for this season and to resurrect a WIP. The voting is still ongoing (the voting ends June 20) but I started on the resurrection project and it's working. The Curved Shawl with Diamond Edging has been resurrected first (mostly because the frogging is already done so I just have to knit now. The Laminara shawl still has to be frogged and I am not quite ready for that yet. Figuring out where I am is a daunting thought). It gets wider as I progress and according to the instructions I have to have 50 (6) stitch repeats in a row to be ready to knit the edging. I have 27 now, so there's a lot of knitting to go. I'm getting the hang of things, though and moving faster than I had been before.

We made it out on the boat on Sunday! First time for me this season (due to repeated mechanical difficulties) and only the second for Bob - that's very unusual for us. We are usually one of the first boats in the water and Bob is normally an early in the season fisherman. He was working ont he basement bath reno, though ....

We had a wonderful day, swam to cool off and enjoyed just being out on the bay. Our evening on the bay was foiled, though, by the warning we heard on the radio - tornado warning for our county! tracking in our direction. I have lots of faith in DH's captaining abilities but a tornado?! Not. We made it across the bay in record time and arrived at the marina in time to get the boat closed up. The skies looked scary but all we had was thunder, lightning and rain - no high winds or signs of a tornado (thank goodness). Everyone in our area was safe, even the people in canoes and kayaks.

While on the boat I knitted on Rob's afghan, which is my usual boat knitting project. I hope to finish it this boating season. I am on the 5th of 8 strips of knitting. I knitted the squares connected, in strips instead of squares to cut down on sewing, and I've sewn 3 of the strips together.

My Pogona scarf is growing slowly. I am not making a big push on this but it's a small project that does not require a lot of stitch manipulation or counting, so it's a portable project and enjoyable.

Bob's socks are finished and stored until cold weather hits. The Calendula socks that I am knitting for a friend are about 4 inches or so from being finished. I need to get on that. The Leaf and Picot cardigan is growing also - I have 9-10 inches for the back done and at 14 inches I start arm scye shaping. I haven't even felt a twinge of cast-on-itis, thank the knitting gods. ; )

Spinning - I wish I could spin more each day. Between work, household stuff and a shoulder that starts aching after a while (because I can't seem to remember to keep my arm below shoulder height), I am limited to about 15 minutes or so of spindle spinning per day. I love spinning the Icelandic. The North Ronaldsay


is a bit more challenging, but I'm getting there. I even spun on the boat!

Angela is loving having the use of my spinning wheel. I think we have another spinner in our midst. We might have to start a spinning guild/group. ; ) 

The veggie garden is doing OK. I need to plant more corn and green bean seeds - only some of the seeds I planted have come up. That might be because I used last year's seeds or for some other reasons but I plan to buy fresh corn, green bean and sunflower seeds this week and get them planted. The tomato

, cuke, watermelon , green beans

and asparagus

that were planted previously are all loving the sun and hot weather we've been having. I planted a raspberry bush, too, but that will not produce until next year. I am tending it carefully because I really want fresh berries in my cereal next year. The blueberry bushes that we planted a few years ago don't do much.

Eldest son's car died. It's a mechanical problem that would be too expensive to fix on a car in the condition his is in. He is now in the market for a used car in good condition and meanwhile DH drives him to work or he uses my car on the weekends. It's weird looking out the window and not seeing his (or any) car in front of the house. It's just another of the mechanical issues we've had to deal with in the past year or so that has been expensive and not possible to avoid. As a result of those issues, I have cancelled my campground reservation for Rhinebeck and have now started to plan for next year. I'll have more time to save more $$, right?

Have a great day wherever you are.

1 comment:

EGunn said...

Whew! That's a list. I'm also hoping to get back into lace one of these days, though the brain cells remain scarce at the moment. Someday, though...