Cruising Along and Blown Away

Dear Blog-

Well, they said we would have a windy day today, but I didn't realize that the wind was planned to start at 6 am, and that it would be blowing so hard that you can't even see the city, or that it would make the blinds in front of the closed windows rattle. Asthma Woman doesn't like the wind. Asthma Woman wants it to go away. I can see why years ago people stuck out on the prairie in little sod houses during months and months of dust storms would eventually go just a wee bit wonky.

Can You See Tucson From Here?

Well, the other morning when I was brushing my teeth, God told me that that was the day to start working on the actual knitting of my felted cable bag. Ok, so you're right, God has bigger things to deal with than my knitting schedule - like world peace and feeding the hungry - so let's just call it a message from the Knitting Goddess, Merino.

I often find that when I am working on a bit of a thorny problem, that I just need to let it simmer on the back burner of my mind for a while and ignore it, and suddenly I will wake up with the problem all solved in my head. Whole knitting designs come to me this way, too. And so it was with this. I had originally wanted to work a cable that was mostly horizontal in design, although it is worked from bottom to top of the bag, and because the charting program I have was giving me fits, I put the whole thing aside for a bit. Over time I realized that I really did want an open, Saxon type of cable that ran in a vertical stripe up the middle of the bag, but I wasn't finding the time or the inspiration to research the idea. And so Friday was the day.

So I spent a good portion of Friday -when I really ought to have been house-cleaning - working on the bottom of the bag (always boring) and then starting the first repeat of the cable pattern. My mind has come up with the occasional But! But! and I am just talking to it in soothing tones and telling it that all will be well. Merino told me so. Once I have the body knitted up I will show it to you here, in the meantime...

I have also been plugging away on my Morehouse Farm Algonquin Cardi. I am most pleased with my progress on it. It is the rare thing that I started with no mental deadline, simply for the love of working with that most delicious of yarns. I have progressed even since the pictures you see here, and am just over a third of the way up the back. Those terrible deadline-like thoughts started cropping up last week, such as: Maybe I can finish this so that I can wear it Wednesday morning when I go for my angiograms. Let's see, if I finish the back by this day, and then a day to work the collar, and then two days per sleeve, I should be able to do that. No! STOP! I am just knitting along, and when it is done, it is done. Get thee gone from my sight, oh Deadline Demons!

But here is a view of the finished fronts-

Algonquin Cardi Front

and of the progress on the back as of Friday morning-

Algonquin Cardi Open to Show Progress on the Back

I have also begun my hunt for the perfect buttons for this. I tried the obvious spots first - the box fabric stores. Yesterday in JoAnn Fabrics I spotted these cute little puppies and thought they were begging me to take them home with them:

Ok, they are out of focus, but aren't those too cute, little pine cones? But now I am not so certain that these are the right buttons for the job, so I hang onto the receipt and the search continues...

In the meantime, as well, I have been working on my Scheherazade Shawl, bit by bit. I promised ages ago that I would post a picture at the end of each chart, and as you know, I was having the dangedest time finding needles that worked with this very fine weight yarn. So once the proper needles made themselves known to me, I took off in a mad flight and not only finished the first chart, but blew through the second. So here it is with two charts completed:

Granted, lace always looks like a dog's dinner until it is blocked, but I think you get the idea from this. Just think: I only have four more charts to go, then I get to pick up from that provisional cast on and do the same thing all over again in the other direction!

So the day's plans include waxing my friend Susan and her daughter at 10, and then a call from my sister who was just visiting last month. Then lots and lots of knitting on the couch.

Stay out of the wind-
Lynda