I got a fair amount done over the weekend - mostly on Saturday.  The shawl is progressing well and, so far, without difficulty.

I have reached the moss stitch part of the shawl and am kind of looking forward to it as I’ve never done moss stitch before - I know, simple thing like that :)  Small things amuse small minds, they say - heheh…  I also have a thought for a type of finishing on this piece, that involves weaving through the eyelet divisions between the chevrons.  It won’t hurt anything to try it.

I also complete the 44th square for the afghan - 4 rows worth of squares now.

That’s about it for today, I’m afraid.  Apparently the landlord has been successful in his attempt to sell our building and the new owner is coming by to inspect the apartments in a little while.  We’re trying not to get tense about the situation; it’s not uncommon (at least in this area) for new owners to empty a building of its current tenants and start clean.  Cross your fingers that he doesn’t have a brother-in-law who needs a place to live!

Happy Monday :)

Hmmm…we seem to have a theme color today :)  And the funny thing is I was telling Rob the other day, that green wouldn’t ever be my first choice for anything but trees.  However…

This yarn was an odd one.  To feel it you might suspect that it was a cross between cashmere and suede - really soft to the touch, but with a certain firmness.  Very curious.  Every time I picked the ball up I got mixed messages; the label said “100% cotton” but my fingers were hollering “No way!!”.  Not only didn’t it feel like cotton, it didn’t act like it either.  Tug on a length of it and it would gently shred in your hands - not that it was delicate, but it wasn’t at all what you could call sturdy either.

So I decided to do a burn test.  So I dug out an old ashtray, made sure there was a glass of water handy, and sat down with some matches and a couple of lengths of yarn.

Burns or Melts?  Burns
Retreats from flame  Nope
Smells like burning wood or leaves  Check
Remains?  Fine, grey ash
Glows before going out?  Yup

All that really does is narrow the content down to vegetable fiber as opposed to animal or synthetic.  However, having gotten that far, I was prepared to concede the label was right after all.  It worked up nicely and this little bag has a wonderfully rich feel to it, though it wouldn’t stand up to any kind of rough handling.

Having been lusting after this pattern almost since before I started knitting, I finally acquired it this week.  And, because I’m waiting on deciding anything about the poncho until I can spend some time with Walker’s “Mosaic Knitting”, and further because I had a large bag of heathery, green Woolease that was ambushing me every time I went to ferret around in the stash…  Well, it just seemed as though last night was the night to start something new!

I’m liking this pattern.  It’s clearly written and well thought out.  As I was working along last night, I kept thinking what a useful teaching tool this shawl would be.  You know, instruction in the basic stitch patterns, lots of practice increasing and decreasing and a splendid piece to show off all your learning and effort.  In fact I’m enjoying the process so much I could easily see myself making another one of these - or more!  I got up to the beginning of the stockinette chevron last night and was loathe to put it down, but it was past midnight and I was afraid I’d be courting mistakes galore if I persisted so…  I’ll be out with my father most of today, so it’s going to have to wait until I get home.  Can’t wait!  There’s only one thing about it I would change…

Can you guess?  When it becomes difficult to read a pattern in a normally lighted room, something’s wrong.  I perfectly understand the desire to thwart copiers - but there has to be a better way than making the pattern difficult to read for those who acquire it legitimately!  While you’ll notice that no part of the pattern appears in the above picture, you should also notice that with the advent of decent digital cameras at moderate prices, the green paper isn’t going to stop someone for very long.  No, they can’t run it off on the copier at the local library (not very successfully, anyway) but taking a digital image makes an even truer copy of the original and is even arguably easier to distribute.  I am certainly not condoning this kind of pilfering.  All I’m trying to point out is that the dark paper isn’t stopping anyone any more - so could you please use something I can read without a magnifying glass and a klieg light?

Have a great weekend everyone :)