I Love Flower Basket Shawl!

My Flower Basket Shawl can be found sniffing the rhododendron (it has a beautiful clean citrus smell) and then it moved over to a viburnum! These photos are so much better than the one for the previous post! The sun certainly helps!

This is the second shawl from this pattern and now I have the pattern down pat and I want to knit one or two more! I do not pull out the points quite as much as I have seen on other blog pics, but I like it less sharp! The first shawl was done with two strands of a coral crochet cotton and this one was done from Grignasco Merinogold! Oh, the merino was such a joy to knit with. Soft and beautiful and it did not split! I have seen some beautiful Trekking sock yarn and I want to knit the shawl in a sock weight yarn! Will I need two strands or one - I will try it first! I do wear the coral shawl a lot, but the beautiful Robin's egg blue shawl is going to a charity auction! I need to give it a home until October, so I had better get busy on the next one or I might be tempted to wear this shawl!!


Thank you to the gals who took the time to have a look at my blog! I hope it all gets better, not only for my sake, but especially for yours!

Every Monday for the past 20 or more years, I have sent a weekly update of news, views and general ramblings to family and friends. You would think that I would have chatting in type down to a fine art. I know who I am writing to in the update, but not on the blog! It does make a difference. Maybe the blog is more freeing, maybe not!

When I first started the updates, I had five people - my Mom, my MIL and my two children and my best friend - that I wrote to each week! Since the computer became part of my life, the updates have spread to more friends and family! I still mail out seven letters a week - some 80 year old cousins are just NOT going to get a computer! Now I find myself in the questionable position of being the top generation of the family - no parents, aunts or uncles to look up to! It scares me to think that I have family looking up to me. I have not told any of them about the blog! Maybe in time! Why don't I tell them? I am not sure and just now I am not going to analyze that too closely!

On my needles just now I have CeCe - a lacy short sleeved sweater; Eleanora - a beautiful sock that I bought from Mim (I will link her site once I learn how to do that!!) a moebius scarf and a baby hat! This scares me!

How do you feel about four projects on the go at the same time? Now some are for mindless knitting - the kind where you just knit and enjoy the process!! The sweater is up past the addition of the sleeves and I need to finish it by May 30th. I have learned so much knitting with the new yarns. The yarn for CeCe is (Shh) acrylic and rayon in a greyed taupe! I tried knitting the sleeves on a set of 4.5 mm steel dpns and the needles were just too heavy - kept slipping out of the work! I had to buy a pair of bamboo needles and then the work went along with no slipping!

My mother would be 106 if she were alive and I am sure she never had more than 15 pair of needles in her life! How did she do it? Of course, yarns have changed a lot since then. She would mostly have knit with pure wool! Dozens of pairs of men's work socks in grey with cream or red stripes at the top and the legs all in a 2X2 rib and mittens in the same grey wool! She would often knit new heels and toes! I learned to knit from my grandmother and I have thought as I knit with pattern striping yarns, got patterns off the internet, shopped at stores on line and read blogs that these two good women would be amazed and I hope they would take to it like I have! To look at a wonderful pair of hands on a video teach me how to M1 or a multitude of other skills would blow these ladies away!!

Enough rambling for today!