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Seriously, I finished the shawl. I even blocked it.

It’s after 8 o’clock so the intended recipient is unavailable to model it. It’s past her bed time. Although it’s pretty heartening to hear, “That’s my beautiful shawl?” as I pin it to shape on the quilt. I think Lexi likes it.

The yarn is handspun Shetland laceweight, doubled as recommended in the pattern and knit 4 stitches to the inch on size 7 US needles.

It’s quite pretty, I know people don’t think of putting little girls in such dark colors– but Lexi has such a clear complexion she can pull it off.

As for knitting lace, the jury is still out. I think I’m giving it a fair trial, but truthfully there are parts of it that really just don’t make for a relaxing time of knitting. I’m definitely not in love with carrying around patterns or firing up the laptop everytime I want to knit. At least with socks and sweaters, cables– oh my beloved cables– I know where I’m going.

It’s a beautiful day.

Absolutely lovely.

The sun is out, the weather is warming up and my strawberries are showing new growth and flowers.

And the new blueberry bush is showing promising growth as well.

The husband is looking very healthy and happy isn’t he?

He broke down and bought me some chicks (I knew he would). And now the husband has to build a chicken coop before the chicks have their full feathers in. But aren’t they adorable?

I’m working on the Flower Basket Shawl it’s a fun little knit, originally I planned doing it on size 5 needles using a single ply of yarn, but I ended up frogging it and using the doubled yarn on size 7s. As is it’s still a very small shawl but I plan on giving it to Lexi when I’m done and she’s a very small person.

Since I have to tink back a few rows I’m not exactly in the mood to photograph my progress at the moment.

I’ve also been doing some linen dyeing and a little spontenious sewing. This is a ruck sack that I made with some of the fabric. The patterning on the fabric is a bit overwhelming so I kept the design of the bag as simple as possible, I tend to like it much more now that it’s been sewn up.

At 12 inches high and 22 inches around, the bag is a nice size for the fabric, I don’t think it would have worked so well visually if I’d gone much larger. The draw-string and the straps are one in the same, it can’t be seen in the picture but at the bottom of the sack there are buttons and the ends of the drawstring have button holes so it can be unbuttoned and carried, or buttoned and worn like a backpack.

Since I’m a little obsessive about finishing it’s fully lined with undyed linen.

I did that. I also made donuts, fry bread and crullers because I’m so talented.

The socks are really nothing special, I’m pretty boring as socks go. Pink merino handspun, size 1 dpns, and a few evenings. They are a little baggy, but soft and comfy.

Updating the blog and fixing the archives was a bit more nerve wracking, and totally required deep fried yummies. I used the Salvation Army recipe for the donuts, the fry bread and cruller recipes are more or less I throw in stuff until the dough looks “about right” and I used milk with a tsp of vinegar instead of buttermilk. Someday I might get around to actually weighing ingredients as I make them so I’d be able to share the recipes. I’m impressed with the donut recipe and it worked well even though I replaced the real milk with rice milk.