Monday, February 12, 2007

Perhaps you are wondering why I didn't mention the beautiful and wondrous knitting projects I worked on while I was away? Remember all the Trip Knitting Speculation Stage items I put forward? Remember the hours and hours of glorious quiet knitting time I had ahead of me? Well, here's the sum total of what I knit:

(It's the beginning of the Shoulder Shawl in Syrian Pattern from "Victorian Lace Today" in a colorway of Schaefer Anne that I'm a little ambivalent about...)

Here's what I did with the rest of my time:


Hundreds and hundreds of ding-dang Sudoku puzzles. Oh yes, grasshopper, I became the flipping Sudoku Master!! You see, the day before we were to leave I felt a tiny telltale twinge in my arm. Of course, I studiously ignored it. Oh no, it absolutely could NOT be my tendinitis flaring up. Not the day before my Luxurious Knitting Trip!!! Well, of course it was. I worked on the bitty shawl above on the car trip up, and my arm was barking so fiercely after a couple of rows that I had to put it down and face facts. There would be no knitting on this trip. After a couple of days I finally and tearfully put all the knitting projects away in the back bedroom; even Matthew was distressed for me.

So that was very sad. My arm is feeling much better now (after its nice long vacation it should be!), so I've been working on this:


This is the knitted-on edging of the Cap Shawl. I have never finished a shawl this way before; it took me a few tries before I understood what was going on. You cast 11 stitches on a double-pointed needle and then do a 30-row lace pattern - on every wrong-side row, you knit the last stitch of the edging together with the next stitch of the shawl itself. It's a beauteous way to finish it off. It would be the perfect time to knit backwards on the wrong-side rows, but I can't get the right tension when I try it. But speed is not the objective. I've done 5 repeats of the pattern, which means I've cast off 75 stitches (15 stitches cast off each repeat); which sounds like a lot, but I still have 623 stitches left. HA HA. So I'm not going to think about that too much. The nice part is seeing the shawl come off the needles little by little. I might faint when it's done (especially since I'll be in my 80's by then).

Pitchers and catchers report to Clearwater on Thursday. Ahhhhhhhhh..........

2 Comments:

Blogger Liz K. said...

So glad your arm is feeling better. I would be devastated without the knitting on vacation. I'd muddle through with reading, I suppose.

I am just about ready to launch the final chart on my current lace project and am just trying to work up the desire to knit 500 stitches per row....

8:21 AM  
Blogger diana said...

Thank you for your empathy, Liz. It was a devastating development, and did definitely compromise the quality of my enjoyment of vacation. I mean, it was a great vacation and all, but still.....

I try not to think of all those stitches..... Denial is your friend.

10:48 AM  

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