Knitting Flowers

A few Christmases ago my mOm gave a cute knitting kit of knitted flowers for embellishment, decorations or pins and jewelry.

The yarn is in every color of the rainbow and the patterns make the cutest things!

I tried my first one and really like it, despite the trickiness of knitting an inch of i-cord and having to turn it inside out! Really, inside out, it was really a pain.

This little flower sits on my monitor stand at work and makes me smile every day. I really should knit more of them, they would make perfect whimsical gifts.

Finished Objects: Santa Fe Eyelet Shawl

This shawl went off the needles and around my neck almost instantly, it is so gorgeous.

The Eyelet Shawl using Dyelot Yarn’s Stimulus Package yarn in the colorway Santa Fe is a superbly simple knit. The yarn comes in a big fat skein but is really six smaller skeins of yarn, all dyed the same but with gorgeously different textures.

The pattern came free with the yarn but it makes a hugely long shawl. I am almost 6′ tall and I have to triple wind it around me for a loose cowl effect. I might like to make another one that is about 2 feet shorter! But regardless, I love this shawl and am so grateful for the gift of the yarn from E___. I am going to be cozy and very stylish all winter long.

Thank you!

Brain Hat Update, A Random Acts of Kindness and a KAL

I have been a little quiet lately, mostly not knitting or any other art projects because I have been very busy healing.
My doctor gave me the green light to start doing physical therapy to start walking!

It had been a long six weeks of not being able to put any weight on my foot or move my healing ankle but it was good for knitting when my brain cooperated.

(brain hat, cooperating)

Now, though, starting to walk with partial weight and using crutches has been a huge challenge. It’s a good challenge! I am doing really well. My surgery-repaired shoulder is not loving using crutches and this has been hampering my knitting in a big way. The faster I could get to ditching that crutch and letting my shoulder heal the better.

I did start pinning the miles of i-cord onto the brain hat, it is looking quite loby! Three-quarters to go!

(this is Quinn’s brain hat, lobes pinned in the front hemisphere)

I also wound up yarn for a new project, a Knit-A-Long for a beautiful lace weight shawl called Nadira.

(Tess laceweight Merino, a pretty color)

Some of my nice new knitting friends from Twitter invited me to join a KAL on Ravelry for the Nadira shawl and with their help and support I hope to be able to get through it. It’s is a beautiful design.

(a screenshot from the Nadira pattern)

My next step is to swatch the yarn so that I can use the best needle for the project.

In the midst of my hobbling around, piles of icepacks and resuming pain medication, ankle Olympics at home and at the physical terrorist, a truly delightful thing happened. A Twitter friend sent me a darling care package that she called “A random act of kindness”.

A bunch of beautiful stamps from
Greece, truly Hellenic post!

An intriguing little box was under the tidy wrappings.

Tucked away Inside were little gifts!

A complete set of crochet hooks in a pretty hand sewn pouch just for me. Now I can try to learn to crochet.

An aromatic bag of mysterious spices from Lemnos and a gorgeous sea sponge from Rhodes was inside the box as well as a delicious packet of toffee from London.

What a sweet thing for my new friend to do, and I cannot say just how much this delightfully unexpected gift lifted my spirits. Thank you, Laurentia!

It was just in time for my birthday and that is a bit of synchronicity. I am plotting a little box of treats I can send her in return from foggy San Francisco.

Please do chime in if you have a great idea.

Meantime I’m off to swatch and slap on some more ice. A quiet last weekend at home before returning to work on Monday stretches before me.

Iced Citron Shawl

Many years ago my mOm treated me to some gorgeous ice blue kid mohair yarn by Sublime.

I had been working on a very pretty ruffled sweater in a soft mushroom color in Sublime mohair and mOm fell in love with a lacey shawl in the pattern book. I promised to make it for her for Christmas.

It was a pretty simple pattern, only a four row repeat but I tried over and over and over and kept making mistakes.  I was beginning to think it was evil.  How could I not make this work?

You know when you see a flaw in something and it keeps bothering you? I guess I am a perfectionist in some ways, particularly when it comes to artistic endeavors. I put so much pressure on myself to do things well, so well in fact sometimes I am afraid of even starting a project in the fear that it won’t be, you know, perfect.

This shawl became one of my nemeses. I won’t even get started with the Rainbow Kauni cardigan, that is a tale for another day. It’s quite difficult to frog mohair, especially this Sublime yarn, but I had to do it. I unknitted this shawl about five times and this last Fall I gave the pattern another try.   It was still evil.

Knitting after my shoulder surgery was really challenging and I had so many lovely projects started for Christmas and birthday gifts and no more money to buy alternatives so I just had to get going with the requisite stuff upper lip.

About 5 rows in I realized I messed up again and began the arduous task of tinking this sticky fuzzy mohair again. (Evil, evil, evil!)   Did I mention that I started this in 2007?

Then I had a completely liberated thought, I could just make something else.

Thunderclap

Sometimes it’s okay to stop banging my head against a boulder, it’s okay to just try something else. I knew mOm would love whatever I created for her (I hoped) because every gift I make is knitted with love, care and more love, right?

I hopped on Ravelry and found a very pretty shawl by Knitty, the Citron Shawl, and it was perfect!

I had to do a bit of adapting for this yarn but it literally flew off my needles, it was so easy to make, it was soft and fluffy and girly and just perfect for my pretty mommy.

It took me a while to finish, well past Christmas, but I wrapped it up in heavy silver tissue and a satin ribbon along with a few other treats, dropped it in the mail and held my breath.

Simply gorgeous.

When mOm got the package in the mail she sounded so happy!  Fortunately it’s still wintery enough around here for her to enjoy it for a few more months.  I am quite pleased with myself actually.

Now, what to do for this Christmas?  As soon as my current shoulder sprain heals I shall get started early so that Christmas gifts will actually be under the tree instead of around Valentines Day!

Love you mOm!