Who Knew??

Take the Quiz here!

Well, and apparently I am Anne Elliot, who exactly is Anne Elliot?  I  don't recall Anne Elliot??!!  Help?

OK, so, what did Jane Austen do with a spinning wheel?  While the well intentioned folks at Interweave are using Jane to sell stuff (I do love them, but really...) I have a suspicion.  Women of the upper reaches of society did not in that era knit or, god forbid, spin.  Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.  Poor women did both.  Jane aspired not to.  It's likely that she did some needlepoint or crewel, for decorative and not practical purposes.

In other news, finished a hat for son R, modelled here by son B

it's the Utopia hat by SmarieK, thanks! B is looking intense as he's watching the Patriots win...

I also finished Lucia Theodora, but not her clothes as yet.  She's hiding behind a pillow case, not a little upset about the lack of wardrobe...

Shetland Tea Shawl

I have at long last completed my second handspun Shetland shawl.

I described the beginning of this project here.

As I mentioned, I searched for patterns that incorporated traditional Shetland lace motifs. I settled on the Shetland Tea Shawl by Dale Long, in A Gathering of Lace.

Now, to be frank, I'm not a huge fan of XRX Press and here's why  (I hope they are reading):  They produce some lovely books, but 1)I'm not a fan of oversized knitting books, hard to use  2) Too much "beauty" photography and not enough functional knitting photography.  I don't need to look at a huge lavish garden spread with a young model sporting a garment in a way that a young-ish person would never would.  And I couldn't see exactly what the center of this circular shawl looked like!

NEVERTHELESS I was really taken with the Shetland Tea Shawl.  I loved the circular construction which I had not done before.  EZ's classic circular shaping allowed me to use the different colors that I got from the yarn in concentric circles which made sense to me.  I did not do the border that is knitted on sideways as I knew that I was running out of yarn, went instead to the old standby Evelyn A. Clark border

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 It's upside down to the border shown below.

(Maybe one of these years I'll figure out how to use Excell to do this, or breakdown and buy the right stuff to develop and reproduce charts!)

It's really kind of a chunky throw but I really love it!

Glove palms and a doll

OK, so we went to Charleston (that's SC) for an overnight during the holiday and visited the Charleston  City Market.  There was a Peruvian lady there selling alpaca handknits...the boys each bought a chullo in natural colors, and R got a pair of gloves.  

Thinking that perhaps the gloves needs some palmar traction,  I purchased some mitten palms from Halcyon Yarn (the only place I could find them, I actually made a purchase there a long time ago during a visit to Maine), shortened them a bit, put some additional holes in with a hammer and a small nail, and sewed them on...voila!

I am having way too much fun birthing a Theodora (also available here)...

She has brown hair (like me). I like not being bored while I knit (e.g. I prefer no vast wastelands of garter or stockinette...) and like a lace pattern. Similarly, with doll knitting,  there's lots of shaping to do  to keep me busy.  Thanks, Helene!!  I suspect that various family members (me, my Mom, my little neice) will all want one, so I suspect more Theodoras will follow...

Important Socio Cultural Knitting News

KAFFESLABBERAS // MADS AND ERNA (SUBTITLED) from Kaffeslabberas on Vimeo.

Perhaps in my senescence an entrepreneur with a social conscience will discover me knitting in my living room and buy my knitting...guess I'm too young for this to happen yet!