Grandma's Ulmus

Grandma's Ulmus
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

This lovely shawlette stayed with my mother this year after our wonderful visit. It's had an interesting journey. You may recall that the yarn actually started out bright golden and took some extensive baths in dye. It also had a tiny mistake I just couldn't leave alone.

In the end it came out lovely. The yarn is 100% silk (Louisa Harding's "Mulberry", which is gorgeous, but normally far too pricey for me at $15/50 gram ball). It has a great hand and it knits up really easily. It isn't quite as forgiving as a more elastic yarn and I do prefer having some wool in the blend. However, working with a non-elastic yarn is not enough to stop me any longer, and everything still came out really even and the shawl blocked wonderfully.

Without wool in the mix, the silk has a fantastic drape, and is wonderful to wrap on to wear. It goes on cool but doesn't chill as it warms almost instantly against your skin. Mom and I also had terrific luck finding a lovely shawl-pin to hold it in place. I usually just tuck the ends in, but this little twisted stick makes everything really secure. I didn't get a picture of it, but I'm sure Grandma will love the pin, too.

Short Garden Update

Garden - 8/4
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Ladies and Gents, I am happy to say, I am on vacation.

Yes, I am far, far from home and yet I bring you a picture of our garden just before we left. We have watermelon! My daughter and I are terribly excited about these little babies and hope they are much, much bigger when we get home again. Since the sprinklers are on automatic and the neighbors agreed to peek in on things, I have a fairly good feeling that plants will still be growing when we get home.

There is also some occasional knitting and spinning going on here, but that will have to wait until we return and pictures can be properly downloaded, edited, and uploaded again!

I'm also really looking forward to getting back to Stitches Midwest. This is the second time our family vacation has coincided with StitchesMW, and I promise I didn't plan it that way. But I sure am going to take advantage of the fact!