So this post is coming to you from the sofa, where I’ve spent much of the past couple of days aching all over and hacking a cough that could’ve come right out of a Dickens novel. (Melodramatic, moi?) I do seem to be throwing these lurgies off more quickly since I began the four-times-a-week-running torture though, so I hope this thing will be gone soon, because it’s no fun feeling too ill to knit. (Also it’s no fun running four times per week, so I’d hate to think that it wasn’t serving any purpose.)
One thing that I did manage before the tuberculosis annoying-but-trivial virus took hold was to finish knitting the Cladonia shawl. I’ll show you properly in a couple of days’ time when it has finished blocking and when I have some daylight, but I don’t think I’m spoiling things too much by posting a dodgy artificially-lit snap taken on my tablet. Lace, people, LACE! Isn’t it pretty?
And the twinnage’s first words when they came home from school and saw it pinned out to dry were, ‘Mummy, you’ve finished your knitting! It’s so pretty!’ Clearly they must have been angling for chocolate cake, because no normal self-respecting dinosaur-obsessed mud-encrusted five-year-old would come out with such sentiments. Still, I’m touched that they noticed and I’m grateful for their words. (They got some chocolate cake.)
Anyway, the shawl has been washed and blocked. I must say, though, that next time I buy Eucalan, it’s definitely going to be the unscented stuff. Much as I love the smell of jasmine (I drink jasmine green tea, I eat jasmine rice, there is jasmine growing in my garden), my jasmine-scented Eucalan is just a Bit Too Much. I’d rather smell the yarn. Lesson learned.
So now that’s done, I can give my whole attention to that other project. Yes, that one. Forgive me if I’ve seemed persistently and annoyingly coy about it all, but I really do want to wow you with the finished thing. Right now (well not right now because I’m very busy coughing like a barking seal and also blogging), I’m working on crocheting the garden. Amongst a large collection of gardening books that the Stoic Spouse acquired from heaven-knows-where, I found a book called ‘Bright And Easy Borders’, so I’m flicking through its pages and working out how to translate them into crochet.
More very soon.
Happy knitting and crocheting, people.
I can’t wait to see your crocheted garden borders! Get better soon.
I’m working on it. I really, really am!
(And thank you.)
Hope you feel better soon. I’m right there with you on the Eucalan smells. After trial and error, I have found that Wrapture is pleasant enough that I like to smell my shawls when they are done., it’s that good.
I don’t crochet or at least not so that I really consider myself capable, but I am waiting anxiously for the big unveil as my knitting commitment issues keep me from taking on anything that big.
Thank you. And thank you for the Wrapture recommendation. 🙂
(Also, the wait will be over soon, it really will…)
What happened think about this? Do you think a Christmas Tree with lights would be a fun project?
Yes!
I’ll let you take over then ……..
Auto correct is going to make me rend yarn to teensy bits of fiber …..
I hope you get to feeling better soon. The shawl looks lovely even in the dodgey artificial light. It will look ulta amazing in some natural light! 🙂
Thank you on both counts. 🙂
The shawl looks amazing.
Hope you feel better already!
Corine
Thank you and thank you!
Sorry to hear that you are poorly sick 🙁 I don’t think that you have over dramatised it at all because when you feel like you obviously have been feeling you are easily convinced that it has to be at least as bad as you are suggesting, if not worserer!! Take care of yourself and I hope you feel much better today.
Thank you! (And thank you for tolerating my melodrama.)
Get well soon.
Oh dear, is the Eucalan lavender as bad? I got some so that it would repel moths from my woollens as well as cleaning them. That and the shampoo I was using was beginning to run out!
I haven’t tried the lavender, but I’d be wary of buying it after the jasmine, however lovely the smell. (That said, if it repelled moths, I wouldn’t care. That’s a genius idea.)
I haven’t had a cold in ages. I don’t run. Make of that what you will Ms Twisted. That shawl is unmitigated gorgeousness. I would most likely cut off my left leg to have something that scrumptious in my life. Note the words “most likely” in this equation. I reserve the right to NOT cut off my left leg as I have grown particularly fond of it over the course of my life and twood be a bit of a bugger to get used to that empty space where once “leg” used to be. I do covet that shawl however. Socks and shawls that make small boys say “pretty”. Is there no end to your talents Ms T?
I think that realistically it was prospect of the cake that made the boys say ‘pretty’, though I’d love to believe otherwise. And thank you for your kind words about the shawl.
That shawl is truly an item that anyone would covet Ms Twisted. The lacework is beautiful. The colours are beautiful and the boys called it “pretty” because it really and truly is, chocolate cake withstanding. You made something beautiful and you can feel suitably chuffed with yourself as you channeled that gorgeousness and made it into a reality. 🙂
Feel better! I must remember this: training small children to appreciate knitwear with positive cake reinforcement.
Kids ain’t stupid, especially when they sense the proximity of cake.
Hope you feel better soon. Loving the lace! Beautiful x
Thank you on both counts! You’re very kind.