I'm back

It's been a long time since I've posted. We've been busy. We went on a trip. Before the trip, there was a lot of things to get done. After the trip, I came down with a nasty cold. It was so bad, I didn't even feel like working on anything. I still have a lingering cough from that cold. D had a birthday. That meant a lot of things needed to be done for that. We just decorated our outdoor tree with lights and bows. We don't do an indoor tree, but we have a blue spruce tree outside that serves as our Christmas tree. I think things will settle down a little now. There are no more family trips planned. The next kiddie birthday isn't until next year.

I've worked on and off on the entrelac stole. It didn't come on the trip with us because I didn't feel like lugging it around. It's grown since I've last posted about it. I plan on using 10 skeins of yarn and I've just finished the 6th one. I still have a long way to go. It's turning out nicely and it does keep my lap warm when I'm working on it. I can't wait to get it finished so that I can use it. I really hope that I finish it during this winter.





This is the project that I took along on the trip. This is the sampler shawl from the book Victorian Lace Today. I'm using Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud in Iris and size 3 bamboo circular needles. There are two versions of this shawl in the book. I'm doing the beginner sampler because it's smaller and I had enough yarn for this one. I'm enjoying working on this shawl. The stitch patterns are easy to memorize after a glance at the beginning of the row. The patterns change often enough to prevent boredom. This shawl will have a knitted on border. I pinned it out quickly on a piece of felt to see how it looks so far. It looks like it will be wider than the stated width of 25 inches. I'll have to be sure to stretch it more length-wise than width-wise when I block it. I had a hard time taking a picture of this. Whenever I tried to resize it, it looked terrible. So, you get this cropped version. At least this one looks decent when you click on it to see the 100% version.