My hand spun shawl

Hi Megs,

The socks are great – the colour interesting. Never heard of fading like that – and I have knit with a lot of yarns. Did the label mention anything about it – like not colour safe? Nice anyway but not the colour you bought.

I didn’t know there was a men’s zipper and a woman’s zipper – go figure! Is it the way it connects at the bottom? Not getting this. But “smiling” Nathan looks great in his sweater. And it fits him. As we heard on the radio, men like plain sweaters – not like the one I was going to make your brother. You brought me to my senses!

I finished my triangular shawl. My first FO of the year. It turned out very nice. I wore it to the Garden Club this afternoon. The pattern is Simple Garter Stitch Prairie Shawl, from “Folk Shawls” by Cheryl Oberle. But, as we discussed at Christmas, there is an error in the pattern. If you do the “repeat rows 19 & 20” six times more after you reach 277 and you have done the yo’s at the top stitches, this takes it off on a wild tangent with more holes. Skip that repeat part and go to “knit 12 rows" - but knit 16 rows of garter stitch (it has to be the same width as on the sides) and increase as the ends of every other row as you did when you did the diagonal but not the yo” and it works! It makes sense when you see it. I guess so far in 2007 we both have our frustrations with knitting – mistakes and fading.

The yarn I used is two ply dark brown marino hand spun by my friend Doris Cook. It was so soft before I washed it but after – just so soft and light. I think I am going to have to learn to spin! Doris says she will teach me.

And tonight is the big night – I am going to block my lace shawl with lots of help from Guild members. A few of us are meeting at Hands on Crafts tonight – they have a carpet on the floor big enough to accommodate the thing. We are going to move the display cases around, put a sheet down and pin and pin and pin. I guess I should have gotten some new blocking wires – but those have not hit Yarmouth yet so we are going to do the old method. The last row of the scarf had 1,380 stitches it started with 8 stitches – and then the boarder. Have no idea how big it is going to get when we block it. I will let you know how it goes.

Love ya, Mom XOP