Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

Well, sort of.

I returned home on July 6th. After 1 week of catching up at work, DH and I were off for a week of frolicking with my immediate family in celebration of my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. We “children” had rented a large house (we had to have space to sleep 20). The family spent the week reacquainting ourselves with the area in Michigan where we used to live between 1968 and 1974. We stayed right on Lake Michigan - the sunsets!





A few weeks ago I went down to the market at Stitches to see Franklin. It’s very interesting to watch Franklin as he works – he makes a connection with each knitter in front of his lens. While I was there, Sally Melville and Beth Brown Reinsel stopped by to participate in Franklin's project. Even though photos were prohibited at the event, I took a chance in order to photograph Franklin at work.









On the knitting front, the Landscape Shawl has been giving me problems - well, maybe I'm my worst own enemy. The pattern is deceptively simple - which means I don't pay as much attention as I should. I've ripped back on this one more than I did on Hazel Carter's Violets By The River (and that's A LOT of ripping!).

As for the purple Fiddlesticks laceweight, I'm tempted to not go any further on the MS3 and instead begin The Song of Hiawatha Lace Stole. I have a feeling that the MS3 will languish in the WIPs pile because I don't like how the pattern ended and this stole would have been for me. I have a couple more choices of patterns. I'd like to start on something this week, so I need to make up my mind.

In the meantime, I would like to start on sweaters for my 3 nieces - who have specifically requested "sweaters like Mrs. Weasley knit" in Grffyndor maroon with the initial of their first names in Gryffndor gold. I don't like to knit on deadlines - why add stress to an enjoyable part of my life? - but I would like to get these done for Christmas. I picked up the Charmed Knits book at Stitches and was going to use one of the sweater patterns, but I want to make the sweaters in the round, so I think I'm going to use a raglan pattern I have and just duplicate stitch their initials onto the finished sweaters. We'll see - famous last words and all that...