Sorta Winter

We've been getting little sprinkles of snow, just barely enough for my husband to take our son sliding on the hill in the neighbor's hayfield, but not quite enough to cover the tall grass.

Outdoors, it looks like winter is just starting. If we are lucky, the cold weather will hold the fruit trees back and keep the flower buds from swelling and freezing. The newspaper said so far, it looks like only peach trees were advanced enough to lose buds.

It was beautiful weather for knitting on the Pi shawl. I decided it was long enough after 11 repeats on the outer ring, and cast on 15 stitches to knit the seed stitch border.

You can see the start of the border on the left side of the picture. Although I wanted a wide border that would lay flat and not curl up, I was not sure I liked the strong horizontal lines of the seed stitch, and worried that it would contract the lace knitting too much. But I think it is growing on me as it grows, and after three repeats in the lace portion, it doesn't seem to be pulling in.

I knitted 3 rows of seed stitch across the bottom before I cast on for the knitted-on border. Border and all, it is about 23 inches long. I wanted a shawl that would be just short of my sitting on it, because I didn't want to sit on the edge and yank it off my shoulders. This looks about right.


I finished pattern 21 and started pattern 22 of Sampler M, and I worked a couple more rows on the Valdani bag. I wasn't at all happy with my eyelets in pattern 21, but after frogging them a couple of times, and trying about three different ways of knitting them, I decided I had learned enough about eyelets made on six yarnovers, and went on to pattern 22, "Scales".