A Sampler Post

Sort of like those candy boxes that have all different things in them.

In no particular order:
For Roxie, our mini soapstone stove with a coffee mug for scale. The curved metal skirt in the front is about 14-1/2 inches (37 cm) wide, and it's 17 inches (43 cm) tall.

No, I don't plan on leaving my mug in front of it, but I'll bet the soapstone top will work just as well as one of those electric mug-warmers.

The weather has warmed back up a bit, so I won't be able to try it as a mug warmer until it cools back off outside.

I saw a hummingbird on some of the New England asters, Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, that I rescued from the bulldozers a couple of years back, but I was too slow to get her photo this time. We had a really dry year in 2007 and I lost a lot of the plants I moved. The survivors are thriving this year, which was much wetter.

Yesterday I was thrilled to see a volunteer plant blooming down by the neighbor's drainage trench. They always remind me of the magician's bouquet that he pulls out of his sleeve.

On the non-knitting front, the Vale of York Viking hoard is going to be on display at the Yorkshire Museum from 18 September to 1 November this year. I particularly love the silver-gilt cup. This is the hoard that was only discovered a couple of years ago.

On the knitting front, lace knitters, we can start the party today!

Susanna Lewis's long out-of-print book, Knitting Lace is being reprinted by Schoolhouse Press and is currently available for pre-orders!

If you were planning to sell your copy to pay for your retirement, I guess you're out of luck. But if you've been watching copies on eBay go for $100, now you can order your very own for $29.95. That's only $5 more than the original price back in 1992.

Now I can finally order my own and quit worrying that the library's will go missing.

One of my favorite things, a cone of . . . gray string?Very nice string. ColourMart cashmerino string, over 2100 yards of it. I'm not sure what it's going to become yet.

When I cut and pasted the Woywod chart, I discovered that the join makes a little three-petalled flower, so I am going to knit enough of a second repeat to make that show.
Our son kept saying, "What flower?" when I showed him this, so I dragged the photo into PhotoStudio and made free with the spray paint tool.
Now I only have about five more pattern rows before the flower is finished, so I must go knit!