Mossy Cottage Knits

Are Our Lives Exciting, or Whut?

The Mysterious K and I are both feeling a little smug since we got our flu shots looooong before people remembered that, why, yes, the flu did kill 40 million people in 1918, yes, it is still a deadly disease and, yes, clinics can run out of vaccine. (What I remember about the day I got my injection is the elderly Scot in line in front of me who was looking at the signs for the women’s and men’s bathrooms and chuckling about how, in Scotland, the fact that one silhouette was wearing a skirt wouldn’t tell you anything.) However, our smugness has been tempered somewhat by the fact that, flu shot or no, The Mysterious K spent the weekend flat on her back with some sort of cold-y bug, perhaps Flu Junior. In supportive, nurturing, partner-like fashion, I avoided her completely. Okay, okay, first I delivered her a bag full of cans of chicken noodle soup, throat lozenges, orange juice, lemon for her tea, and chocolate, then I stayed away from her. Okay, well, again, not completely. There was that little visit on Sunday. Oh, and then there were all the phone calls. (Okay, so I need to work on this “staying away” thing.)

Knitting Knews
Since it has become painfully obvious that stranded two-color knitting and I are not going to get along, I suppose it's time to learn more about cable and lace knitting. To this end, last weekend I purchased my first laceweight yarn, some JaggerSpun Zephyr (see color 16, called "Teal" on other sites although it's truly more a mint color). I do not see myself getting sucked in to Shawl World, especially since most of the patterns say awful things like "get a 9-foot long circular needle and cast on 1,489,232 stitches" so mostly I plan to use this yarn for swatchin' and learnin'. Here, a couple of swatches I knit, one using a purple wool-mohair dk/worsted weight waste yarn from Le Stash Chez Moi, and another using the Zephyr. The pattern is the Madeira Lace pattern from Barbara Walker, volume 1. (Confession Time: Did anyone else besides me look at the pattern on the paper towel under the swatches and try to translate it into knit, purl?) On Wednesday, the painful story of another lace swatch which I frogged, at last count, fifteen times.

A question for sock knitters: If you add some lace at the top of a sock, since the lace is not ribbed and has no give, how the heck do ya' make sure the lace part will fit around your foot?

Dye Garden Dyegest
On hiatus until spring (or sooner, if we start seedlings). See you then!