Knitting Report

It takes me awhile, but I do get some of my knitting projects completed now and again. This past week I completed a prayer shawl that I started sometime last year. I wanted a project on hand that didn't have a very complicated pattern so that I would have something I could take along on road trips or anywhere else I might be confined for awhile without internet access. I had not made much progress on it and when I picked it up a couple of weeks ago, I was only 1-1/2 skeins into a 5 skein project.

It was what I decided to take with me to the hospice center where I sat with my mother during her last illness. I would knit and chatter to her and knit and watch tv and knit and sit in the quiet stillness. Over the course of a week I had the shawl about 3/4 completed. There is nothing like knitting a nice long stretch of uncomplicated pattern to keep your nerves calm and your spirit peaceful under stress.

I didn't touch the shawl for a couple of weeks, but I decided this past week it should be completed without delay, partly as a memorial for my mother. Everytime I wear this shawl, I will associate it with her.


It's a little bit hard to see here, but the pattern is a wide 5x5 stitch rib, which creates a textured stripe effect. The pattern came from a book of prayer shawl patterns. If you have not heard of the prayer shawl ministry, there are scores of knitters out there who knit shawls that are blessed by ministers and priests and then distributed to people in physical or spiritual pain. It is a lovely idea and many terminal patients or grieving relatives have been given a prayer shawl to provide comfort during trying times. I didn't expect that I would be knitting my own prayer shawl during a very trying time.


It occurred to me while I was setting up to photograph the shawl that I never posted a photo of the second Noro silk scarf that I knitted last year. It is an incredibly easy pattern and the yarn does all the work. The first scarf was in earth tones. I decided the second scarf would be as far away from the first palette as possible, so I chose yarn with an abundance of purple and blue. I love these scarves and I love the rhythm of the pattern. I may just have to start another one.

Next up, I am looking for a pretty scarf pattern for my newly acquired silk yarn. I am currently paging through patterns and looking for inspiration.

I see this calling for a lace pattern and knitted lace is never easy. This one may take me awhile. And I won't be taking it with me on road trips.

Did I tell you the story about the last intricate pattern I started and made the big mistake of taking with me to work on while a co-worker drove us to a meeting in Dallas? I had started an afghan with a lovely tree of life pattern and had worked enough of the pattern to feel like I could risk working on it while riding along in the back seat. Everything was going great until just before we hit Dallas and my circular needle unexpectedly broke. The 5 inches of completed afghan (thank God it wasn't any more than that) quickly laddered and I am not experienced enough to be able to recover that kind of disaster. Straight knitting I might have been able to recover, but this pattern was a very involved cable this way, cable that way pattern and there was no way. Someday I have to go back and restart that project, but not yet.

My hobbies have a way of taking turns. Sometime I feel like genealogy, sometimes I feel like working in miniatures and sometimes I feel like knitting. Lately it is knitting that is speaking to my soul.

But, I was up in the dollhouse room earlier this week and I found my fingers getting itchy to start a new roombox. I think it won't be long now before the dollhouse muse comes back into my life.

Until then, k1, p1, ssk, psso....

LSW