Mortaine’s Blog

Nearly everyone you talk to will tell you “the Canadian side is prettier!” when planning a visit to Niagara Falls , and that might be true. It’s been about 16 years since I was in the Canadian side of the Falls. However, the American side is quite majestic, and affords a view of both sides [...]

Originally posted to Life on the Road. Read the rest of the entry there!.

Quick knitting update: I finished hint #3 yesterday while at my dad’s house. John and I went over for brunch and hung out all day with Dad and Kim, lounging around the back porch in the sun, making goofy faces at the dogs, watching a movie, and generally having a good time.

I finished Hint #2 early last week:

I’ve started on hint #3 as of yesterday.

Meanwhile, last week I also went to WEBS, which was awesome and magnificent, and I bought… well, I didn’t buy too much– just enough to feel like I’d indulged myself. I should have probably picked up yarn-on-cone, but… anyway. Here is some of the lovely pink laceweight I bought.

Next door to WEBS is the WEBS bead shop, where I bought some little coppery green-with-pink-tones beads to go with the yarn:

This eventual shawl is the counterpoint to the green Secret of the Stole (above), which is green yarn and pink beads. See? It’s like some kind of creative balance or something.0

On top of some cashmere/silk from WEBS and the beautiful slate blue yarn my friends gave me in Portland, I have certainly topped-off my yarn stash for the near future.

And yes, WEBS did break my shopping moratorium. I chalk it up to… you know what? I’m not going to make an excuse for this, nor am I feeling apologetic. It was a breach of the moratorium, but I don’t care. The laceweight was gorgeous and affordable. It was gorgeous yarn. The cashmere was on sale for $4/ball. I couldn’t not buy it!

After I got back from my trip, we traveled to Niagara Falls and lost our Internet connection! So, we’ve been in the land of no-net for about a week. Doubly frustrating, because our backup connectivity (my cell phone) failed, and the backup-backup (park WiFi) failed! I’ve been able to check email, and get online for [...]

Originally posted to Life on the Road. Read the rest of the entry there!.

I frogged the Magickal Earth Shawl. I was knitting it on size 3 needles. After 8 months of working on the edging (not consistently, mind you), I had 7 repeats of the edging pattern done. The edging calls for 48 repeats, which means I had one half of one side of the edging. It was already 5 feet long, which meant the “shawl” would have been 10′ x 10′. I was knitting it for my sister-in-law, but I know she and I are about the same height…. and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t need an alpaca-silk lace bedspread.

RIP:

And now the yarn is free again to be used for something else! Perhaps even the same shawl on smaller needles… but probably not. I didn’t like knitting it on the very small needles that the pattern really calls for.