Mortaine’s Blog

I took some time off from the USTravel.today.com blog. Mainly, I needed to do a little life balancing. See, I had an epiphany recently. I have time in my life for work, knitting, reading, writing, social life, tourism, music, etc… but only if I pick 3 of those things to focus on in any given [...]

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

Here it is! I finally finished the Secret of the Stole iii shawl! Shown here on me, in front of the Lajitas Mesa, near Big Bend National Park and Terlingua, Texas.

We arrived yesterday from San Antonio, and took today to go scout Big Bend. The park is gorgeous, if you go for big, sweeping views of colorful buttes and mesas.

It is, however, the rainy season here. Last night we watched as a lightning storm rolled in and played merry havoc with our plans to sleep.

See, at first it was really cool. We went for a moonlit walk, watching the distant lightning silently terrorize south of the Mexico border. It was windy, but hot.

But about an hour later, the storm reached us, and we suddenly realized that the big awning needed to come down, like now. We went out there in our pajamas and wrestled with the awning in the wind. Awnings are one of the most common breakages on an RV. They flap in the wind and very powerful winds can gust the awning to the point where the frame holding it in place breaks. Awnings have little clasps on the sides to help keep them from flapping too much. Ironically, these clasps invariably come loose in the wind.

Anyway, the storm rolled in, and I heard what sounded vaguely like water dripping. Figuring this was just water hitting the ground outside, I ignored it. John got up eventually and said “Um, we have a problem!”

There is a vent in our bathroom ceiling. It’s about the size of a small box fan and it has, in it, a small box fan. It’s to help vent out damp air and steam from the bathroom as needed. When not needed, it has a motorized plastic cover that flips up or down to cover the fan.

The plastic cover… well, we had no idea where it was. We’d heard it rattling on the road yesterday, but fixing it was a very low priority when we pulled in.

Not at 11:30 PM when rainwater was pouring in through the ceiling! And with lightning striking less than a mile away, it would have been suicidal to climb onto the roof to try and fix it! We put a basin under the vent and hoped it would catch most of the water.

Needless to say, we slept poorly last night. We talked about what would happen if the RV was struck by lightning– would we be safe inside? Should we hightail it to a nearby shelter? I was counting on the nearby mesa being tall enough to draw the lightning, but the fact is, this park is very open and exposed.

In the morning, we both felt wretched, but we survived the night. The RV survived. The ground was damp. The bathroom was a wreck– thank goodness we’re in the desert! It dried quickly. And I got up and had coffee and got dressed in time to snap a few photos of the shawl before we headed into the park.

Note the pretty glittery beads? Those are light pink– they really show up well on the shawl, but they don’t show up well in photographs.

The yarn is Malabrigo laceweight, and it’s one of my favorite yarns. Wonderfully soft and very easy to knit with– it’s a heavier laceweight than most people are used to, which is probably why I like it so much!

Although the pattern’s name hasn’t been revealed yet, it seems to have some relation to the state of Colorado, and another famous national park therein.

OK, ok. Not really…. WebWorks Roundup was last week here in Austin, Texas. I spoke on Tuesday about developing a paperless home office system to help combat the piles and piles of paper in your life. I also learned a bunch of great stuff, including something I’m going to try to implement more in my own writing, at least.

At the end of the conference, there were some prizes (for things like “first person to pick up their name badge” and “first person in the bar”) and a drawing for a few goodies. The grand prize was a 1-hour introductory flight in a small plane.

Guess who won?

Jennifer is the WebWorks employee who had chosen the prize and set up the flight for me. She’s a private pilot who learned here in Austin, and I told her I’d rather do it here before I left, if I could.

We extended our stay here in Weird Austin for 2 days so I could fly on Sunday at 2 PM. It was rather windy yesterday, and I was very nervous. The instructor, George, was very helpful and calm, and confident. Which only helped a little….

About 45 minutes into the flight, I started to feel nauseous. Really, really nauseous. Part of that was the ride– there were a number of updrafts and I was, simply put, scared half to death. George was very calm and reassured, though, so I should have been more at ease. I wasn’t, sad to say.

At one point, however, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had that “aura” you get when you know you’re going to lose your lunch, and I told George I needed him to take over. I spent the rest of the flight (including a bump that I’m sure George thought would mean some pretty massive cleanup in the Cessna!) with my hand over my mouth. As we were coming in, I felt a lot better, and my stomach settled down somewhere around 1800 ft.

I do believe if it had been my first flight, I would have felt so awful, I wouldn’t fly again. But since I flew 4 years ago in Watsonville, I accepted this flight as “part of the range of normal,” and yes, if the chance comes my way again, or if I ever can afford both the time and the money at the same time, I would do it again!

As you know, I’ve been working on a couple of lace projects (and not really blogging much– there are reasons for that, mostly having to do with work and burnout).

Anyway, I finished clues 6 and 7 in Secret of the Stole III:

It’s hard to see the lace pattern, but there are flowers (or snowflakes, or trees, or abstract 6-lobed things) tracking across the shawl, with the background going from very open to solid, then back open again.

This stole is 70% done. There are 9 clues total, which means there are 2 more clues left, though according to the designer, the last clues are a little shorter than the first ones (she is aware that Mystery Shawl 4 started 4 weeks ago). However, I think of it as 70% because with 9 clues, that means I’ll be 90% done when I complete knitting the stole. Blocking accounts for the other 10%– I can live with that.

The yarn is Malabrigo lace, which I bought here in Austin, Texas. [Yes, those of you who read my blog purely for the travel posts will miss that hint! We're in Texas!] The beads are a pink-rose. You really can’t see them very well in my photos, but they absolutely pop on the shawl.

I continue to be boggled by the question of “what the heck am I going to do with all these shawls?” But I try not to think too much about it. The answer will come. Either it will be “wear it!” or the right recipient will come forth. The answer in this case is probably wear it– the green is the same color as my birthstone, after all.

I also cast on and knit Clue 1 for the Mystery Shawl 4, using the yarn I frogged from the Magickal Earth Shawl:

The little knitted-in beads are a matte silver-lined amber. They have a kind of soft gold appearance to them, which I think works with this particular pattern. I don’t want to overwhelm the lace pattern with the beads, after all.

This one is for my sister-in-law, who was supposed to get the Magickal Earth Shawl, but will instead get a pretty beaded shawl which I hope she likes anyway.

There are 6 clues in this mystery shawl-along, with the 1st and 2nd clues being heavily beaded, and clues 3 and 4 being knitted lace (I don’t know about clues 5 and 6– they’re not out yet!)

Both ends of this shawl are worked at the same time, then grafted in the middle. Which means, if you don’t wish to tackle one half, then confront the other half right when you feel like “ah! I’ve finished!” you can get both of them done at the same time by casting on both sides and knitting them simultaneously. You do have to be very conscientious about not mixing up your yarns, so that you don’t accidentally knit across and join the two pieces accidentally.

I use this method (knitting both at the same time) with many pairs of socks, to avoid the dreaded Second Sock Syndrome (SSS, which also takes the forms of Second Mitten Syndrome, and sometimes, Second Sleeve Syndrome). With the shawl, it seems to take forever, perhaps because the shawl is 113 stitches across (times two), with a beading method I find fiddly (put the beads on after knitting the stitch– I usually put them on first, so the beading hook is in my dominant right hand). And I will admit– the problems I had before with the Magickal Earth Shawl may have also been related to the yarn. The yarn is… I don’t know, but I don’t love it. It’s everything I normally love in a lace yarn, but it just doesn’t groove with me.