more good weekend

. . . than you can shake a stick at.

first of all, yesterday was a GLORIOUS fall day out there. temperature is in the mid-60s, quite windy, the sky a brilliant blue (for a change), and the leaves appear to be changing color by the minute. we had a great bike ride last evening, racing the dark to get home. and it was still early when we got in.
boy oh boy, i hope we have this kind of weather for rhinebeck! (i know it will probably rain at least part of the time—it always does—but one can hope, and i am an optimist at heart).

it was a perfect day for trying out the new camera . . . the one i didn’t think we needed, but now i could be glad about having. i think i mentioned that david is a techophile. i just have to make a mere mention of wishing an appliance had a better feature or other, and he is online, searching for the latest and greatest. and me—i hate changing instruments, at least at first, even when it’s good for me. he’s been talking about me getting a new camera for quite a while, ever since he saw how much i use it on the blog. i, of course, could go on using the old camera til it died—i have no clue that it is not good enough for the job, except i wished it worked better for closeups (that was before i discovered the macro lens; duh).

well, over the summer the (4-year-old) camera DID start dying—shutting itself off just cuz it felt like it, doing weird flashy things, and then finally, not saving pictures (arrgggh). and david pretty much insisted that we upgrade, probably due to my complaining. so friday, this arrived on our doorstep.

(just look at that starlight wrap, reaching out to get her tentacles around this thing—and right in front of camoSox, too. she’s a troublemaker, mark my words . . .). so yesterday i tried it out and failed miserably, not realizing that . . . um, that it did not have a memory card installed.

so this morning i tried again, and managed to get a few shots squeezed off. it’s obvious that i will need time to “become one” with this camera, just like the other one. it’s good to know that i am not alone in my learning curve.

on saturday i swatched almost all day for the man lace shawl. yes! we can now officially call it a shawl, because david called it a shawl the other day. when he was telling me what a good pattern it would make to sell during the pre-christmas season. and i quote:
“because . . . you know . . . everyone will want one.”
how cute is that?? he’s just a marketing whiz, that one . . .

so, anyway. i spent quite a bit of time swatching to find the right stitch. there are many, many stitches we both liked in the book, but i knew they would not all work with the yarn—it’s a very hi-contrast tweed, so the speckling will obscure a lot of patterns. we very much liked this one

and decided that a smoother yarn would play up the simple elegance of this stitch better, so we are saving it for the next manShawl (yes! there will be a next one, hopefully in DK cashmere).

i kinda knew david would like this next stitch the best, even though he did waver between it and the one above.

i could tell that the deep cushy texture would knit up nice and cozy in this yarn and that he would fall for it (he likes cozy). you can’t tell in this shot, but there are lots of holes! in fact, i found another version of the same stitch in another book, which enlarges the repeat by two stitches and two rows, so that it is even hole-ier, and he said he wanted the bigger one.

now, about the border. i know the (seemingly) best idea would be to put a nice plain garter stitch border on it. my instinct tells me that ANYTHING with an irregular edge of any kind would be considered gurly-with-pink-swirlies, but i saw this sawtooth garter stitch border in one of my books that looked actually quite menacing, so i may take a second look at that.

just a peek i mean. really.