lily daze

everything is coming in so early this year—we are in blueberry season already; we got an email form the farm that picking begins on thursday. and look, my yellow day lilies began to open yesterday.

my friend anne marie was here for a couple of days this week and we had a great visit. since she used to be in our spinning class, we invited everyone over for dinner on sunday to visit with her, too. i cooked a curry, beckie and linda brought appetizers from our local indian restaurant, and helena made a chocolate dessert. linda also brought bindi for each of us to wear, which was a lot of fun and darned if i didn’t get any photos (sorry, i was busy in the kitchen!)

but i do have more lily photos that are in the spirit of the evening. one thing about our spinning class—we sure do know how to laugh and be silly.

anyway, it was so much fun to chat and knit with with her in person; though we spend plenty of time emailing and working together (anne marie is one of our amazing proofreaders, as well as a test knitter), we miss spending real time with each other. i’ve got a club deadline at the end of the week, so i’ve been working hard on that and having company gave me an excuse to take a bit of a break.

by yesterday morning though, it was back to work for me. after anne marie and sam left, i spent the whole day writing at my desk and did a good day’s work. i often forget how much more productive i am when i include breaks for knitting, exercise, or just relaxing into my schedule. i always come back refreshed and ready to crank out work.

hmmm, let’s have some more flowers to contemplate that last bit . . .

(i love the orange ones, don’t you?)

while anne marie was here, i got lots done on the back piece of my holda cardigan and last night, i got to the shoulder bind off.

i’ve got the shoulders on scrap yarn until after the front and back pieces are blocked—i want to do a three-needle bind off, but i want the pieces separated for blocking. i love the photos of the sweater today because they show the colorway—purple haze—so accurately, which is a very gray plum that often photographs as a stronger purple. it is SO my color.

mmm, how can you not want to smoosh your face into that fabric? besides being a luxurious fiber blend of lambswool, cashmere, and angora, the holda yarn from spirit trail fiberworks has a lovely, velvety texture and a soft denseness due to its many, many plies (twelve all together, i think).

i finally decided on a name for this sweater the other day; it will be called caïssa, for the goddess of chess. i know that jen, genius of spirit trail color ways, likes to name her yarns after goddesses, so this one seems just right. now i can’t remember how i stumbled upon it, but i was surprised that there even was a goddess of chess; who knew??

as you can see in the photo above, i’ve begun a sleeve and hopefully, they will knit up very quickly, compared to that back piece. although, there are two of them, sigh. still, this is knitting i can pretty much take anywhere and with TNNA coming up next weekend, i should have some good hours of knitting on that trip in which to complete at least one of them.

my deadline for the club at this point revolves only around writing; my secret knitting right now is all for future club shipments. i always feel like deadline week is a little breather in which i might plan and begin some non-club knitting, so naturally my thoughts wander to my overly-full mental “box of ideas”. and of course, my overly-big, but very real, work stash.

summer is the season when i get a yen to begin a little lace shawlette or scarf in fine yarn. with long hours of gorgeous sunlight available now in which to work comfortably with small needles and stitches and the need for lighter-weight projects to work on in sticky weather, the season is upon us.

that said, i still enjoy a lace yarn most when it has a bit of substance and body—completely limp lace yarn is becoming more difficult for me to use, since there is little tactile feedback to substitute for the sharp eyesight i don’t possess any more.

this skein of stella merino/silk from briar rose fibers has been calling to me ever since i brought it home from wooster a couple of weeks ago. it has a bit more twist that most fine lace yarns, which gives it a little more tooth and body, as well as a smooth sheen. while i was working in chris’s booth at the show, we discussed a new design using this yarn (which is interchangeable with the 100% merino bella for all intents and purposes).

chris is just getting into lace knitting a bit—she knit her very first lace project (les abeilles) in the fall AND she enjoyed it. so she’s thinking that something simple to work that has a lot of impact would be great. well, the color sure has impact, doesn’t it? i think it will be extremely striking as a lace hem.

i recently designed my first crescent-shaped shawl (wandering thyme, for our BNK club) and really enjoyed knitting it. i’d like to do another soon, in order to try out a few adjustments to the shaping that i think will be pretty. so while i’m writing and working with words this week, in another part of my head i’m visualizing possible stitch patterns for this piece. i have a few in mind; hopefully in a couple of days, when my wiring is done, i’ll be ready to chart up something and begin work on that.

but for now, it’s time to get back to work—i’ve got a club that’s chomping at the bit to see what we have planned for their june yarn (if you’re curious, visit the june spoiler thread in our barenaked clubhouse on ravelry).

so that’s it for now; i leave you with my last flower photo of the day—honeysuckle.