Enjoying the weekend

This is my last free weekend for three months. I'm really enjoying that I don't have to do anything today until 3:30ish. The house is mostly clean; I don't have sewing that has to be finished for a deadline. So I'm sitting here knitting and watching Dirty Jobs and OPB.

Next week, Mom and Dad will have left for Alaska and I will be at their house every Saturday doing yard and garden work. It's kind of a pain but I get the produce from the garden. Of course that means I'll have canning and freezing to do. I've never done canning by myself so it could be a bit entertaining. I've been canning with Mom since I was little but I'll have to look up the times and whether I need the pressure canner or if a hot water bath canner will be fine. I need to make some applesauce when the apples are ripe. I'd like to can fruit, which means I'll have to buy some flats of fruit when it comes on.

Monday is going to be difficult. This is what our offices looked like at about 3:30 yesterday:














My two student workers and I stayed at work until 6:15 last night to finish up. I packed the camera so I didn't get final pictures. I'll have to try to remember to take my camera on Monday. Unfortunately, the work computer wasn't working well and didn't save several pictures and gave everything a pink cast. Correcting the color left the pictures kind of...off. Hopefully my camera will do a better job. I'm not going to think about moving again until Monday now.

I'm off to enjoy my weekend!

Phew... no wonder...

I thought this shawl was taking forever on every row so I counted the stitches... my most recent row was 501 stitches and each row adds two stitches; every other row adds an additional two stitches. Ooof! My goal is to have at least 6 inches of border. I think I'm at 4. I wonder if I'll make it.

I've come a long ways from this:



Here is where I am now.




I didn't swatch so I don't know how this yarn will block out. It's wool so I assume it will block nicely but I can't measure my shawl and estimate the finished size. What that means is that I don't know when to stop. Wool often blocks out 2.5 times larger than the original. I'm hoping for that in this.

The yarn is Knit Picks Gossamer in the colorway Caribbean. The colorway has been discontinued and I picked up four skeins each of the Caribbean and another color called Sweet pea when it was on clearance. It's a lace weight. The pattern (Multnomah) called for a fingering weight so I had to make some adjustments for the lace weight (Size 00 needles). So far I'm really pleased with the results.