Water Under the Bridge

Oh, my! have I been remiss in my blogging! I do apologise, and offer the following lengthy post, divided into segments, as atonement.


July 2/3


This is Chart A of Clue I of the Mystery Stole 3 completed. The sharper-eyed among you may have noticed that it's on a different needle than the previous pic. I had bought a brand-new pair of 14" Inox #4s for this project, eagerly awaited their arrival in the mail, and cast on with them immediately. By the time I got to the point of where the previous picture of progress was taken, I had fallen completely in hatred. They were horrible! They were sticky and unpredictably grabby, and I was constantly wrestling with the stitches. A very nice lady on the KnitList was destashing, and offered a bunch of old needles for sale for a reasonable price, so I bought them. Among them was a pair of 10" Brittany birch #4s, to which I immediately switched the stole. Wow! The Brittanys are smooth, yet grippy, and bent in exactly the same places my own hands would bend them. I like them as much as I hate the Inox. The stole is proceeding much more easily now.


July 4


Of all the words written regarding 'the nation's birthday' this year, I found the Tsarina's celebration of her grandfather's birthday to be the most meaningful. Russia is a poorer nation today because so many people like her family left there. The USA is a far richer nation because so many of them, and so many like them from everywhere in the world, chose to come here. Happy Birthday to the melting pot!


July 5


Here is Chart A of the stole completed, once again. It doesn't look much different from the previous picture, does it? It is, though. In fact, it's a completely different piece of fabric! What happened was, a cat decided the knitting was an extremely dangerous and fierce dragon. In the process of bravely attacking and killing this threat to domestic harmony, the knitting was destroyed past any hope of salvage. That'll teach me not to Put Things Away. In a way, I'm rather more pleased than not. I never did like the way the bottom point looked on version the first, and I fought it and fought it and fought it, every stitch of the way. Version the second has been much better behaved, and knitted up about three times faster than the first. I actually got ALL of this done in one (rather lengthy, I admit) sitting! Don't the pearls look pretty? They probably are too large, but I don't care. I like them!


July 6-10


I've done it to myself again. I follow links in blog posts. I find out all sorts of fascinating things that way, and end up in some strange places, when the links have links and so ad infinitum. (The 'net is quite possibly the greatest invention since the printing press, IMHO.) In this particular case, I saw a picture, and fell madly in love with the subject. I posted on both the KnitList and the MS3 list (which grew from just over 4,000 to 6,910 people after the Harlot blogged about it! USA Today interviewed Melanie yesterday.) trying to find more information about it. No immediate answers, but a LOT of people expressed interest in knowing the answers when I got them. The result is I am now a List Mom! The picture on the home page is the one that started it all. As of this morning, 384 people seem to share my passion. I wish this blog had as many readers!


July 11


And this brings us up to date. In between e-mails, and ListMom chores, I have been knitting, and Clue 1, all 100 rows of it, is finished! Here it is:



It's only finger-patted into shape, of course, and will look much, much better when blocked out properly. I took this photo at 2:30 this morning. I somehow believe that I will end up adding the "slow bee" button to the blog, though. I'm still way behind, unless I can complete all 50 rows of Clue 2 before Friday morning, when Clue 3 is released, anyway. Care to estimate the odds of that actually happening?