Miscellaneous Thursday

Thanks to everyone who left a comment on my starling trapping post. I believe that's the most comments I've ever gotten since I started blogging and I certainly enjoyed reading what you all had to say on this subject.

I've been busy this week working on some of the things on my "Projects to Be Completed by the End of November" list. I finished this prayer shawl last Sunday. This is one of my "Pay It Forward" projects. I hope to get it shipped off to the recipient this weekend.

Here are some "chemo caps" I knitted for Cari at the Undomestic blog.

I originally thought I was going to use some soft cashmere/merino blend yarn and then when I read the care instructions on the ball band label it said that hand washing was required. I don't know about you, but my handwashable wool items tend to just pile up in the laundry room before I get around to handwashing them. I figured if Cari wasn't feeling well the last thing she probably wants to do is handwashing her hats and if someone's coming in to help her with chores, they won't have to worry about them either. The brown hat on top is a machine washable wool/acrylic blend and the 2 hats on the bottom are 100% machine wash & dry acrylic (Soft Yarn by Red Heart). I have never used this yarn before and I loved knitting with it. I also loved trying out these 3 new patterns from Knitting Pattern Central.

I ordered some new knitting pattern books last week from Amazon and they arrived on Monday. I'll save these projects for January (after I get my Christmas projects finished up).

Fortunately, these knitting patterns have been fairly simple (good for multi-tasking), so I've also been watching The West. I really like all of the Ken Burns documentaries and The West is no exception. I tried getting it from NetFlix, but was only able to receive Part 1, so I checked with my local library and once again, they came to my rescue and were able to get Parts 2-9 for me on an interlibrary loan. Because these are a 7-day loan, I've been watching a couple parts each evening. Tonight after supper I'm heading back to the library to return Parts 5 & 6 and pick up Part 7 (which arrived yesterday at the library) and then I hope to finish watching the last 3 parts before Saturday.

Have any of you watched this series? What did you think of it? I'm learning a lot of things about the events that settled the West and changed the United States forever, but I have to say there are also a lot of things revealed in these stories that make me less than proud to be an American--especially in regards to how the Native Americans were dealt with.

Snow & Knitting

As you can probably tell, there hasn't been much going on in my life lately that's even worthy of a photograph or a blog post, but it's been a while since I've posted anything, so here are a few things from today that were worth taking pictures of and talking about. We had snow--all day! Most of the time it was just light flurries, but there were some heavier bands and we actually had a couple inches piled up on the deck by the time I got home from work. The grassy areas are still warm enough that most of the snow melted during the day, but temps are going to drop overnight and the ground is already white, so for the first time in many years, there will be snow on the ground for the Minnesota firearms deer hunting opener. That's going to make a lot of people happy......


I stopped on the way home from work at my LYS (local yarn shoppe). She's recently moved to another new location and I wanted to stop by to check out the new spot and wouldn't you know I found some yarn to purchase! (I am a pathetic yarn addict--you should have seen the beautiful mohair with a silver thread in it that I almost purchased instead of this!) Noro makes these wonderful yarns where the color changes are really lengthy and it gives your knitting a really neat striped effect.

This is a ball of sock yarn, but I'm going to try knitting a shawl with it. I love the colors--you can't see it really clearly, but there's an olive green color in there and way down inside the ball there's also a lovely slate blue that fades into a purpley-gray color. The hardest thing will be to choose which of my shawl patterns will showcase this yarn best. (I'll be sure to post pictures once some knitting progress has been made.)

Almost a year ago, I left a comment on Jorun's knitting blog from Sweden. She was doing a knitting "pay it forward." In today's mail, there was a package for me all the way from Sweden. Here's what Jorun knitted for me:

Isn't this the cutest little felted bag? I wish you could feel how soft the yarn is. Jorun told me in an e-mail that this was her own design. As you can see from the picture above, it's going to be the perfect little bag to carry a small knitting project in (like this sock I've almost finished).

So now it's time for me to "pay it forward." I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on this post requesting to join this Pay It Forward exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.