I'm awake... enough already!

It's Saturday. It's 7:00 a.m. It snowed. We live on a bus route. I'm up.

Why am I up? Because we live on a bus route, the city makes sure that this street is plowed. That means snow plows. They're loud. As well, we live across the street from a mall. By 6:00 a.m., they have their parking lot cleared. They use snow plows, too. Did I mention that they're noisy? And then there are the sirens. First snowfall = accidents.

I'm up, so I may as well be productive and blog (and then get back to my knitting).


This picture was taken about half an hour ago. Apparently, there's more of this stuff on the way and the temperatures are supposed to drop. According to one forecaster, we may see temperatures lower than we've seen in the last 20 years this winter. I guess we can say that winter has finally arrived. At least, the skiers will be happy. For those, like me, who have never and will never be skiers (what? and break my bones?? no thanks!), this is knitting weather. Now, if only there was a fire place to go along with the knitting.

And speaking of knitting, this week, a ball of Drops Alpaca shouted at me that it wanted to be a Zetor shawl. Who am I to ignore a ball of yarn? I did start the Zetor once before in some lovely yarn that Robbyn sent me, but it just didn't feel right. (When that little skein of lovliness lets me know what it wants to be, I'll listen!)

So far, I've done three repeats of the second chart (the main body of the shawl) and am very happy with how it's looking.

To take this picture, I slid all the stitches on to blocking wires and pinned out the top edge. So much easier than trying to pin it out so you can see the pattern.

Blocking wires.... now, there's a purchase I won't regret! Already I can tell that blocking, from here on in, will be a dream. A wire down each side, one down the centre to keep it straight, perhaps two along the top edge (the wires are 36"; the shawl will be wider than that), a few pins to keep everything in place..... oh yeah! Blocking will be a breeze.

I've also been spending time with the Faroese shawl for my mom, but it hasn't had it's picture taken this week. I'd say that, stitch-wise, I'm about half way. Row-wise, I'm about a third of the way, but the rows are getting shorter and shorter. There were a couple of hiccups in the process, but they've been sorted out and it's knitting up nicely now.

At one point (the day I started Zetor), I'd worked on the shawl during my lunch break and noticed a dropped stitch... three rows down. I anchored the stitches (a k2tog) and put it away until I could concentrate enough to repair it. The following afternoon, I pinned it out, re-knit those stitches and continued on. Sounds easy, but it does take some concentration and the ability to read your stitches. Apart from that, it isn't difficult, just fiddly.

Ok, I'm rambling now. Time for another cup of tea.... and more knitting.