Oh Bother!

I love blogging. Really, I do. That said, though, I really, really, really hate it when you have a post ready to publish and the program you’re using decides to crash. That’s what  happened earlier. I had my post ready to hit “publish” and I got that error message. You know the one.

So, now I have to remember what I wrote or start over completely. I’m starting over, trying to remember everything.

There has been knitting this week, but not really much to show. The cardigan is coming along nicely, with about 4” finished, and the first buttonhole inserted. The rows are getting shorter now; after the current pattern row, I’ll be down to about 500 stitches (from a cast on of 915). Yesterday, not much knitting happened because of a migraine (kept me in bed pretty much all day), but I did work a few rows on the Shetland Christening dress. It’s all garter stitch at this stage, so there’s no brain work involved. Perfect for those days when thinking hurts… literally.

This week also saw the growth of my stash, thanks to Ann (once more, Ann, thank you so much for thinking of me). She stopped by the shop with a bag of yarn for me, a bag that contained this…

The yarn in the first picture is a cotton/linen blend from Denmark. I’ve never heard of the company, but I do like the feel of the yarn. One of the ladies I work with suggested a tank top or light cardigan perhaps. I’m not sure yet what the yarn wants to be, and until it tells me, it will wait in the stash. The second yarn is two 4-ounce cones of 100% wool lace weight yarn from a Canadian company, Condon’s Yarns from Charlottetown, PEI.

I’ve done a little research into the company and didn’t come up with much. I did find an article about them that was interesting; I also did a search in the extensive yarn database on Ravelry, but only came up with one hit. There were also two threads started, with one post to each thread, hardly qualifying them as discussions. To find out a little more, I’ve emailed the Charlottetown Chamber of Commerce, asking about this company.

If/when I hear anything, I’ll pass it along here. This morning, I also took the time to knit up a swatch with the yarn. It feels rather scratchy, or raw (it even smells like wool, telling me that it has a fair bit of lanolin in it??), but it does knit up well. I wanted to see whether or not the wool would soften up after it’s washed. It’s still drying, so the jury is still out. Once it’s dry and released from the pins, I’ll post a review of the yarn, even though it’s a yarn that has (likely) been discontinued. I’m hoping it softens up quite a bit because, as I said, it really is nice to knit with.

Ok, now it’s time to get my apple jelly going. Last week, we were given a box of apples and I made a batch of juice, which I froze because I didn’t have the time to finish making jelly. Right now, it’s thawing on the stove (low heat) and I’m forcing myself to deal with it. I also intend to make a batch of dinner buns and some bread sticks, so I’d better get moving.