FO Sunday

Wow, what a terrific feeling it is to be having a normal (non-working) weekend. Friday night was total relax-time; in fact Peter and I both fell asleep watching "Gorky Park". Saturday we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned some more, in anticipation of my family coming out for Mom's birthday dinner. Roast beef and veggies in the slow cooker, homemade garlic bread, and fresh (frozen from last year's pickings) strawberries and blueberries on pastry with loads of whipped cream and/or ice cream, as people preferred. Very tasty.

Then we all sat and watched the hockey game, and I wish I had thought to have Peter take a picture - sis Karen was crocheting, Mom was knitting, I was knitting! Our own familial SnB. :) Karen's recently got back into crocheting and Mom has rediscovered knitting, so I let them go through my big bag of "to donate" yarn and have at it. Yarn all over the living room floor, thank heavens the cats were hiding out. Karen picked a few balls of Phentex Merit acrylic worsted to make a chevron-style shawl, and Mom grabbed a ball of blue Divine and two balls of LB Homespun, for a couple of triangle shawls. They cast on right after dinner. Nice!

Meanwhile, I was working steady on Mom's birthday present, a silk scarf which (dammit) I forgot to take a picture of. It's a kind of lizard-y iridescent green, chunky weight, which I knit in a double moss stitch. Looks like green chain mail - she loved it. Ran the ends in and handed it over, then got back to Peter's toque, which is now DONE!

Here it is - the pattern is "Basic Cable" from Stitch 'n' Bitch Nation, but I added several pattern repeats for length because he wanted it long enough to fold over his ears. This picture is odd - the stripes are actually black and dark green, not dark and light green! Sunday morning light I guess. Anyway, I had to break stash diet for this one and buy the yarn to match his coat - Patons Classic Wool in black and bottle green. Funny thing about this - Peter requested the hat because he lost the one I made him last year (same colours, different pattern). Guess what we found yesterday while cleaning? Yup. Last year's hat. Ah well, you can never have too many toques. I may make myself a "Basic Cable" for next winter - it's a fun pattern and the cables and ribs make it extra warm - "insulated cable", as I said last night, to no amusement of my family. They got no sense of ha-ha. :)

Then I pulled out Yumi's Fire Shawl, which got LOTS of work done on it while I was on course Friday. There's only a wee little ball of yarn left, so I'm going to finish it up today on breaks between researching my term paper. Here's the shawl at "almost-done" stage:

Again, the camera is not seeing what I see - the colours are deep burgundy and gold and hot red and smoky purple. This is Fleece Artist "Kiss Curls".

I stuffed the baby blanket in progress into the WIP/UFO bin and stuffed the bin in the closet before the family came over, so no pics of that right now. Next week!

And now, since (almost) all the house is clean and (almost) all the laundry and dishes done, I'm going to make a big batch of blueberry pancakes and bacon, and dive into my research. And NOT have to stop what I'm doing at 1 or 2 o'clock to get ready to go to work - ah, luxury! I just hope the budget will hold up to me not working the second job for a couple weeks; if it does, I may become a lady of leisure on weekends again. We shall see.