Summertime Summertime sumsumSummertime:)

To my fellow Murrikans, I wish you a Happy Independence Day weekend. Here on the mid-Atlantic seaboard, it is a beautiful day.  As I sit here typing, just before leaving out to visit a client who is placed way out in farthest reaches of Western Merlin, mapquest directions and GPS in hand (belt and suspenders!), the house is peaceful.  R is at her weekend job, D, just got back from a weekend with his SO and is chilling out between gigs. 

Life has gone on since my last post, nothing of particular significance - at least no more significant than what has gone on in every life.  Does that stop me from writing about it? Of course not, LOL:)!

Work has gotten a bit busier. We have added a new jurisdiction and a group of us have been nominated to make the trip to that courthouse every so often.  I love a challenge and love to see how other places deal with the various issues in our cases.  And Merlin is one of those states where each county can be very unique in that regard. 

So the knitting...I've made a lot of progress on my Drachenfels.  It's a lovely pattern by Melanie Berg.  I had been fascinated with it - and of course the On the Spice Market shawl as well (more about that below). I used yarns in stash and am quite pleased with the results so far.  One of the delights of this pattern is that it is so very adaptable to your needs (or to be more precise, the amounts of yarn you have).  I am not a great fan of knitting yards of garter stitch, but between Melanie Berg and Elizabeth Zimmermann, I am slowly being converted!

Since last month when I went through my projects and frogged a number of them, I got the entire number of WIPs down to 40.  DOWN to 40? you might ask - well, yes and that really doesn't count the number of sock projects I just work on from time to time. That number may pare down even further as I decide to either finish, modify, or frog a number of them. In the meantime, I am not going to stop being intrigued by new patterns. Nor will I stop being a bit distracted by the next shiny thing I see. That is the joy of this craft and as long as I have the resources, I am going to enjoy it. So there.:)

Another Melanie Berg pattern that I decided to purchase on ravelry after a few weeks of thinking about it is On the Spice Market.  I just love her use of color, but buying a bunch of new yarn is not in my budget right now. I did buy two balls of green at my local yarn shop that I think will do quite nicely and filled in the rest with stash yarn, so I am feeling quasi virtuous, LOL:).  These colors truly are reminiscent of the colors of spices and a beautiful photograph a friend of mine sent back to us from Morocco of exactly that - a spice market! The beautifully bright colors in the desert light offset by the simple background is a work of art.  This shawl evokes just that for me and apparently countless others because it certainly is popular on ravelry.com!

Unlike the Drachenfels, which I am knitting in a Dk/light worsted weight, the Spice Market uses fingering weight.  I anticipate this will take a while longer.  But I am having fun so far:

It is not a difficult pattern, though there are some challenges, such as German short rows and an unusual, though again, not difficult, stitch coming up fairly soon for me.  But that's the thing.  It's never boring and you find that after hours of knitting, you actually have made some lovely progress.  In the interests of full disclosure, I did not weave in my ends yet.  They are tucked behind the bit of knitting to show how it will look once that is done;)!

These are not colors I would usually wear, but sometimes you have to do something different.  Or maybe, circumstances will show me that this needs to be a gift for someone else! And that, in the words of the immortal Stewart Smalley, is Oh Kay...

Speaking of gifts, these babies will have to be set aside for the next month as I am awaiting the arrival of some KnitPicks CotLin in Swann for a baby blanket for a dear friend's daughter! I will be knitting this and I hope I can do it in 3 weeks! Wish me luck folks, I'm going in there....

So.. whaddya think? Do I have a shot? Fingers crossed!

Well, gotta go.  Hoping to hit a Yarn Shop in Frederick on my way back.  We'll see. I really shouldn't (famous last words...)

Until next time, God be with you 'til we meet again!+