Knitting At Night...

...which was the original intent of this blog, after all. I haven't been doing too much of quilting or knitting lately, mostly just wiped out by this stupendously hot weather, and general lethargy. I hate summer for a reason. I have no energy at all, even though I'm in central air conditioning most of the time.

Anyhoo, I'm sure that all two of you who read this blog saw the picture of the Duchess of Cambridge taken right after her marriage - off on a shopping trip to the local supermarket. While that may be amazing enough, that a Royal would go off food shopping, what was really amazing was that gorgeous green ruffled shawl she tossed over her jeans and white t-shirt. Like 98 million other women, I instantly coveted that shawl. And where else to go to look for a pattern but Ravelry? I found two that I liked. One is very true to what she was wearing, done in 2300 yards (!) of lace yarn on size 1 needles; the other is a similar one done in a worsted weight on size 8 needles. Well, wanting a bit of instant gratification (and also because I don't have any suitable lace yarn in my stash), I started on the one done in worsted. Just so happens I had 4 skeins of Patons wool in my stash.

Not in the color I wanted, of course, but a denim-y heathered blue, which will at least go with the jeans that I spend 90% of my life in. Of course, now all I have to do is lose some weight, get some decent hair, and drop 30 years from my life and then I can look like Kate!

I've been looking for lace weight yarn; I forgot how expensive it is! Normally, spending $23 for a skein of yarn for a shawl will not make my hair stand on end - it's a pretty reasonable price for a shawl. However, since I need 2300 yards, that translates to 4 or 5 skeins, which is going to break the bank for me, unless I want to give up eating for a while. And come to think of it, I DID want to lose some weight...

The first picture is the closest in color to the actual yarn I'm using. Unfortunately, my camera chose to focus on the skein, and not the project, which I didn't notice til I uploaded. I'm feeling way too lazy to set this up again, so the second shot was taken at the same time, just without flash. It's a bit more green than the yarn, but it shows off the detail a little better.

I'm still qilting. Still working on green pyramids, and I have started pinning the last few rows of my 1930's sunshine quilt together. Ireally want to be done with that quilt. I just need to sew on the last few rows, and then applique the vines. I'm doing the flowers for the vines as yo-yo's, so they will be attached after this quilt is quilted. This quilt is pretty big, so I think I'm sending it out to a quilter. I have a lot of other tops in various stages of piecing, so I'd rather work on them.