Thank You, Rhianna

Thank you so much for your bravery.  Thank you for coming forward and telling your story.  Thank you for showing how even girls at the top of their game, in the spotlight, living a glamorous life can go through something so horrifying.  Thank you for stressing that it is NOT OK for a partner to hurt you.  Thank you for telling about the scars that remain inside long after the outside scars have healed. Thank you for showing how people outside the relationship can turn their backs on you, victimizing you once more, making you question yourself and look into yourself for a place to lay the blame.  Thank you for not blaming yourself.  Thank you for expressing the confusion you felt and the difficulty in ending the relationship.  Thank you for your poise.  Thank you for your grace.  Thank you for being a survivor. 

You can find the rest of her 20/20 interview at www.youtube.com.

Ask Melistress #1 (and only)

A few days ago I asked my readers to provide me with something to talk about  by asking me questions.  Only Schmutzie obliged and she asked

Where do you find most of your yarn and/or knitting patterns?

Fancy that!  A knitting question! 

Everything is coming up Ravelry.  If you aren’t a ravelry member and you are a knitter, man, you are missing out!  Still currently in beta, Ravelry is a member only community for knitters all over the world.  Membership with Ravelry right now boasts of 500,000 members from all over the globe.  That’s a lot of knitters! 

Once you have your membership with Ravelry you are presented with a wealth of resources for all things related to knitting.  A profile for you is set up so you can log your projects and their progress, including pattern, yarn, needles, notes about whatever you like to note, and best of all, pictures!  There is a place for you to log your stash, your needles, your books and patterns.  There is a place for you to log your favorite patterns and create a queue for yourself.  There are forums to look to for resources on any knitterly issue you might encounter.  The best part of Ravelry is the database.  This is where I go to for most of my patterns.  Now, they aren’t all sold on Ravelry, but it gives me ideas and I can search out the patterns and purchase them afterwards.  The internet has changed the face of knitting.

So most of my projects begin with Ravelry.  I look up the patterns by category and if I already have yarn in my stash that I am looking to use, by weight and maybe similar fiber.  From there I locate the pattern.  If I find a pattern and do not have the yarn in my stash, this is where both my local yarn store and online yarn stores come into play. 

Usually I look to Prairie Lily first for my yarn.  We have more than one yarn store in my city but this is the one I choose to patronize.  She has a very good selection, she is very helpful in either selecting or ordering yarn and she tries to keep up with the latest trends.  I am almost never disappointed when I go there.  If she doesn’t have or can’t get what I am looking for, I go online to purchase my yarn.  There are several vendors I patronize online. 

www.yarnandfiber.com has free shipping to Canada and a very good selection of yarn.  Excellent source of Dream in Color yarn.

www.knitpicks.com has a good selection of yarn and is my go-to for needles

www.jimmybeanswool.com has excellent customer service, reasonable shipping, and a fantastic selection of yarn

http://www.etsy.com/shop/BlackTrillium I can’t tell you how much I love Melanie.  I love her colors.  I love her service.  I love that I can call on her for a custom color and she will make me something beautiful.  She is one of the few indie dyers I actively seek out. 

http://www.bluemoonfiberarts.com/newmoon/ Socks That Rock!  Need I say more?  The colorways are fantastic!  The yarn is gorgeous.  This is one of my favorites. 

www.theloopyewe.com another favorite.  They are always getting new things in.  Plus, they are the one supplier I know of Wollmeise, although I have yet to purchase any.

So that’s it!  That is where I source out my yarn and patterns.  Might I mention that if I have any questions about the yarn that I can go to Ravelry for that as well?  There is a lovely yarn database.  You can see projects knit in the yarn and all the different colorways that people have used (provided they have posted pictures).  You can also peruse the comments about the yarn and the properties.  This makes a wonderful resource for when you are looking for an appropriate substitution.

Go forth and knit!  Be creative.  And then come back and tell me all about it.  I look forward to seeing your projects. 

(if you are interested in participating in ask melistress, please go ahead and do so)

Ruba'iyat mittens

Its pronounced Sawen, Not Sam Hane

When I was a child, I was brought up by a woman who had a great love of the horror genre.  She read horror books and watched horror movies and one of the only ways that she really knew how to play with me was to pretend that she was a vampire and freak me out by bearing her false teeth and running after me.  It scared the living hell out of me. 

I remember movie nights that my family took me to at the homes of their friends and how very few of those movies were geared to children.  I was never ever censored.  Everything that my parents watched, I was allowed to watch, which made for many sleepless nights, hiding under my covers with the door to my bedroom open, my closet open, and the light on.  American Werewolf in London is burned into my memory, as is a movie that still has me nervous to be at home alone at night called “When A Stranger Calls” (1979).  I can still hear the voice asking “Have you checked the children?”.  I think my very first love of the Vampire was in watching Dracula (1979) when Frank Langella turned Bram Stoker’s creepy villain into a much more suave and handsome and romantic creature.  I was terrified and haunted by Count Yorga and his harem. 

This exposure to all things creepy and disturbing lead to a long love of horror.  By the time I was in fifth grade I was a full on fan of horror novels, engrossing myself in Stephen King, Peter Straub, Dean R. Koontz, and anything else I could get my hands on.  I would bring the novels to school with me, reading them during recess and silent reading periods.  My teachers would have meetings with my parents commending them for encouraging my love of reading but then telling them that maybe I was a little “too advanced”. 

In university, I met and dated a guy who inspired a competition amongst ourselves.  Who could rent the worst horror flick?  A good rule of thumb was to judge a movie by its cover.  The worse the cover, the worse the movie.  We had great fun taking in the worst of the worst and managed to fall quite in love with the horrendousness of all the Puppetmaster movies, eagerly anticipating the release of the newest installment.  Eventually we found a movie called Blood Lake (1987).  Competition over.  We couldn’t even watch it all as most of the movie was really bad home movie quality shots of a guy waterskiing.  To this day I couldn’t even tell you what happened in the rest of it. 

All of this leads me to yesterday when a friend of mine posed a question to everyone online.  “What is the scariest movie you have ever seen?”  It took me awhile and I came up with an answer.  I was hard-pressed to do so as I had been so desensitized  to the horror genre.  Of course there were the movies that terrified me as a child, but those movies were no longer even close to scaring me now.   I’m sure that all of us have been at one time or another, caused to jump out of our seats or even uttering a little scream, watching the millionth installment of Friday the Thirteenth, A Nightmare on Elm Street, or Halloween.   Freddy, Jason, and Michael have become horror icons.  But for me, the most terrifying thing I have ever seen exists within a split second of a movie.  This tiny sliver of time keeps me up at night, just like when I was a child, eyes wide with terror, closet open, light on, door open, even with Andrew laying snug beside me.  Stephen King is and always will be the master of horror.  Nothing scared me quite like Carrie coming home after the carnage she caused at prom, not noticing that her psychotic mother was hiding behind the door in the darkness, weilding a big knife.  Nothing else about that movie freaked me out.  Just the image of her mother.  Standing behind the door **shudder**

That leads me to this.  What is the scariest movie you have ever seen?  And what is it about that movie that has you sleeping with the lights on?

 

 

Aftermath

Most people, following domestic violence, if they choose to speak out, talk of the violence itself. For me, the story that follows demands much more importance than the violence itself. I have talked of that enough. It deserves no more of my time. This is a story of family. It is a story of true friendship. It is a story of healing, forgiveness, love, and most of all SURVIVAL.

These all sound like wonderful things, don’t they? The words paint a pretty picture of the aftermath of domestic violence. Let me assure you that this isn’t necessarily the case.

Family

As a survivor (I refuse to use victim) of domestic violence I found out who my family was. I turned to my father when I finally decided to leave. He did not disappoint. Without requiring further explanation, he came and got me. Unfortunately my last experience with domestic violence was not my first. I fell for it twice…

The first time I was with a young man who was very good at playing the game. He made friends with my parents, eagerly integrating himself into the family – playing cards, water skiing, fishing. We were picture perfect to the public.

 The second time I was involved with a man who was transient, dark, and chemically dependant. He did not play the game well at all. My parents were never comfortable with him but I pushed them away, determined that I would prove to them what a big girl I was who could make her own damn decisions.

As time passed, I heard rumors of comments from my mother such as “You know how she gets”. I brushed all of it off, thinking hat no family in their right minds would blame the survivor of domestic violence. It just isn’t done. Yeah. Right. Later, my mother said it straight to my face, feeling fully justified in her opinion. I felt battered once again, by the very people who were supposed to love me.

Friends

What friends? I was so isolated from everyone that I had no one to turn to. Anyone I had been close to either moved away emotionally or physically.

I remember one attempted conversation with a friend who suggested that I give my child up for adoption while I heal. This child was the whole reason I got out to begin with. Sure, single parenthood was hard, especially while dealing with my broken emotional self, but this child was the whole reason I got out of that relationship. This child was the whole reason I went on living. What this friend interpreted as “needing space” was really just a much needed shoulder to cry on. A shoulder that was unavailable. The sting of that slap rung through the air as I hung up the phone. This bruise ran deep.

Healing, Forgiveness and Love

This is what I did for me. On my own. With very little support from those who supposedly loved me. I forgave myself for falling for these men. I recognized that it was not my fault and that I deserved better for myself and for my child. I learned to love myself and trust myself again. And I learned to love and trust others again. I learned that the only person I could really count on was me and discovered that, to do this, I had to heal. I had to stop looking over my shoulder and I had to stop fearing what might lurk around the corner.

I still have nightmares every so often. He told me he would kill me. He told me he would rip my head off and while my eyes could still see, he would rip the arms off our baby while I lie helplessly dying. Who wouldn’t have nightmares?

I have survived. I am still here despite the emotional beating I have taken from those who loved me and who were sworn to protect me. I have learned to be the family and the friend to those who are going through this so that their story might be different from mine. I am here. I can love. I can laugh. I can trust. I am a survivor.

Same Like Each

I want to tell you about my latvian mittens, but first I want to conduct a little experiment.  I have dreadfully run out of things to talk about over the last little while.  Life is clipping along pretty smoothly and the news has given me very little to rant about lately.  My big fat ass has stopped talking to me and I have put a stop to all things that stress me out (short of work)  have been given the big ol proverbial boot from my life.  On that note, I would love it if you would provide me fodder for further posts on this site until such time as I manage to have something to say…and I should soon what with the annual giftmas rant coming up very soon. 

My friends Schmutzie and Cenobyte have both done a post recently, inviting their readers to ask them anything.  So I am going to carry along with that and rip them off celebrate their creativity by doing the same thing.  So there you go, ask me anything and over the next little while I will give a good attempt at answering your questions.  I truly appreciate your anticipated participation.

 

Latvian inspired mittens have caught my fancy lately.  I ordered a tonne of Knit Picks Palette and from there picked out a couple of colors in order to venture into the world of color work.  I’m very wary of colorwork.  It scares me.  I worry about puckering and uneven ugly stitches.  Guess what?!  I can do colorwork!  This mitten is a very pretty pattern that I have managed to adapt to my tastes.  What you see above is the initial attempt when I thought that I really didn’t like ribbing at the bottom and that the transition from wrist to hand wasn’t very nice.  So I added in a picot edge and taught myself to knit a braid.  The first attempt turned out really pretty with the exception of one thing.  My use of two handed knitting made my knitting insanely tight.  No human adult hand was going to fit into this mitten.  So, true to my name, I frogged it.  the second attempt is still a little tight but much better.  I have actually completed the hand and merely need to stitch on a thumb.  Hopefully I won’t abandon this project and have an orphan mitten around.  When they are finished you will be treated to pictures. 

I have been inspired by this, however, to try to design mittens similar but with a Ukranian embroidery design to honor my heritage.  Stay tuned for details on that.

A Wash Of Warmth

Every so often the pieces of the puzzle just fall into place.  Work is going well.  The sun is shining on a perfect autumn day.  You’ve had lunch with a stranger and discover that through your chance meeting with her, you can see things in a way you never really looked at things before.  A day when your boss is in a good mood and a day when your children are healthy, your friends are endearing, and your husband is the greatest man on earth. 

Loreena McKennitt was just on CBC Radio. 

All is well in my world right at This Very Moment. 

I’m having a lovely day.

Random Things

1. You may be wondering why my big fat ass is no longer talking to me.  Well, it appears my BFA and I are at an impass.  I have been finding things like sleep and work and children and family visits and illness WAY more important than going to Curves.  Therefore, my BFA is giving me the silent treatment.  I can’t say that I don’t actually like it better this way.  Seriously, who wants to listen to an ass talk anyway?  Curves has broken their promise to me as well.  They promised me that when I miss more than three days working out that they would call me and haul my sorry big fat ass in.  Its been almost a month and no dice.  I choose to think it is their loss.
2. George W Bush came to speak in my little Canadian city today.  I have no idea what to say but it appears that all the yokels in this area who went to see him really liked what he had to say.  I looked longingly at the box of shoes under my desk and lamented my absence from the protests.
3. My PMSing and Ranty self went to a parents meeting at the kids’ school tonight to learn about the programs they are using to teach The Diva to read and write.  It was interesting and definitely a good thing I went.  I was under the impression that they were using the same one that they used for my son which virtually ignored Phonics and went with this “Whole Language” program based on word recognition.  It appears that Phonics is making a comeback and for that I am grateful.  This is not the way that I learned phonics but it is phonics nonetheless.  I can work with that.  I am still confused, however, about why they sent home a feedback questionairre about the effectiveness of their math program when they have yet to even begin it.  I am even more astounded that some parents have already handed it in.  Perhaps this is the way they label the parents into the groups “Liars”, “Lazy”, and “Luddites”.  I am hoping that eventually I fall into the third category as I have yet to return a form giving them feedback on something they haven’t even done.
4. For a long time I put down my Every Way Wrap, frustrated and bored with it.  Having finished everything else that was aiding my procrastination, I picked it back up and I am finding it a much more enjoyable knit now.  I can’t wait to finish it and wear it.  The colors of the Dream In Color Classy yarn I am using are gorgeous and seem to swim together in hues of pink and purple.
5. I’ve joined a book club.  I’m not sure that I *should* join book clubs because they make me ranty.  Or maybe that is just the PMS, but I doubt it because this happens all the time.  Our book is The Secret Life of Bees.  It is a story set in the 1960s about a little girl with a crappy home life who is being raised by a black woman at the time the Civil Rights Act is being signed.  They get into a lick of trouble and run away only to be taken in by some other black women who raise bees who teach them that the world isn’t all bad.  Although circumstances are changed slightly in this book, it appears to be the same as several other books I have read and then some.  I get it.  The world is not all bad.  This isn’t the problem with the book club.  The problem with the book club is that I read exclusively for enjoyment.  I wouldn’t know “good writing” or “symmetry” if it jumped out and hit me in the face.  Someone suggested to me that I would know good writing because without it I wouldn’t enjoy the books that I do.  To her, I said “Yeah, but I LOVED Twilight and The DaVinci Code which are heralded as the worst written books ever.”  I’m not sure that I would have anything to contribute of value to a book club.  All I would have to say, really, is whether I enjoyed the book or not.  To be honest, I don’t know how the literary types can enjoy literature when they don’t read it to escape, but are instead looking for things like “symmetry”.  Are they reading for entertainment or are they reading to make themselves feel smart?  I suppose the latter could still be their own form of entertainment but it is entertainment I just don’t “get”.  I will go to this book club meeting.  I will see how it goes and then I will decide whether it is worth it for me to continue.
6. If there are any online sellers reading my blog, I want to say a little something.  Online sellers have very little personal contact with their clients and this makes the little things that you do Very Big Things, indeed.  I had a heartwarming purchase recently that I want to share with you.  I was looking forward to the end of the knit of my Every Way Wrap and realized that I needed a shawl pin.  I went looking on etsy as usual because that is where I go for things I don’t think I can get here and would prefer and even delight in the fact that they are handcrafted.  I found a lovely shawl pin and ordered it.  When I got it, with the pin, there was a handwritten note:

Melissa,

Thank you very much for your purchase.  I hope you enjoy using your shawl pin.  If there is anyproblem at all with your purchase, please contact me.  Your satisfaction with my workmanship is very important to me.

Your shawl pin was made from an old, wind damaged red oak tree that had to be cut down in 1999.  It’s wook was made into lumber and has provided many wood turnings.  the tree was located about a mile SW of a little village called Salem Corners in SE Minnesota.  Salem Corners is about 5 miles SW of Rochester, Minnesota which is the home of the famous Mayo Clinic.

Best Regards,

Charles

I think that is about the loveliest order I have ever gotten.  Let this be a lesson to all of you.  Little things are wonderful and it can be as small as a handwritten personal note about the handcrafting of your wares.  If I have need of further wood products he sells, I will most certainly look to Charles first.

What’s going on in your world?

The Best Thing I Have Heard on Television

Mr. Torres: Leviticus: Thou shalt not lie with a man as one would lies with a female…
Callie: Oh, don’t do that, Daddy. Don’t quote the Bible at me.
Mr. Torres: The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great. And sin is exceedingly grave.
Callie: Jesus: A new commandment that I give unto you; that you love one another.
Mr. Torres: Romans…
Callie: Jesus: He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.
Mr. Torres: So, you admit it’s a sin!
Callie: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Jesus: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Jesus: Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is my savior, Daddy. Not you. And Jesus would be ashamed of you for judging me. He would be ashamed of you for turning your back in me! He would be ashamed!

Normally I wouldn’t quote TV but Way to go, Grey’s Anatomy!

Sanitize, Moisturize, Repeat

Do you know that I am better able to come up with titles for posts than I am actual posts?  Just a thought.

Enter cold and flu season and with it the horrifying threat of H1N1.  We’ve been vigilant in our house recently what with Andrew bringing home some sort of bug a couple of weeks ago.  This gave us reason to go through our medicine cabinet and take stock of what we have available to us for the cold and flu season.  The answer to that question was Not Very Much.  Everything in our cabinet was long since expired and we never seem to have enough Children’s Tylenol on hand. 

While at Thanksgiving dinner last weekend, we had opportunity to talk to one of the wives of Andrew’s cousins (would that be a cousin in law for me? I don’t even know.) who works in the penal system and does a lot of traveling up North to our First Nations communities which are being slammed pretty hard with the virus.  It is interesting to note that while for the most part the media exaggerates most things and creates a mass hysteria amongst the general population, this time they are seemingly uninformed.  Those who have relatives and friends in the health care system tell a much scarier story than what the media is right now. 

So this cousin in law tells us that they are thinking of quarantining the Northern communities and closing off the highways.  Not good.  Especially if she is up there when the quarantine happens.  We heard from her that it is a wise idea to stock up on things like drinking water and electrolyte drinks and Tylenol because once this thing hits, they are going to be in high demand and lower supply.  We took that to heart when we saw the condition of our medicine cabinet. 

When Andrew went grocery shopping (yes, I am that lucky, my husband does the groceries) he came home with a good stock of cold and flu medication but as I put it away and began disposing of the old stuff, I realized that we just weren’t there yet.  The next day I was off to the Pharmacy to pick up the things we lacked.  My arms quickly filled up with boxes of cold/flu relief products and then I was off to find the hand sanitizer.  I was shocked as I saw the hand sanitizer with medical masks hanging beside them.  My eyebrow went up and I contemplated the necessity of masks.  Do we need them?  Will we really need to go THAT far?  I decided the answer to that question at the moment was No.

As I walked up to the check out I felt a little embarassed by the content I was carrying, as if I was caught with a case of condoms and a case of lubricant.  I mean, really, we are all so worried about whether people will view us as paranoid or naive that some of us are too embarassed to get prepared.  The load I had falling out of my arms as I went up to the checkout just screamed paranoid psycho.  I had a little giggle as my bill rang up north of $90 in medical supplies.  The check out girl was at least good at pretending to be good natured about it. 

Now, as Andrew’s cold gets passed around the the rest of us, I am terrified to use what is in the medicine cabinet, for fear that we are going to run out before the scarey H1N1 virus hits.  I have only been allowing myself hand sanitizer and a boat load of vitamin C (which seems to have fought off what I was coming down with).  Where I was otherwise lax about it, I have been screaming at the children to wash their hands several times per day.  My daughter has caught on quite easily but my teenage son has never been good with hygeine and is proving a difficult sell.   I hope he discovers girls soon so the hygeine will improve because threatening him with the flu doesn’t seem to be doing the trick.  And he is home today.  With the very same cold that Andrew and I had. 

The media has been talking about the groups that have been suffering the most.  First I heard “young women” and for some reason I didn’t consider myself anywhere near that age group.  Then I heard that the young women that they were talking about were in their “early thirties”.  Ok, where is that line?  I am 35.  Will the flu recognize that this is now mid to late thirties and end up being a mild case for me?  I don’t think so.  I am way too close to that line.  And what about our vaccines?  Should we get one?  Will we get it in time?  Why is Canada dragging its feet so long on this? 

So I haven’t written much lately because this has been on my mind and not much else.  This is the kind of thing that happens with Anxiety Disorder.  Yes, I capitalize that because it deserves to be capitalized.  I am just as likely to kill myself with stress over H1N1 due to Anxiety Disorder as I am to die from H1N1.  But I am prepared, damnit.  I hope.

The other thing on my mind has been my year long standing date with my co-worker and friend for New Moon.  Got my tickets for the advanced screening yesterday.  And I am terribly excited.  Is that sad, or what?  After I handed Miss Thing in the next office her ticket another coworker asked what we were talking about.  We gave an embarrassed little giggle as we told him.  But we have our tickets, damnit, and I better live long enough to go see it.

The Diva has a new sweater. 

Culture Shock

This Thanksgiving we spent our family time in the boonies just outside of Prince Albert, SK.  And truly, it felt like the boonies.  It is interesting to know that even within your own province you can experience culture shock, simply by spending time with a family that you normally don’t spend your holidays with.  The funny thing is that it was very Saskatchewan while missing some of the usual Saskatchewan elements…like booze…which one might actually need to spend time with some of those people.  Thankfully (see what I did there?) I have wonderful In-laws, who, although they have their quirks, are absolutely wonderful and loving people. 

Inside of an afternoon I found out a) that there are at least two gay dudes working at the local Tim Hortons, b) that my husband’s cousins are very hillbilly chic and extremely homophobic c) that my grandmother-in-law not only used to knit, she also spun her own wool with her very own spinning wheel made for her by her father.  She’s a lovely little lady who resides in a remote location on Cape Breton Island.  She lives in a very old house with a lot of character.  At the ripe age of 91, Nan’s fingers are no longer nimble enough to knit or to spin. 

We went in early and took the kids to a hotel.  Unfortunately Andrew was terribly ill and we didn’t spend much time doing anything fun, rather allowing our children to fill themselves with sugar and then bounce off the walls while we eyed up the bottle of Nyquil on the desk, weighing out the option of settling them down with a shot of it or not.  You will be pleased to know that, although we were in close quarters with the little psychos, we did NOT drug our children. 

Prior to checking into the hotel I made puppy eyes at Andrew and he drove me to the LYS, which is NOT shut down (thank you very much mother), but quite operational.  I had been there a couple of years before and saw a wonderful mitten pattern that I would really like.  I went in, grabbed two balls of Noro, carried them around for awhile, put them back, picked them back up again (as is my custom in most yarn stores), carried them around for awhile, and then put them back in favor of some Marble Chunky that would make a lovely sweater for The Diva.  I asked the store owner if I could purchase the pattern for her mittens (as I already knew that she had it for sale).  She indulged me but only on the condition that I buy the yarn for them there.  She did NOT have the colors I had in mind.  I suggested that she just sell me the pattern but she refused, saying it wouldn’t make her any money.  So now I have crappy colors for the mittens and not only that but I got the yarn home and it is *gasp* ACRYLIC!   What do I do with this shit now?  Who makes warm mittens with ACRYLIC?  OMG!  The one kind of yarn has a “little bit” of mohair in it, but certainly not the percentage I was looking for.  Normally I would have walked out of there at the suggestion that she wouldn’t sell the pattern without the yarn (even if it is $ 2 for the pattern, it is $ 2 for her own personal pattern she wouldn’t have had before I walked in the store not to mention I was already purchasing OTHER yarn) but I really wanted that pattern.  They are really cute waffle style mittens, done with mohair as the main color and then brushed on the inside so that they are a cheap thrum mitten knock off.  Well, now that I have the pattern, I will have no further need to shop in her store again.   

The rest of my weekend was spent in my pyjamas, on the couch, knitting the second of my Pretty Thing cowls that I had cast on.  This time I used a lovely lace weight cashmere.  You know what?  The way to spoil yourself and make yourself think that you own a cashmere sweater is to make yourself a cashmere cowl.  You get the cozy, cashmere softness right next to your face.  Your neck is warm, which is keeping you warm, and in turn makes you think that you are wearing a lovely cashmere sweater.  I think I might have the ultimate christmas gift for those who are into those girly kind of things. 

 

As you can tell, yes, I am rather quite proud of it.  This is my first project on lace weight yarn.  I don’t recommend doing this on nickel plate needles as I did.  For the first time I recognize the need for needles that are not metal. 

Next on the needles:  mittens, socks for my father in law, new forest canopy cowl to match my fingerless gloves, and perhaps I may even finish my black cardigan. 

To close, I wanted you to know that this year, dear readers, I am not only Thankful for my family, friends,  and their good health, I am also Thankful for you.