Friday sucked. I woke up early and fought traffic to get to the hospital district before I would normally be awake, to get an MRI and many, many x-rays. (Which reminds me, they always ask if there is any chance I might be pregnant, before doing procedures or tests. My answer is that there is always a chance, seeing that I am of child bearing age, and married. This inevitably annoys them. I’m sorry, but how else am I supposed to answer that?) My MRI technician came to the lobby to fetch me, and saw me swatching the Lily of the Valley shawl. As we were walking back to the changing rooms, he asked me what I was working on. I pulled out the pattern and showed him a picture of the shawl, and he said, “Oh, that’s cute!” Now this poor man was sincere, and very friendly, but I’m sorry, CUTE?! It’s not cute! Stunning, sure. Gorgeous, fine. I’ll even go with “an insane ambition”, but cute definitely doesn’t apply.

I will spare you the details of the rest of my miserable day, which included shuffling the kids to another babysitter and heading immediately off to a different doctor’s office for another kind of exam…… But I WILL tell you that by the end of the day, all I wanted to do was sit and knit. Which is what I did.

This continued on through Saturday, and Sunday, and now I have two wonderful things to show you.

Keep in mind, this hasn’t been blocked yet.

This is a halfway completed swatch for the Lily of the Valley shawl that is pictured in last Monday’s post. It is really beautiful, and not nearly as difficult as I expected. Well, the pattern is easy enough to memorize, it’s that stupid bobble thing that is going to be the death of me. I’m supposed to knit 5 stitches together into 1. It is lame. I’m learning to knit the 5 stitches really loose in the previous row, which makes it at least possible to knit into 1 stitch on the following, but it is not easy, and it takes a lot of time.

We were at a really cold and windy picnic on Saturday afternoon at Magnolia Park in Seattle, to celebrate with some very good friends, their six years together. I met a really neat woman there that my hubby has worked with professionally in the past. Her name is Amanda Koster, she’s a photo journalist, and she was admiring the ponchos the girls and I were wearing. I was knitting the Lily swatch, and she sat down and knit a few stitches on the other thing I have to show you.

This is a pouch for my digital camera. I started it Saturday, using leftover yarn from a stole I made at the end of last year. It is wool that is spun with a nylon thread, so it is basically a twisted roving that varies from sport weight, to chunky, and is hand painted. I don’t remember who makes it, unfortunately, but the color I bought is called Eleanor Roosevelt. (All the colorways are named for famous women.) Olivia did quite a bit of knitting on it in the car on the way to the picnic, and Amanda knit a few stitches on it at the park. I finished it up yesterday. I wish I could show it to you with the camera in it, but that would make it rather difficult to actually take the picture. I want to get some cool beads to tie to the ends of the drawstring, which is why I left a length of yarn on the ends. Isn’t that yarn crazy?