Wife Week

Steve may be too busy to blog, so I thought I'd declare this Wife Week and take over the blog for a while. I'll try to vary my topics each day this week to please our varied readers. But don't look for reviews on Spurgeon or my thoughts on eschatology - my brain doesn't operate in those realms too often!

Today's topic: Knitting (I'll get this over with for those non-fiber inclined folks). I finished the beautiful Hedera socks. What a lovely lace pattern! Easy to memorize and knit, nice and stretchy... but I washed the socks and they shrunk just enough to not fit my size 10 feet anymore. Happy Birthday Mom.... I've got some lt. purple merino wool in the stash for another (larger!) pair.

So I started another lace project - the Ella Shawl from knitty.com. I have a great slubby cotton blend yarn in shades of green. The pattern was irresistable - it shares the same name as my favorite singer: Ella Fitzgerald! The yarn reminds me of the forest of Lorien from Lord of the Rings. All vine-y and tendril-like. Definitely elvish. The pattern even looks like large mallorn leaves! But it's been slow going because...

I started in on a baby cardigan for Jr. Hemmeke! With only 9.5 weeks to go in this pregnancy, I needed something to remind me of the joys of bearing children (namely, the end result). I'm modifying a pattern of a seed stitch cardi with a few cables here and there. Since we're having a boy, I can't really do all the cutesy lace patterns or the funky granny square sweaters I've seen. I'll save those for Grace and me. :)

And there's a ton of new sock yarn in the queue. Stripes and more stripes. For friends and myself. And I'm determined to learn how to knit two socks at once on one needle. And all those leftover bits of sock yarn will most likely become baby socks. Maybe I could figure out how to do 4 or 6 baby socks on one needle! There's the ultimate in multi-tasking!

Grace learned how to knit on a circular knitting loom this week. Owen turned his project into a spider web. I have visions of a family cottage industry floating in my head! Perhaps we'll teach the kids to spin on a drop spindle and convince Steve we need a few sheep roaming in the backyard! "But it will cut down on lawn mowing, honey!"