ON HOLD

Everything in my life is on hold as I deal with the murder of my firstborn grandchild, a beautiful young woman and mother of three.  I am still stunned from the devasting news and expect closure will not be forthcoming until the killer is found and brought to justice.

VACATION KNITTING

Although I divided my time among other creative pursuits, I managed to get in quite a bit of knitting. I have only the collar and finished edges remaining in the blazer-vest I discussed in my previous post. As predicted, it was an ideal long travel project.

I took along another project, a lace ring scarf using Schaefer's Andrea in the colorway Elena Piscopia. I had my LYS order the yarn and also the Heartstrings pattern: H45-7041, but I took so long in picking it up, the owner started the Ring of Lace Wrap herself -- in my chosen color!

And yes, I did snatch it off her needles -- at her offering, of course. She had only a few rows done, and oh that I had kept them and purchased her needles. The pattern calls for a crochet cast on of 300 stitches. Just keeping count of that many stitches in a fine thread was challenge for me, more frustrating each time I had to begin over after several false starts. I heard lace is forgiving, so I kept going, mistakes and miscounts in the first few rows notwithstanding. I'm several inches of pattern rounds now, and I became comfortable and overconfident with the ease of progress. Agggghhhh. Complacency strikes again! I forgot to yo at the beginning of my last row. I'm just not up to dealing with removing 300 (or whatever number I may have ended up with -- oh the shame) barely visible stitches to correct the problem and am contemplating a suicidal leap into the frog pond.