Friday, March 18, 2011

Knitting Of The Green

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day.  A day for celebration and merrymaking.  A day when everyone is Irish.  We have a very local holiday here that coincides with St. Patrick's Day.  Evacuation Day celebrates the evacuation of the British from Boston.  It is a holiday for Suffolk County (Boston proper) and is marked by closing school and government offices.  There's your history lesson for the day.


My St. Patrick's Day celebration was pretty tame, but I was working with green yarn throughout the day.  It was a day of appointments and meetings, and that green yarn made the rounds with me.




I know it's a busy day when I do my photo shoot between stops in the back of the pickup.


Most of my recent projects have a border in one form or another.




This project, Tower Mill Shawl, is no exception.  This design incorporates working the garter border along with casting on the stitches.  It's like killing two birds with one stone.  Very clever.  After casting on/working 299 border stitches, I'm ready to move on to the body.


While not every knitter is a lace knitter, I think everyone can appreciate handknit lace.  Lace knitting often requires a certain amount of patience and concentration.  One truly remarkable lace knitter is Gene Beugler.  Gene is a self-taught knitter who also designs exquisite, heirloom lace projects.  I had the good fortune of meeting Gene last year at Stitches West.  This 87-year-old, gentle man was willing to talk about lace with anyone who would listen.  You can read the story of this master lace knitter here


Blood oranges have been popular in my household for the past few weeks.  They are like candy, and they are my color inspiration for the week.




Slices of sangria.

3 comments:

Karen said...

Those oranges remind me of my Schaefer yarn colorway (not quite as purple) - would make a fine long-repeat variegated yarn.

Is the pattern stitch part of that shawl almost the same as the cowl you just did? I liked that stitch a lot, and would always rather have a shawl than a cowl (just not my thing).

I just replaced my doorbell so I would know when the UPS fellow showed up with the oboes we are test-driving this weekend. Good thing I know how to work a screwdriver.

Betsy said...

I was kind of sorry to read this state and municipal offices in Suffolk County were open this year on Evacuation Day. I always thought it was such a quirky little holiday.

For anyone wondering, Evacuation Day is the day the British army left (i.e., evacuated) after a year-long siege of Boston during the Revolutionary War.

Betsy said...

Sorry - you already said what Evacuation Day is!