Saturday, January 02, 2016

Even the afternoon seems to have got away from me...

Here, however, are some Christmas pictures.

Rachel's husband Ed, decorating the tree on Christmas Eve, with Perdita's help:


The turkey. Ed carved it in the kitchen, to keep things simple. I took this picture to show my husband what it looked like. (He cannot move about easily.) You can also see the list which Rachel and I worked to all that morning:


Christmas dinner itself:


Perdita has taken to sleeping on the plate rack. It is a good spot for keeping an eye on dripping taps in the sink below, and it allows one to confront one's parents eyeball-to-eyeball when needful:


Perhaps tomorrow for pictures of Christmas in Greece.

I started the year off well yesterday, with progress on the tax as well as on the Dunfallandy blankie border. I'm no longer in a panic about finishing by March, nor about running out of yarn. I will need to wind another skein today –that always feels like progress.

This is all just as hoped – round and round in beautiful madtosh yarn, red yarn, to see me through the dark days. I toyed with the idea of doing the increases with YO's, being rather tired of M1R and M1L. And YO's would be much easier to see when I forget whether I'm doing an increase round or a plain one. But I stuck with the pattern, feeling that we didn't need another design element. The smooth corners look good, as I thought they would.

Be Inspired: You say the owner is named Mei, Knitlass. Does that mean that she's a bit Japanese? She had some wonderful Japanese pattern books. The next time I go, I will concentrate on browsing through them. I had a Japanese knitting phase, some will remember. Their wonderfully clever schematic patterns can be mastered and employed without a further grasp of the language. I even managed an earflap hat for a granddaughter one Christmas, from a Japanese pattern.

I spent an appropriately new-yearsy time yesterday wondering whether I should attempt a third bridal veil. When I knit Sharon Miller's “Princess” I imagined granddaughters passing it reverently from hand to hand. But of course no one wants to look like last year's bride.


More on this subject anon, I hope.

10 comments:

  1. Talking of shawls, I wonder if you have come across Monique Boonstra on Ravelry? She took up the challenge to work out the pattern for an antique Shetland shawl which had appeared in the "Outlander" film. the pattern for the rectangular version is now up, under the title "The Shetland Stars Shawl". She seems to be still working on the square version. The whole enterprise struck me as very impressive, and the shawl has a great provenance.

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    1. Carol5:54 PM

      Thanks, Shandy - truly interesting to read Monique's 'timeline' on how this came to be. Love her designs -had to fave several.
      Carol, San Diego, CA

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  2. Anonymous11:31 AM

    What a cat!!!

    Helen (anon)

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  3. Your bridal veil was stunning, as if the fairies made it.
    This was a low volume turkey year in the USA. My neighbors told me there was a sort of bird flu that made for less turkeys. Our Thanksgiving turkey was bigger but the Christmas turkey had skinny legs.
    Perdita is hilarious! She entertains with gusto!
    Our daughter in law is coming today (as well as all of the kids and grands) and she can show me how to use my winder. I shall buy some bright yarn for the cold montths. Smart.
    I love reading your posts and I love your very real photos of home and family. God bless you, good Jean.

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  4. Happy New Year Jean! Looking forward to thoughts on another bridal veil.
    Lesizmo-from-yesterday's-comments - fascinated by the tale of roasting Hatch chillies, but like you mystified as to what anyone would do with 40 lb of them.

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  5. Perdita! Aren't you ending up with cat hair on the plates? It looks as though you had a nice Christmas. I thought of you when I heard the beginning of Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, here of course, in the early morning on public radio. You do seem to really enjoy the lace, so why not another bridal veil? Or at least planning for one, which is part of the fun.

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  6. Perdita is The Best. One of my cats used to slide into the sink (!) and watch the tap with a steely gaze. She would slowly raise her paw to swipe at the drip. Live Water in The House!

    Your lace is like a living thing. I still can't get over the photo at the top of your page; the veil seems a fine mist.

    I am knitting grey blanket (a nice silk Shibui) with a red stripe and grateful for the red.

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  7. perdita on the dish rack is hysterical! we have no such useful items in our ancient apt building (a fourplex). one of my cats, Isolde, loves to drink from the water faucet in the bathroom and will come and beg to have it turned on . i leave a little dish in the bathroom sink so she can drink from it when i am not around (the other cat, Emil is a bit of a bossy pants so it helps her to have her own special place for water as he can not climb or jump very high being rather large).

    anyway, lovely perdita has claimed that dish rack for herself... as she grows i wonder how long she will be able to perch up there! cats - so entertaining and with their own personalities!

    looking forward to more photos of the blanket!

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  8. I'm not sure where Mei is from originally, but her blog says she lived in Beijing for 5 years, and London for 15 before she came to Edinburgh.

    Love Perdita's sleeping arrangement. Does she fall off? My parents had a cat that often slipped gently off her favourite window ledge mid-snooze...

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  9. Anonymous9:35 PM

    Love Perdita on the plate rack! Looked like a pleasant Christmas dinner.
    - Beth in Ontario

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