I'm so close to finishing Rosa's Magnolia mini sweater! Just a little left on the sleeve, and it will be ready for blocking. I've cobbled together two sizes to make this work (my daughter will be eight when she wears it, but even accounting for growth the 8/9 would be far too large). The sleeves are on the slim side, and Rosa has commented that the wool is scratchy every time she's worn it -- hopefully it will actually be worn! I might need to make or purchase a shirt to go underneath, or perhaps washing will help with the scratchy factor?
I'm slowly reading through The Children of Hurin, my first Tolkien in ever so long. The writing is beautiful, though the main character is frustratingly obtuse! If he would stop getting in his own way, he might have a chance at a happy ending... though my husband just finished his second reading of this book (I'm reading it at his recommendation), and he's told me enough that I have little hope of a happily-ever-after.
I'm also working on a second project -- a pair of socks for Laddie in his favorite colors, green and orange. We dyed the yarn together (more on that in a future post!), and this has been a great little project so far. I'm not using a pattern for these, and I'm experimenting with toe-up socks. That's resulted in a fair bit of frogging, and I don't even want to count how many times I've restarted these socks! But they're finally the right size, and I'm ready to start the heels. I've never done contrasting heels/toes on socks before, and have been eager to try.
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| It's not knitting, but I did add leather to my knitting bag handles -- they were starting to look a bit worn and dirty, so leather seemed like a good solution! |
My other read is A Practical View of Christianity, by William Wilberforce (one of my personal heroes). I purchased this book over a decade ago -- in fact, I posted an excerpt in 2009 -- but never finished it. It's quite a challenging read! But well worth the effort so far. I've read several biographies of Wilberforce, but I'm enjoying reading his thoughts first-hand. It's part of my daily devotional reading, but I'm trying to fit in some extra readings here and there because I have quite a few books in my "devotional queue" right now.
Linking up with Ginny's Yarn Along.
Lovely makes and great reads too! The socks are bright and cheery and the sweater is such a lovely shade of purple. The leather fix on your satchel is perfect--I'm always wanting to do stuff like that but can never source materials easily. Sometimes a good soak in Euclan or some other kind of wool wash will soften it up--or you could try hair conditioner in water, that helps too sometimes.
ReplyDeleteJuliana,
DeleteThank you for your kind comment! The green-and-orange is definitely out of my preferred color palette, but they will make my five-year-old very happy. :-) In spite of having a whole box of thrifted leather garments, I still had to rummage through my husband's offcuts (a whole grocery bag from a local saddle shop) to find the right weight and color. I've built quite a stash of leather over the past few years, but haven't been using it up fast enough!
Thank you for the tip about the conditioner -- I'll definitely try that if the Euclan doesn't soften it up enough!
Cheers,
Shannon
Beautiful sweater, Shannon! The socks look awfully cute, too. The dual tones give them a playful air.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lisa! My son loves the sock colors -- not my personal favorites, but they were for him! :-)
DeleteCheers,
Shannon