Finishing up

The return to the foggy, chilly St. John's spring has been a bit of a shock to the system, but it's good to be home. Finally, yesterday, we got our first really nice warm spring day, and being Victoria Day weekend (when traditionally, you can start planting things in Newfoundland and not have to worry too much about frost), we spent yesterday planning and starting our patio garden. We inherited a pot of chives from the previous home owners, and put in some strawberries and shallots yesterday, and started seeds for lettuce, spinach, and zucchini. The peppers, tomatoes and herbs will have to wait until it gets a little warmer though.

After a good day of moving planters and dirt around, I sat down in the evening to put together Marjorie.

Marjorie from Knitty.com, size medium. Knit on 2.75 mm circular needle with GarnStudio Silke Tweed.

I really enjoyed knitting this sweater and the fit turned out to be just about perfect. It had just the right degree of intricate detail to keep my interest, and I knit on it almost exclusively from the time I started it. It took two months to finish, but since I haven't had a lot of knitting time lately, and it's a fine gauge, I think that's pretty good for me.

One word of warning about the yarn: it leached a lot of dye. See?


That's the first of four soakings, and even the fourth one still gave off a bit of colour. It's almost as if they didn't rinse the fibre at all at the factory after dying it. Strangely, none of it came off on my hands while knitting and the colour of the yarn didn't fade at all after all that soaking. I am going to have to be very careful about washing this sweater separately.

Now I have returned to knitting on Gatsby Girl and I also started yet another Swallowtail shawl during my flight back from England.

I'm just starting on the second Lily of the Valley border. It surprises me how fast I can whip one of these off now. Perhaps it's time I tried another shawl pattern... or finished up the Mystery Stole that I started last summer. Here's to clearing out some of the long-languishing projects while I'm in a spring cleaning kind of mood.