Show and Tell

The almost-finished sweater
No, Lucy did not
make this sweater!

Yes, I know I know--the Queen has been absent this week. It was Day Camp week at church. A week of 300 kids and 150 adults at church all day, all wearing the same shirts every single day for a week, and all returning home at 3:00 each afternoon to piles of laundry, empty refrigerators, and piles of Legos all over the floor. No one involved in Day Camp has the energy to clean, shop, or blog. It was all I could do to manage to lift the bottle of Pyramid to my mouth each night.

Thank goodness each of my boys received a cd of the camp music, lest we forget any of the songs that are burned in my brain...

And even though my house did suffer considerably this week, I do have some knitting excitement to share. I am done sewing up my sweater! Done sewing it up. The sewing up of the sweater has been completed. There is no more seaming of the sweater to be done. The seaming of the sweater shall be no more.

Anyone who knits understands my utter joy in expressing these words. Seaming sucks. And add my terror of viewing the finished product and you see why I am so excited now that the sewing up of the sweater is now and forever finished. Because you see, THE SWEATER ACTUALLY FITS ME. It fits me quite well, in fact. The sweater, that I designed using my brain, fits me. The sleeves are a tad too long, but that is completely because I blocked them too long. But the sweater actually looks nice. Lucy Ricardo has left the building--I actually would be proud to wear this sweater. I still have to add the button band and collar, so I'm not completely home free, but this is HUGE, people!

My Panda Silk project

In other happy news, I recently picked up some Panda Silk. It is merino wool, bamboo, and silk. Love it. Love it. LOVE IT. And I've begun a fun little project with it that I have no time for, but I so want to do. So I pick it up and knit a few stitches every night, after my "work knitting", just to have a little "ahhhh" moment.

Leah's new purse

The other night Leah came into the shop to visit since we were meeting for drinks after I closed.

Leah, who does not knit and who has never visited my shop before, fit right in. The shop was full of regulars that night so my conversations with them were already pretty casual as they shopped. Leah, who perhaps I mentioned is not a knitter, was completely chatting them up. And then Leah (did I mention she is not a knitter?), started shopping. She poked around for a bit, checking out the sock yarn, fondling the cashmere, and then she found the Noni felted purse patterns on display. There was an audible gasp.

Leah, who is not a knitter, opened the pamphlet, and began to read her very first knitting pattern in order to start shopping for materials for the purse that she was inevitably going to ask me to knit for her. It was making me smile to watch her poke around through the yarn, trying to select just the right color. And then I believe there was a squeal when I made a couple of suggestions to send her on her merry little way. I now have a happy little bag of yarn just waiting to be a chocolate brown felted purse with lime green flowers and sparkly brown centers. Hee hee!

My goals for this week? Sanitize my bathrooms before the health department shows up, catch up with my orders for Willow & Bloom, pick up stitches for a button band, sit on my butt and watch tv since Day Camp is over, and laundry, laundry, laundry.

I'm thinking I should prepare Shannon before presenting her with a sweater that actually fits me and has been sewn up to perfection. She may have a slight coronary. I mean, I don't think anyone actually expected this thing to turn out. I know what you all have been thinking. Yeah yeah yeah--you can tell me that you knew I could do it the whole time, but I can see it in your eyes. You're just as stunned as I am. It's further proof that alcohol and knitting truly are a good combination.