honest to blog or I can't believe I had no camera with me

Yesterday I was sitting in the ski lodge chatting with my mom and knitting these fingerless gloves while the kids and my dad skied. I swear that I saw a woman whose hair matched my knitting come in. Not only was her hair the same hot pink in places, it was the same gray and and purple. Honest. I promise to never leave my house without my camera again.

an act of faith in my mailbox or why is there a stuffed dinosaur on my kitchen table?!

Rebecca's penpal in Oklahoma sent us a stuffed dinosaur the other day. His name is Max. Max started off in a 5th grade classroom in Michigan and is traveling the country before returning in May. So far he's been to South Carolina, California, Oklahoma, and now Massachusetts. I love the idea of it. We're sending him on with some photos of his stay here and a magnetic that looks like the sign in the photo.

prayer shawl completed

it felt like magic

I finished knitting my bag. I love doing it. It knits up fast on big needles, and I figure that my mistakes won't show after it's felted. I used Webs' Valley Yarns. The Yarn Harlot just talked about what great, cheap yarn it is, and it felts beautifully. This is my third knit to felt bag with it.
The best part was the grafting. I took the two ends of the strap and did this cool thing with a tapestry needle that made it look like it was one knit strip. What kind of genius thinks this kind of thing up?
http://www.knitty.com/issuesummer04/FEATtheresasum04.html
It came out of the washing machine (3 wash cycles on hot later) looking like this. I want to make one every day. It's magic. Shrinking things on purpose--what fun!

one little detail . . .

I finished knitting my latest shawl last night. I'm very excited. It was scary there in the beginning casting on 1095 stitches (for that ruffle on the bottom) and I didn't quite get how I could decrease on every row and end on the wide/top part of the shawl, but that all worked out. I really like the ruffle and the wrap-around-and-tie-in-back style.

The detail is that there is an i cord decrease, so even though I could tell before the end that I was knitting a tiny garment, I couldn't figure out how to reduce the rate of decreasing and keep the nice i cord edge. It was not my original intent to make a shawl that fits an 8 year old so well. I hope at least she'll wear it.