Flower Basket Shawl finished! Pics soon...

Ok, I promise to post pics really soon, but IT'S DONE. I had to redo the bindoff three times to get the right amount of stretch, and I have to fix one dropped stitch, but the Cursed Shawl is finished.

The bindoff: After trying size 13 needles (still too tight), I wound up getting out a crochet needle the same size as the needles used for the shawl (size 10), and adding one crochet stitch between each bound-off stitch. That worked.

And, being a glutton for punishment, I'm now thinking about doing another shawl, this time of my own design, using a Pine Tree Lace design. Yeah, I really AM insane. But we knew this.

Updates

Flower Basket Shawl: it's nearly done. The darned thing keeps fighting me every step of the way, though. I bound it off, and of course the bindoff is too tight, so went up a needle size, and I think it's still too tight, so tinked back to the beginning of the row and will try again with a still larger needle size when I get home tonight. You think I'd know this by now... (sigh)

Flower Basket Shawl progress

One reason I haven't posted much lately is that the only thing I've been working on is the Flower Basket shawl. I think I frogged it completely three times, moving up a needle size each time. I'm now using a Size 10.

The good news is that it's close to done, though I'm not quite there yet -- going to keep going until I use up most of the yarn (3 skeins). I probably could have gotten the "shoulder shawl" size with just two skeins of KPPPM. I'm splicing in the third skein now.

New Rug, & living room progress

So, what I did this past weekend:

Saturday, took a couple of tatty old wing chairs I got from my mom's neighbor a few years ago to the upholsterer's. I sort of had ideas about reupholstering them myself (and have the books to prove it), then decided slip covers might be more manageable, but... no time. And now we have a little money, thanks to a nice tax refund, so off to the upholsterers they went, along with fabric I bought back in the Fall. Cheaper than buying new chairs, actually. But I somehow feel... very grownup, taking chairs to be reupholstered. Wierd. I think it's the very traditionality (not that that's a word) of having something reupholstered, rather than just tossing them out and buying new.

Sunday, went to Ikea and bought a Persian rug. They have hand-knotted rugs for fairly reasonable prices, and I bought a nice one for what I consider a relatively decent price to replace the cheap rug we bought a few years ago from Home Depot, which will go in Kevin's computer room once we put down the hardwood flooring. The new rug is smaller than the previous rug -- just big enough to go in front of the sofa and under the coffee table, really -- but that's not a bad thing. It actually makes the room look a little bigger, because a little more of the wooden floor is exposed.

I have wanted a nice oriental rug for SO long. There's just something beautiful about them -- I love the rich reds and blues, and you can really tell when they're handmade because they have those little variations that tell you something isn't machine-made. And even when they're a little worn they look good -- if you look at "Traditional Homes" or other such home dec magazines you often see rugs that are worn but still beautiful. I'm tired of buying cheap rugs and having to replace them every few years when they look bad.

I'm second-guessing myself on getting forest green fabric for the chairs, but when I get them back, I intend to get some Kilim runners and drape them over the chairs to add more color to the room and tie them into the rest of the room. There's green in the quilt I have draped over the sofa (which may actually get replaced with a Kilim, eventually), so that helps tie the whole color scheme together.

K. has been working on the built-in bookshelves in the living room, so it'll be nice to have those done soon...

Then we've got the baseboards and wainscotting to do. But at least there's some progress!

A closeup of one of the crocuses in the front lawn. Did I mention that, while going through the seed packets from last year, I just found another bag of crocuses? Doh! Well, I'll plant them this fall and hope they're not toast. Maybe I'll stick them in the fridge in the meantime. 

Spent about half an hour weeding the garden paths; I'm about half done (you can see where I stopped). Lovely evening. Molly is hanging out on the deck... 

The front yard -- the crocuses I planted last fall have come up! I was a little worried, because one YELLOW crocus came up before all the others. I didn't remember planting any yellow crocus, so this must have gotten mixed into the bag. 

Camille Paglia

Listening to an interview with her right now on TOTN, and the woman drives me nuts. She makes a few valid points, but loses me when she claims that Emily Dickinson's "Because I Would Not Stop for Death" is about rape.

Why is everything about rape for certain types of feminists?

If I recall correctly, Paglia is a critic of that type of feminist, but now she sounds just like 'em.