A Wonderful Thing...

This week, I found out how you send hugs by mail several thousand miles. Take one amazing, loving friend. Add hours upon hours of painstaking hard work and creativity. Personalize to make this just exactly right. Assemble into the softest blanket ever - add notes and encouragement. Mail box from Nebraska all the way to England, and sit back and wait for the recipient to open package and be bowled over with love and comfort. Here are SusieJ's hugs, sitting on a bench in the garden my mom loved so well.





Y'all, I cannot express how wonderful SusieJ is - we've been friends for over 5 years now and it feels like I have known her so much longer. I'm lucky to know her in the best of times, and even more so now. She knew exactly how to touch my heart, and how to make me feel better in a dark, dark time.






This blanket is the opposite of darkness - beautiful soft yarn in colors of lilacs and lavender and all my favorite flowers. The embroidered squares are the best part - one is my mom's name and the dates she lived, and the other is this verse. Just perfect...

I love this picture of the crocheted squares in detail. Can you feel how soft it is? I've wrapped this blanket around me every evening since it came, and I feel better every time I do. Thank you, Susie. Thanks for being my friend.

Answer to a Great Question

Everwhelming Liz left such an intriguing question in the comments that I must answer it in a post!

Q: Nice socks. I have a little question for ya. If you were actually going to make a pair of socks into a horcrux, which pair would you choose? Ignoring for a moment the really evil nature of horcruxes, of course.

A: Of the socks I've already made? The Vanilla Blue socks were my first "wing-it without an exact pattern" pair, so those might be a good choice. Otherwise, maybe something really tough and lacey, or perhaps a sock-within-a-sock project. Did one of those aeons ago when the KnitList was young, in the early 1990s, but my gauge was so off I ended up with two Christmas stockings, pretty much...


(Complete aside - you must go see Liz's veil right now. There's going to be a spectacularly beautiful wedding with such amazing handiwork gracing the bride...)

Socks and Updates

So....here's how the socks came out. Not bad, and the Horcrux socks (blue pair) are adorning my feet as I type this. As always, the hardest part of making socks is the grafting at the toe., but even that went well enough.

In other news, MS3 theme has been revealed, and it's a nifty one. I won't say here, in case a few of the MS3 knitter/readers are trying to wait until they reach Clue 5. I have put aside my charcoal grey stole for the nonce - it really is almost impossible to see the yarn to knit for me right now. I am working my way into Clue 4 of the natural wool one, and have decided to do the shortening option as my knitting's always bigger and the haphazardly stretched stole through Clue 3 seems really large.

I spent a couple of quality hours in the knitting house with it yesterday - I had been knitting on it in the house, with people around, but my concentration just wasn't there. Being all by my lonesome with some mellow jazz on the radio is a much better system. I decided my house-knitting had best be socks. Cast on another sock in a German microfiber yarn in variegated neutrals. My own recipe, all ribbing ankle-length, which I am writing down as I go, the better to replicate. I'm not thrilled with the heel, but the rest looks pretty good. Picture will follow when they're done.

Check out the Family blog (link at left) for a couple of cute summer kiddo pics, as well.