Shawl Finnished

There has been a bit of knitting lately. I found this lovely shawl pattern on Ulla, a Finnish on-line knitting magazine. Although the pattern is in Finnish, and although I know only a dozen or so words in Finnish, I was able to decipher the instructions by taking several steps.

1) I ran the pattern through the mostly unhelpful Google translator which provided insightful tips like these:

Watered scarf, squeeze it dry and pingota. Enter
huivin be pingotukessa until it is completely dry.
Heads Telecommunication Finally the yarn ends.

2) I cross-checked the Finnish instructions and the translated ones with the Ulla site's Finnish/English knitting terms.

3) I luckily mentioned my effort to knitting savant Sue, who happened to be knitting a shawl that appeared to begin in the same manner as this one. So I used her instructions to begin the project.

4) The lace portion is charted and most knitting charts depict the same stitches in any language, so it wasn't all that difficult after all. Anyway, I'm pretty proud of my Lumi Shawl (Lumi means snow).

And, I know my Finnish grandfather (who taught me a few words in Suomi) would be proud too. So, here it is . . . knitted in a Elsabeth Lavold yarn "silky wool," whose obtuse name cleverly disguises the fact that it is a silk and wool blend.
There has been other knitting too--CHRISTMAS KNITTING!!!! or maybe birthday knittting, I haven't decided which. You see, there are two lovely nieces who live in the fantasy world of Laura Engels Wilder and for whom I made prairie dresses last year. Certainly they need shawls to go with those dresses, and so as of this morning I am one shawl to the good in filling that need.

This shawl is made of a 6/2/3 weight pima cotton weaving yarn. It is wonderfully drapey and I think just perfect for the intended purpose. One similar (or identical, I haven't decided--but do not want to start a fight) shawl to go along with the decision whether they will be September birthday gifts or Christmas gifts.

A Few Days in the Ozarks

Kelly and I left town last week for a little R&R in the Ozark Mountains of Northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri. We camped two nights on Beaver Lake outside of Eureka Springs, Arkansas and then stayed a few nights at Big Cedar Lodge on Table Rock Lake in Missouri. (I refuse to say we vacationed in Branson--have you been there????? YUCK)

Anyway, we went to visit a water powered grist mill at War Eagle and bought various milled grains, took a bird watching class, rode bikes, took a tram ride to visit some elk and buffalo, and best of all hired a guide to take us fly-fishing for trout. I took my spinning wheel along and got two bobbins of sari silk done.

On the wildlife tour they stopped the tram and spread grain along the ground to get these guys to come visit:


That was really cool until they got this CLOSE. (I was NOT using a telephoto lens) I was fearful of being the lead story in the Ozark Hillbilly Post--Tourist Gored on Idiot Wildlife Tour.

Fly fishing was great fun. Kelly was all duded up in his outdoorsy stuff: Mountain Hardware camping shirt, Columbia shorts and cool hat, putting on the waders kind of changed the picture.


Ummmm, Kelly dear-- you really are NOT much of a "hat guy".