Yippeee!

I’ve finished knitting the Oregon shawl. The only thing that remains is to block it, and then enter it in the Lynden Fair. My goal was to have it completed before August 1st, so this will give me more time to fuss over it during blocking to get it “just right”.

It was a lovely knit. I used Madil Kid Seta kid mohair/silk laceweight. I said at one point that the shawl practically knitted itself. As long as I held onto the needles & let the yarn flow over my fingers, I simply watched the pattern emerge. Believe me, lace knitting has not always been this way for me, so I was very pleased.

The Oregon is not a difficult pattern. The center square is an undulating wave pattern which repeats every 16 rows. The side borders are fir cone, also a 16 row repeat, and the trees in the corners are actually pretty simple, an 81-row pattern. I was glad that I ordered an extra ball of yarn. I used about half of it.


In between things I have been washing fleece. This is from my sheep Anemarie, a CVM (California Variegated Mutant, a multicolored version of Romeldale). She has lovely crimp and fine fleece. I didn’t get around to coating her last year, so there’s a bit of yellowing at the tips, most of which is washing out. She’s white/black badger face girl, and has black spots peppered throughout her fleece, which comes out a lovely silver-gray. There was less than a year’s growth on it, and we are just learning how to shear, so the staple length that we got was about 3”. I’m hoping to coat all the girls soon so next year’s fleece will be realllly nice.

Also spent a day dyeing some combed top from my stash. This had been yellow/orange/turquoise, and I decided to overdye into colors that I like a bit better. It wanted to felt, but I think will be usable. . . if not, it’ll be felted into something like a scarf or poncho.