It's Raining!

Good morning, everyone! It's raining! How wonderful. This is the sunrise that greeted me just a few minutes ago. A morning like this is worth getting up for. You have to picture me standing in the middle of the street in my bathrobe and flip-flop slippers with an umbrella in one hand and my camera in the other while I took this photo. It was the camera I didn't want to get wet, not me. The sky changed in less than a minute as the sun rose.

Cooler weather seems to finally be setting in here. During October, we have had days of 90+ degree temps with a plunge to the 50s or even 40s during the night. (Kind of like the stock market.) A very late summer. While I am not complaining about it—the cool nights are better for sleeping and I haven't had to turn on the furnace during the day—it is nice to have things finally feeling more fallish. Makes me want to knit. And I've been knitting up a storm.

The Maltese Shawl is coming along beautifully. It's going very fast now. I got discouraged when I discovered that I had to do 88 repeats and not 75 (I don't know how the number 75 got into my head), but I am close to the finish. Sorry, I am not going to post any more photos until after I give the shawl to my DIL, but it is going to be gorgeous! My advice to her is to get a sexy, slinky, satiny dress or top, preferably sleeveless, in deep blue, dark purple, or black with a long skirt and then have my son take her to someplace very special for New Year's Eve (I'll babysit).

And I couldn't resist taking on another project. This one is for me. It is the Feather and Fan Cardigan designed by Pam Allen from Make it Modern by Classic Elite Yarns. The yarn is Soft Linen, a combination of baby alpaca, wool, and linen. It has a nice drape and good stitch definition for the lace pattern. You start at the cuff of the sleeve and work your way up over the shoulder to the top of the bodice on each side. Then you pick up stitches and knit down in one piece for the lower bodice. The lace pattern is easy in comparison to the shawl and this is definitely a project I can take with me and knit in the odd moments in my day.