New Shawl Pattern

Once upon a time I had an idea for a giant worsted weight shawl using the natural shades of the Au Naturel wool/alpaca blend that I had blended at the mill not far from where I live.  I knew I wanted to pull inspiration from the gansey-style sweaters that I adore so much and so I set about creating a shawl that incorporates different stitch patterns/aspects from those sweaters but with a feminine touch to it.

After pouring over book after book and chart after chart and tweaking this and that and crunching number after number, I came up with this.

 

The shawl did not take all that long to knit either - I was pretty monogamous with it and wanted to make sure the numbers and pattern repeats worked and there were adjustments/ripping things out but it worked out in the end and I am rather happy with it. Little man and I took it to the Enabling Garden close to our hose for the photoshoot and then went on a FoggRun afterward. Here's the kicker - I still haven't released the pattern because I haven't been able to come up with a name. It's terrible, I know. The shawl though, is fabulous - it is giant and squishy and so warm. We took it with us over New Year's to Chicago and I used it as a lap blanket in the car and in the hotel and Adam's Grandma J used it as a lap blanket at his Aunt A's house... I adore it and am thinking about knitting another in a solid color (dark gray maybe) and possibly seeing what a smaller DK version would look like. Perhaps it's a good thing I haven't released the pattern yet ;) 

 Here are some of the flowers and things we saw in the garden and on our outing.

Annett Nature Center Outing

The minions and I wanted to take advantage of this mini window of slightly cooler temperatures so we headed South and meandered around the Annett Nature Center.  This is one of our favorite places to go and I can even get a bit of knitting done.

One of the things I really enjoy about going here is that even though the paths are the same, it's always different - different bugs, different birds, different sounds, different flowers are prominent, different stages of other plant life...

This is today's adventure (aka things that made me happy) in chronological order - more or less.

It was a nice little outing. Next time we go we'll be able to spend more time looking around. Maybe we'll even double dip and check out the lake nearby as well...  Hmm... We did try out a new-to-us trail that we hadn't been on before which is where I found all that lovely fungus! Overall, there weren't as many noticeable insects this time and the prominent color was yellow - yellow flowers were everywhere. I loved the tall sunflowers standing guard along the trail. They were in the process of mowing so maybe that had something to do with the lack of insects... Also, not sure what those black caterpillars were but I have never found so many in one concentrated area before. They were only on 2 plants but those plants were covered top to bottom. Weird.As always, there are more photos on my flickr page.