Something old, something new,

...something from the garden, and something blue.

Not much knitting this week - it's all the time I spend thinking up clever word play, you see...

Actually I have another dissertation meeting with my advisor, and I feel very close to a topic AND very confused at the same time, so I'm actually doing lots of reading (like I'm supposed to!). I'm also working on semi-secret (read: lumpy and experimental) knitting on something, perhaps an octopus, to hold the rings for Claire's wedding. I'm sure it'll be awesome when it's done, but right now it looks sort of like a potato, so I'm not going to show any pictures.

I will show you some tomatoes from the garden and my finished Charades:

Pretty (my first eye of partridge heel!), and look how bright in the sun!:

This is a nice pattern for variegated yarn - it's a nice, simple pattern, and the herringbone stitches make cool criss-crosses of color (I tried 5 times for a close-up of how cool they look, but my camera is just not up for it.). I got sort of bored with the pattern by sock #2 since it's only a 2 row repeat (I'm so jaded), but the finished look is great. As Carole noted in my comments, it does use up a good deal of yarn - I used most of a skein of Fleece Artist Merino 2/6 (355 yards), which may not seem like a lot, but I have really small feet! - and it makes a bit of a thicker sock than fingering weight usually does. Oh yes, and Beth (aka Baseball Knitter) asked about its stretchiness - it's quite stretchy indeed, with a lot of give in the herringbone bits, but they aren't baggy or inclined to flop at all.

My mom got her Hidcote shawl in the mail on Saturday, and she loves it so much she's wearing it in Kentucky in the scorching heat (I'm assuming only inside in air-conditioning - love only goes so far). No pictures yet though. While I'm being on top of things: Peaknit asked how much of the SeaSilk I used for the shawl. Answer: enough I'm almost embarrassed to say! (It's ok to drown in luxury when you're knitting something you give away, right?) The shawl took 2 skeins of Seasilk, in their (I think temporary) 150 gram skein. Gulp!

Finally, the something old, something blue of my opening line:

It's the first shawl I ever made! I pulled it out to air it, and the sun and shade looked so cool, I thought I'd post it. It's the Feather and Fan shawl from A Gathering of Lace, and the same cone of yarn that made this, made Claire's wedding shawl too.