Tailspinning

I started this Tailspin shawl when I was out in BC at the beginning of February. Nice garter stitch with a bit of excitement once in a while. Of course, a top-down shawl that starts small and grows is always so fun at the beginning! "Whee, I am zooming along and will have this finished in no time."

The pattern calls for leventy-million colours, and I just wanted to use two. The white is some Rowan Fox Fibre cotton I recently bought from a fellow Raveler, but it must be about 30 years old, if I know my yarn history right. The blue is "upcycled." I once bought a Rowan Denim hand-knitted cardigan on Ebay, which I sort of knew wouldn't fit me. Elaine wasn't interested, so this blue is from the sleeves. (And taking apart someone else's knitting, especially in this yarn which shrinks and tightens up when washed, is not much fun.)

After a while, I thought the blue and white was not as great as I'd thought. I thought it looked like an industrial tea towel, and Stephen thought maybe a prayer shawl. And then there's the blue and white country kitchen.

Some vintage dishes I saw last weekend

Nice enough, but not quite the look I was after.

So I threw in a ball of dark navy, to at least zing things up a bit, if not make me into a French sailor.

I had a ball of Twilley's dark denim, which I bought in Cambridge in 2005! Time to be put into a shawl, for sure.

Unfortunately, I didn't read the pattern properly and put the dark blue triangle right on top of the previous one! Didn't notice for many rows thereafter, and no way I'm ripping back. More zing, I figure. 

My next trick was to jiggle things a bit to end up with a white triangle. 

The rows are now about 450 stitches, so I am making no promises about when this will be finished! Slog-o-rama! I am on my 4th ball of the white, and will likely get most of the yarn from two sleeves into this.

It will be a giant, scallop-edged tea towel, perhaps.

And enough of that for now. I will tell you what I did this past weekend.

Arthur is looking into universities for next year. (Yes, he used to be cute and 8 years old, and now he is 18 and thinking of leaving the nest! Still cute, though.) So at the beginning of the school March break he and Stephen went to Ottawa, and last Thursday he and I set off to a couple of other places in southern Ontario.

Of course, as well as universities, we had to check out the secondhand shops. So I saw those blue and white cups above in a very lovely junk shop in Peterborough, along with this table of coloured pyrex. Oh, my!

The river there had been frozen over until quite recently, and now it is thawing and making these great stripes of ice, slush, water, whatever. Like agate or something! Stunning. 

We travelled by train, and it was generally pretty boring, but on the way home I noticed the woman across the aisle was knitting! Kinneared her... 

And that is what I've been up to lately.