Another Birthday Zooms Past...

But certainly not un-celebrated! This year was a "big" birthday for me and my family had a wonderful party at ICE.

There were just 15 of us, mostly my family. We selected the menu and (with the help of several professionals) made dinner! Some of us also wore chef hats...

Here is my sister texting, not cooking...

Here is my brother and my mother making pasta...
Peter wielding a sharp knife...
My sweetie and brother browning butter...

My sister, Jeri and Bob working the pasta...

And here is BadKitten, flipping crepes! And then we sat down and ate it all.

A birthday never passes without dear friends giving me lovely and thoughtful gifts, and Sandra got me the English version of this gorgeous Estonian lace book. I have the Estonian version and love the charts and photos but always wanted to really read the text. It is the most charming book. She also got me a set of Blackthorn needles, which I have resisted up until now. I can't wait to cast-on with them. And some Optim fiber, which is merino that has been stretched to make it finer. Again, something I have never tried but always wanted to.

Some of my Thursday evening knitting friends gifted my with yarn. Clearly they know I like purple. Top right is plum Zephyr from Margret, bottom right is Lineapiu Camelot Melange and purple beads to match from Cara and bottom left is Phoebe/Mocha's Fiber, from Dawn. Three shawls waiting to be born!

Jeri got me blocking tiles!! She knows I have been using my old rug. And she made a gorgeous bag for me to store them in. These will be used in a few hours...

Several of us went on a little shopping trip and I managed to collect a few beads for my stash. Seriously, each tube was selected to match yarn that I have for a project. Really!

And to top it all off, The Metamorphosis Group had a virtual birthday party for me and Karen collected the posts and gave me this journal and a CD of matching music! It was really wonderful and I can't thank everyone enough. THANK YOU!

Next week I will be back to the business at hand, and that would be Metamorphosis. We have several finished objects to share and I hope to have all the project samples ready (with cheesecake shots) for that post. Until then, keep knitting!

Metamorphosis: onward!

For the Metamorphosis Project, this week is all about edges!

Our first shawl project, The Metamorphosis Shawl, will be getting Chart D. You can see how that looks on my shawl above.

I used Chart E on my Metamorphosis Sweater pullover. We are blocking between the body and the sleeves to check fit and you can see Miss LucyFur has done her usual fine blocking job!
I used blocking wires, which allowed me to follow the curve of the waist shaping. I used t-pins for each point along the bottom edge.
Here is a close-up of the Chart E edge following Chart C on my sweater. I slip a piece of paper between the layers to help show the pattern off but the photograph is not really going it justice.

Finally, here is a peek at what the Chart F edge looks like. Above we can see F following Chart A with clusters, which is a chart I have not posted yet. We will be using this one with the next two shawl/stole projects, so consider this a sneak peek! More details about the piece above will be coming.

Next week we will be moving on to the sleeves and another shawl/stole project, so please feel free to join us if you think what we are working on looks interesting. Jeri and I are having a blast! All the information about joining us is right here. Plenty of people are still casting on and the files are excellent, so come on down!