Birthday Stuff

Wow, I'm a seriously lazy blogger. My birthday was now three weeks ago and I'm just getting around to posting the details. First of all, the Husband totally came through with a fantastic gift (after I sent the link and color preference) of my Hanne Falkenberg Mermaid Jacket kit. I've been wanting this since forever and it's probably going to take me another forever to knit it. (It's hard!)

Also, my knitter friends gifted me with some wonderful birthday stuff. My knitter friends rock.

The photo essay:

First of all, Gina came by on my birthday to deliver these beautiful tulips (my favorite flower) and to give me this stunning cashmere.





Here are the gifts laid out:



See that Superior there? Yeah, that's going to be a sexy scarf soon. Also this:

A mini-dishcloth in a frame from Lora:



It says "Love to knit with my friends" She also knit me a coffee sleeve and gave me a gift card to Starbucks. That girl knows me!



Wait, there's more:


(click to make it big -- it gets all sparkly)

Handspun merino with angelina by the fabulous Gina. Read about the process here. I've received Gina's handspun yarn two birthdays in a row. Talk about getting spoiled. Knowing the time, effort and love that goes into a gift like this makes picking the project for it all the harder. Last year was very serendipitous in that I had a wedding to go to and a dress that matched the yarn beautifully.

I'm going to let the yarn tell me again what it wishes to be.

Swallowtail Shawl

A few weeks ago I decided to start a shawl as a end-of-year gift for The Boy's first grade teacher. I cast on for the Shetland Triangle with some beautiful red silky wool. After knitting for two weeks or so, I had to come to the conclusion that I didn't enjoy knitting it. I don't know if it was the pattern or what, but I was forcing myself to knit it. I couldn't have that much bad energy knit into a gift for my favorite teacher (so far), so I decided to frog and cast on a different shawl, in a different wool.

Ta-da!



This one only took seven days to knit, and was completely enjoyable from start to finish.

Details:

Pattern: Swallowtail Shawl, Evelyn Clark Fall 2006 Interweave
Yarn: Kauni EQ
Start: Thursday, April 3
Finish: Thursday, April 10

Edited to add: Knitting Daily just re-published the Swallowtail Shawl in The Top 5: The Best of Interweave Knits Readers' Choice Awards until May 14th. Go and get it while it's there.

This will probably be my last FO post for a while, since I've recently cast on the Mermaid Jacket! I've been dying to get this for a while, and the husband got me the kit for my birthday. It'll take a while, but I'm really enjoying it so far. I'll post some progress pics once I get a bit more done.