It's Finally Friday

and we are having another one of those plant shutdown days. No cleanup crew worked either, so I've been off all day. I told Cody it felt like Saturday to me because I wasn't at work. It felt so much like Saturday that I kept feeling like I should be taking my Saturday Sky photo. I didn't actually do it, though.

So what did I do? A bunch of little things that have been piling up for a while. I boxed up 16 hats and sent them to charity. These were all knitted last year from small bits of stash that weren't big enough for anything else--most of which my mother sent me when she cleaned out her stash.

Plus, I mailed birthday presents to two of my nephews. Joshua was 3 yesterday, and Nate will be 7 on the 27th. I don't have new pictures of either of them. I guess I'll have to lean on their mommies a little.

I started the new

I never did do the first of the month cloth. That came about when I was still so sick with my bronchitis that I wasn't thinking clearly and, after nearly completing it, I ripped it out because I didn't like the color I'd chosen. I ended up not doing it at all. BTW, I'm feeling much better now, thank you.

I worked a lot on my grey scarf these last two days, #3 on my Stashalong WIP list. The pattern is Yarn Harlot's One Row Scarf pattern. This has very quickly become one of my favorite scarf patterns. Ok, ok, my favorite scarf pattern. It is so easy, yet it provides enough variety that I don't get bored working on it. I see many more of these in my knitting future.

I also worked on this sock:

This is a basic sock knit from Meilenweit Multieffekt. Don't ask me to pronounce it. I'm not even going to try to match stripes on the second one of these. As you can see, I was able to knit nearly the entire leg before getting back to the same spot in the color repeat. I've taken far longer on these socks than I should have. I rented the DVD of House Season 1, and ended up ripping and redoing the heel three times. That's when I decided I needed something a little more mindless, like the afore mentioned grey scarf.

What I didn't work on was my friend's prayer shawl. I'm still not motivated to knit it. I know I should be, but I pick it up, look at it for a while, and end up putting it back down and reaching for something else. I'll get it done eventually. It'll let her know I haven't forgotten. When my father died, there was a great outpouring of sympathy, plants, food, visits, cards, etc. A week later, everyone was going about their business as if nothing had ever happened. I wanted to grab them and shake them and scream, "HEY! My father's still dead and I'm still hurting here!" I think that's why prayer shawls are so important to me. Long after the flowers have died and the food is eaten up or thrown out, the grieving person still needs something to hold on to. A shawl will last forever.