The Aurantia Sisters

 We’ve got some new neigbhors.  They’re weavers, and they look a bit intimidating to me. Ms. Argiope Aurantia, or Yellow Garden Spider and her sister have camped out on our window frames (you can tell they are females because of their size).  They are orb-weavers and set up pretty impressive  3-4 ft webs fairly quickly. The heavy zig-zag line along the sill is actually a woven part of the web, the stabilimentum, which may be there to add stability to the web, to help camouflage the spider, or draw prey in.  I don’t know about the camouflage, but Ms. Aurantia was just having lunch when we dropped by.

We deftly slipped inside and quietly called the landlord about the possibility of relocating the Aurantia sisters.  Though I do appreciate having weavers in the neighborhood, and the spiders are also known as writer spiders which is also a pastime I admire… perhaps I’m more territorial than I let on and I’d prefer to keep at least 10 ft distance between their webs and my front door, even if they aren’t venomous.

Safely inside, with one eye on the crack between the door, not that I think either of the Aurantia sisters could fit mind you, they’re rather, shall I say, well endowed…? I knit the final stitches of my baby eyelet cardigan courtesy of the folks at lionbrand, though as usual I didn’t manage to quite follow the pattern.  This is what happens when you don’t pay attention to matching dye lots in the store but catch it in time to incorporate it into the design and pretend it was the plan all along.  Now to find the perfect button.  Or Ribbon?      

Back Again

and so much has transpired in-between, but for now I’ll stick with knitting news:

I finished my 7-chakra shawl, so called, because it is knit in 7 vibrant colors and it helped me to focus on and visualize healing energy during our many visits to doctors and dentist’s offices over the summer.

It is still in the process of fully blocking, but here are the preliminary photos:

Now that summer is almost over, the sun finally came out and I decided it was time I joined the lampshade clan.  The pattern is from the spring/summer 2007 issue of "knit simple".  The yarn was reclaimed from another well intentioned crochet project. Very nice coverage from the sun and yet it still showcases my lovely new earrings by my very own in-house designer (I had him make an extra pair, available on etsy for those of you who are interested.

MS3

  MS3: The last clue was posted last week and I am at the very most, halfway through, I was on a roll for the first few clues, but then fell hopelessly behind after trying to fix a very conspicuous error at the end of clue 3.  After knitting a portion of clue 3 and the 1st half of clue 4 several times without any improvements, (if anything I made things worse).  I determined to plow on (I’d noticed several other errors that had escaped my attention further down as well) and officially abandoned perfection.

I managed to catch up again for clue 5, but was nearing knitterly burn-out and then… the theme was revealed: swan lake.  The other half of the stole was to be a swan’s wing and I was re-enamored.  But I stopped knitting, because I didn’t have time or the will for such focused knitting and because I couldn’t decide if this would mean I should lengthen my stole, or maybe do a symmetrical one (much as I love the idea of the swan wings).  So here it is unfinished.

There are some beautiful pictures of finished stoles on the yahoo-group, I hope no one minds that I’m sharing some of the ones that most inspired me here for those of you not in the group (if you do just let me know) .       

I love the way the wing looks draped across the shoulder in the first photo (courtesy of modestine07), the second one (by christinacote27)  makes me wish I’d knit mine in larger gauge, but who knows, maybe heavy blocking will get me there ?(mine is currently very scarf-like).  While the third shows a gorgeous and ingenious join for a symmetrical version (by djgeddis).