Survivor knitting...

The night of the fire, after the flames were out and the giant fans had blown through the remains of our home, the firemen let me run in and grab our meds from the kitchen.  To their obvious consternation,  I added a quick trip to the living room to grab the three knitting bags/baskets that were sitting by the open patio sliders.   The bags did a great job of protecting their contents from the smoke and soot.   Only the top projects were smokey and stinky.    So far, I have been able to comfortably work on most of the deeper projects.    This Linen Tunic is one of those survivor projects.

The Linen Tunic caught my eye and landed on my needles more than four years ago.    This is what I was working on when I left for vacation and ended up moving to Florida.   By the time it came out of storage, I had moved on to other things.   Then, recently, while searching my napping projects for something else, it once again caught my eye.   Now four years, a major move and a house fire later, it is finally done.   It has been soaked, spun, and hung to dry.   All that remains is a quick iron and it is good to go.    Assuming I stay on task, I will be wearing this baby on Tuesday when I meet the girls for lunch and a knit.

WIP diving rocks...

The Purl Bee: Linen Tunic

I realized the other day that I would need something other than the KAL to work on over the next month.   The weather in NE FL is finally warming up, which had me thinking of summer knits, specifically a tank top, maybe in linen, maybe blue.    Which brought me to the realization that I had an unfinished blue, linen, tank in the WIP stash.   A short dive later, and I had unearthed the Linen Tunic from The Purl Bee (one of my favorite LYS before the move).  

Not only did I find it in short order but apparently I abandoned it in nearly finished condition.   Were it not for the fact that it had slid off the needles and run back a bit, I could have started on the armholes right then and there.   It was a bit fiddly getting the stitches back on the needles, and working them up (including the last set of decreases) but by Saturday night, the deed was done and I was on my way.

I remember working on this the summer before we moved.    It is knit from the bottom up and  love, love, love the picot hem right at the beginning.   For the life of me, I can't remember why I put it aside.   Possibly it is just another casualty of our move.   In any case, it has my attention now and I can't wait to wear it.

Look what I found...

Earlier today, while searching my UFO bins for a past project (more on that another day), I came across this lace capelet.   I remember making it and I remember that it was supposed to be a birthday gift for a NJ friend (before we moved to FL).   What I don't remember is why it never made it to the intended recipient.   The only thing I can think of is that in the craziness of the move I just forgot.

All I had to do was weave in the ends and I had a lovely bit of handmade goodness to wear to a committee meeting tonight.  It looked very nice indeed over black knit pants and a black tank.   So nice, in fact, that I want another one in blue or maybe turquoise.   The only problem  was that, while I remember knitting it, I don't remember where the pattern came from.

Enter Ravelry.   It took a bit of time and multiple searches but eventually I came up with the this:

The Sea Swirl Capelet that I am almost certain matches mine.  Since we moved in 2008, I could not have gotten my original pattern from the source listed on Ravelry,  I suppose I could have the wrong pattern but I keep looking at the two photos and they look the same to me (it even calls for the Euroflax Linen that I used).   In any case, I do have the listed source (2010 Pattern a Day Calender), so getting my hands on it was not a problem.

There are a couple of things I have to finish first.  Plus, I want to take my time picking the color. But, before too long, I hope add at least one more of these sweet capelets to my wardrobe.