I'm 60!

 Hi all -

It's been a long and busy year, and I'm finally getting around to writing another blog post. It's been a very busy year. Our little company was acquired by Google on Dec 1 and I've spent a lot of this time working every spare hour to get our system to run in their cloud. I got the initial work done in mid-June so have had more time for other stuff this summer. But I never got around to writing about any of it, so decided that I should write today since it's my 60th birthday. Boy, does time fly!

To get back into things, I worked on a lot of small projects. I started with the Rosemary Cowl by Alison Green:

Rosemary Cowl

Then I made the Permafrost Cowl by Rachel Brockman, which is shaped to protect your skin where your coat opens:

Permafrost Cowl

Permafrost Cowl

I had a lot of yarn left over from the Permafrost Cowl, so I decided to make a Fernhill Hat by Kate Gagnon Osborn:

Fernhill Hat

Fernhill Hat

I also made the Bridgette by Jane Richmond:

Bridgette

I made these Mosaic Dish Towels by Universal Yarns:

Mosaic Dish Towels

and made an extra towel with the remaining yarn:

I made these Colorful Cloths by Amy Gunderson:

Colorful Cloths

and made a couple of extra dishcloths with the leftovers:

I made the Embark Shawlette by Becky Dahlberg:

Embark Shawlette

Embark Shawlette

I made the Orchid Cowl by Jo Strong:

Orchid Cowl Detail

Orchid Cowl

All of these projects were from the Jimmy Beans Wool Accessory Club. I really enjoy this club because you get a new, fairly small project each month with interesting patterns and a variety of wool. You also get similar knit and crochet patterns each month. So far I'm just doing the knit projects, but I do want to learn to crochet, too.

I also started knitting the Flowla shawl by Laura Nelkin. The is the July Lola's Choice project. Laura decided to do a mini mystery knit-along for this project: the pattern was divided into 4 parts and we received a new part each week. I finished the first two parts:

Flowla

After that, I got a bit bored with this pattern and got tired of knitting with cotton yarn, which has no give. So I started working on my After the Storm Cardigan by Kelly Fowler:

After the Storm Cardigan

It's hard to tell, but this is the upper back of the cardigan. The pattern has narrow stripes of color, and, if you look closely, you can see that I just finished my first stripe, which is purple.

Finally, a couple of years ago I purchased the Birthday Box from Jimmy Beans Wool. This is like an advent calendar for your birthday month. I thought my 60th birthday was the perfect time to work on this! This is the box:

Every day you get a little surprise or a small ball of yarn to create the accompanying shawl project:

The project is the Birthday Bliss shawl by Amy Gunderson. There are knit and crochet versions of the pattern and I'm working on the knit version. So far, I've kept up to date and here is yesterday's progress:

Birthday Bliss

Birthday Bliss Day 11 Close-up

That's all of the knitting I've been doing. It looks like a lot, but the projects were small it's been a while.

Some of you are probably also wondering about Lance. He continues to do well. Amazingly, he's somewhere around 15.5 to 16 years old now! He has DM (degenerative myelopathy), so he has a lot of trouble getting around, but he can still walk, although he looks a bit drunk and sometimes needs help getting up. Otherwise, he's amazingly healthy and seems happy and comfortable. He gets acupuncture every other week to help him keep going. It's nice because his vet does the acupuncture, so we also talk about all aspects of his health while we're there. It really eases my mind knowing that he's getting such great care!!

That's it for now. I hope everyone is having a great summer!!

Nancy