Craylola Scarf

 Hi all -

I thought I should get this out before the storm starts. If the forecast bears out, we are in for a couple of feet of snow in the next couple of days. Up here, that means that we'll also lose power which means no water or internet either. And there's very little cell service up here, so it will be some time to relax and concentrate on hand work. To get ready, I'll be filling a couple of buckets with water for the toilet and bringing my battery charger in from the car (I have one that can be used to jump the car battery) and topping it off since I keep my knitting patterns and my books on my iPad and iPhone. The more I do to prepare, the more likely we are to keep our power....  😉

The first project I want to share with you is my Craylola Scarf designed by Laura Nelkin. I made this scarf for my neighbor. For some reason, my dogs like to escape my yard and go to her house. Lance did that all of the time until he got too old to slither between the bars in the gate. And now Grace is doing the same. I've been working to shore up the gate to keep her in, but it's been a process. I started by covering the gate with plastic chicken wire, but Grace broke through that within a couple of days. So then I covered the bottom of the gate with craft chicken wire (a thinner chicken wire that is covered in green plastic). With that, I saw evidence that she got through the upper part of the gate. So now I've covered the top of the gate as well. That seems to be keeping her in. (I didn't originally cover the entire gate because I was scraping my hands on the zip ties that I used to attached the plastic chicken wire when that went to the top. But I switched to heavy-duty zip ties for the wire version and I don't seem to scrape my hands on that as much.) Anyway, the last time Grace got out before I covered the tops of the gates, I saw her at my neighbor's house (as usual) and when I went up to get her my neighbor wasn't home and Grace had obviously knocked over a painted Mexican flower pot and it broke. I let my neighbor know what had happened and offered to replace the flower pot, but she was really nice about it and told me not to worry about it -- she would glue the pot back together in the summer. So I decided to knit something for her to apologize since it felt incredibly intrusive to me. So I looked through my Laura Nelkin kits and decided to my Craylola for her:

Craylola

I've been wanting to make this scarf for a while. I love the zig-zag construction and all of the beads (just under 600 beads in total)! And I like that it's a thinner, lighter scarf that I think can be more useful. Here is a close-up of one of the ends while it was blocking:

Craylola - close-up

I'm thinking that the weight of the beads will also help to keep the scarf in place around your neck. I hope to make one of these for myself sometime!

I also started another Stephen West shawl -- the Fiber Fest Shawl. Stephen said that he designed this shawl to highlight one of those wonderful single skeins of yarn that you pick up at a fiber festival because it is so beautiful, but you don't know how you are going to use it. I haven't been to a fiber festival, but I have a lot of beautiful skeins that I've bought online just because I couldn't resist! So I looked through my yarn stash and picked out some skeins for this lovely shawl:

Fiber Fest Shawl

One of the reasons I wanted to make this shawl was because it has these mini baubles that I wanted to try:

Fiber Fest Shawl -- mini baubles

I think these are so cute!! This is where most of my knitting efforts are going right now.

Before I go, I'll share a couple of Grace pictures. I think I've mentioned that she loves sticks! Of all sizes!

Her favorite stick lately has been this VERY HEAVY stump!

I know how heavy this is because she keeps setting it on the path in front of me so I'll throw it for her, and I can only get it to go a couple of yards. And just another fun picture of the bobcat tracks I found on my driveway when we got back from our walk a couple of days ago:

I took a picture with my hand so I could gauge the size and check online to make sure they are actually bobcat tracks -- and they are! I love all of the interesting wildlife we have around here!!

Well, the first game of the Big 12 tournament is on now so I'll watch the rest of that and then start my storm preparations before the second game starts. I hope everyone is doing well!!

Nancy