Spindle Spinning & Pie Wedge Shawl

Today I was ambitious and made my decluttering task be my spinning area (details & gory pics at my other blog) and here are two things I'm very happy to be reunited with, even if their re-discovery increases my already staggering UFO count.

First, here is a project I started many moons ago, one I used to take to the bookshop and work on while I was there. (The shop closed at the beginning of September...) I was really happy to see this project, unfinished as it is. It is a Coopworth Swirl roving from the good folks at Jehovah Jirah Farm, (all their fiber auctions were ending when I wrote this, but do check back as they offer some neat color combinations ) and I decided I wanted to spin it and ply it using only my drop spindle.

I thought it deserved to be worked on again, so I put it in a special place, my new Lantern Moon twisted palm tote (this was the perfect place to stash the silk hankies, too.)
And then, I found my first Pie Wedge Shawl - the one done with Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace from the pattern on the skein band.


It just needs those ends woven in and some blocking to make those gorgeous points show their true elegant selves.

This shawl, besides being the first lacy sort of thing I've ever done, is crisis knitting - and carries a lot of painful memories. I had just started this when we got the terrible news my husband's twin brother had been killed by a drunk driver. I worked on this for the next weeks and shed many tears over it.

Then it was put down (and I accidentally pulled one of the needles out and just stalled on trying to get all those stitches properly back on the needle) and not picked up again until another tragedy. Our son was in a wreck a few months later. This was the knitting I took with me after he had been airlifted to a hospital 80 miles away. This was the knitting I did during the 5 hour surgery he had two days later. I think I've been so slow in finally completing it because it does carry memories of such difficult times. At the same time, I love it fiercely, for the comfort the knitting of it provided me - the familiar, unchanging rhythm of the needles that lulled and soothed me.

And one of these days soon, I will complete it and wear it and be warmed by it.
'zann