Progress is slow

I am getting up before the sun these days. That is not right. It is not the natural logical progression of the world. The sun rises; then me. This is what I saw a few days ago when I got up. Yes, there is a lot of construction going on around me now. The colours are beautiful -- I used to be so intrigued by the various shades of reds and pinks and greys and blues of the sunrises of several years ago. I wanted to capture all that colour and create clouds of wool to spin! I'm working on it.

I've been slowly working on the mystery shawl. I am about a third way through Clue 4, and Clue 5 comes out tomorrow! I am not able to spend enough time on it. It has not been easy! There are lace pattern rows on BOTH sides -- and I really had to struggle with them for some reason. This is not the first time I've done lace. I think I can usually work through any kind of pattern, but this one was really difficult! There wasn't much of a design developing, that I could see, so I had to concentrate on following the charts, and would lose my place a lot! I developed a way of isolating only a section at a time, and then moving that little window as I worked the stitches. It's coming along, and I think it will be looking great when done, but there is not much to see right now. As you know, lace needs to be stretched out when being blocked to show off the pattern. So we will see it at the end! I will include a pic here of what I have so far. Looks good, right?

Remember that bag I was felting? Nothing much happened when I rubbed and scrubbed in the sink by hand. It usually worked when I did smaller things. So I threw it in the maching when I was doing my laundry, and let it go through a cylce. It's better, but not felted much yet. The stitches are still visible and there are a couple of holes where it was stretched too much. I think that another run through the machine is necessary. I'm told that sometimes it takes 3 cycles in a machine before it will felt.

But my shawl is not getting done; more to follow.