Circle of Life Shawl

I finished another shawl yesterday, and here it is in the blocking board. It is the Circle of Life shawl by Eugen Beugler. I made it in Fiddlestick's laceweight , 50%silk 50%merino wool. The colour is daffodil.

I really like the centre flower. Shawls are often let down by slightly messy centres, but this one is perfect.

I like geometrical patterns so this one was perfect for me. Most unusually for me I worked it exactly as the pattern says, from start to finish, and I am very happy with it.

I have already started my next shawl, of course!



Exhibition Japanese Calligraphy

One of my readers asked to see more of my husband's Japanese calligraphy, so here are photos of photos taken at exhibitions in Japan and China. The one above is the most recent piece. It won an award at an exhibition in China recently.

Here is a montage of other exhibition pieces. The picture of my husband and me was taken shortly after our wedding, thirty years ago. I wish we still looked like that!



Lace Stole

This is the Fine Lace Stole from Shetland Lace by Gladys Amedro. It is a very pretty light green, but this seems to be a colour the camera cannot cope with.

I knitted it a good many years ago in a very fine silk and cashmere yarn. It includes my two favourite lace patterns (shown above and below).

My one quibble with it is that the yarn I used was too fine so it is whisper light - to the point of providing no warmth whatsoever! If I was going to make it now I would use a slightly less fine yarn, with more cashmere in it. As it is, it is very pretty but too fragile for practical use.



Sewing Roll

I made this a good many years ago based on a project in one of the Australian craft magazines. It is very useful. The idea is thet you lay out your patchwork, applique, embroidery, etc. pieces on it and then you can roll it up without misplacing anything. The basis of it is one of those cardboard rolls you can get at the post-office for sending documents you don't want to fold. It is much the same idea as those rolls one sees advertised for jigsaws.

As you can see, I went to town on the embroidery. As far as I remember, there were bits of embroidery arranged like this on the original, but I thought they looked a bit skimpy so did my own thing!



Tigger

I'm feeling seedy and miserable today - too many bits of me hurt and it is both cold and very windy. So here a couple of baby pictures of Tigger.



More Tatting

I am very fond of the patterns in Tatting a 4 square ring by Mary Maynard and have tatted  many of her designs, some of them many times. But I also seem to end up giving them away before I have got around to photographing them so I could only find two photos. And, needless to say, I have given both those pieces away so I will have to start again!



Rain

It seems to have rained for days on end. Now it has stopped raining and returned to wintry cold. So I thought I could do with a look forward to summer.

And here is Ginger, being deliberately cute - he's good at cute!