Shelter In Place, Part Two

A lot has happened since I checked in last.  A lot.  In a surprise to no one, Covid-19 is not going away.  San Francisco’s second shelter in place starts today.  Anyone who’s been paying attention saw this coming.  Being one of those people, I got while the getting was good.  My contract at work came to an end so with no job to keep me in SF, last week, I drove to my sister’s house on the east coast.  Just in time to quarantine with my nephew through the holidays!

I love road trips, so the driving was no problem.  And unlike flying, I didn’t have to travel light!  I brought lots and lots of knitting with me.  Not knowing what life with a toddler would be like, I cast on a whole slew projects just to get them started and take all that decision making out of the equation.

It was fun digging deep into the stash to cast on project after project.  I chose patterns based on how much I’d have to be looking at the pattern and how easy they would be to pick up and put down constantly because…toddler. 

First up, the new Stephen West shawl, Painting Waves.  The yarn is a combination of two Icelandic laceweight yarns Einband and Jurtalitad Einband, a naturally dyed yarn from Icelandic dyer Hespa.  When I was in Iceland, I visited the Hespa dye studio and saw how she gets such a gorgeous range of colors from natural dyes.  With the exception of the indigo blues, all the plants for the dye were harvested in Iceland.  Apparently, indigo is one of the things that’s been imported since the days of vikings so it’s the only exception.  All the other colors come from a range of local mosses, lichens and flowers.  It was a great day. Naturally, I bought one of her kits with an array of different colors.  Now, finally, 7 years later, I’ve found the perfect project.  Each colored stripe is a different Hespa color with the grey stripe being the commercial Einband.  I’m really excited to start making progress on this one. 

I went a bit heavy on the shawls.   Three are repeats of patterns I’ve already made, Matchmaker, Number 10 and Cameo.  Two are designs I’m just making up as I go, a basic top down triangle and a two-color, sequence-knit asymmetric triangle.

It’ll be interesting to see if I stick to all these plans or if I even get far enough along to make any progress.  I can tell you already, a toddler is tiring.  And have I mentioned, there are two young cats here?  The odds seem stacked against knitting but I am determined, nonetheless.  Fingers crossed I’ll be back with progress soon!