Happenings

I have been meaning to post for what feels like days, but whenever I get a spare moment that can be used for what I think of as the knitting part of my life, I am drawn, inexorably, to the Lacewing shawl. Of course, it's at that stage where, even with all of the knitting I've been doing on it, it doesn't look like I'm making much progress at all.
It is getting bigger, though, I swear. And I'm giddy like a schoolgirl with this thing, no joke. It's challenging, in the best possible way. I need to pay attention, which is wonderful and absorbing, like sight-reading a good piece of music. I did go through a small period during which I was convinced that one particular 32-stitch section was cursed; every time I finished knitting it, I'd check my stitch count, but by the time I got back to it, stitches were inexplicably missing. It was a Bermuda Triangle sort of thing, and I found it frustrating beyond belief (seriously, no-one should have to spend a good hour of knitting time fiddling with 32 stitches). On the other hand, it most certainly was an opportunity to hone my skills at reading my knitting, so that I could see where I'd gone wrong. See what I mean? Giddy. Gettin' jiggy with it. You know it's bad when even a cursed patch is a fun challenge. I guess I've been missing lace.

As I said, though, it's not something I can knit when I'm going to be interrupted much. I did manage an hour or so each morning this week, especially on those days when I dropped Older Daughter off for her two half-day orientations at her new school (they went swimmingly, btw, and she even declared herself "much less scared (but still a little scared)" to start in a few weeks; this is good news), and Younger Daughter played quietly in her room. However, there was no way I could knit this while taking the girls to see the American Girl movie (very nice period knitted sweaters) or when going to an afternoon meeting, so I worked on the half-pi shawl during those. I also can't knit Lacewing while playing games with the girls, so I've been knitting the Kimono socks from the most recent issue of Knitscene.
I decided to only do one of the cute little ties; one was good, two seemed like a bit much.

Have y'all seen the recently-inaugurated Twist Collective? Anne has an amazing pattern in there, and there's a pair of Cookie A. socks that I might have to buy the pattern for, as well. So much to knit, so little time.

In fact, I'd just managed to pack the girls and Rick off to this morning's market so I could have a little quiet knitting time (on Lacewing, what else?), when Older Daughter came running back in saying there was something I had to see, right now. So I ran outside to see, and by gorr, she was right.
Do you see what's sitting there on a bag of guinea pig litter that the girls forgot to put in the garbage can?
Yup, a hawk (Sharp-shin, I think, although maybe a Cooper's). It didn't seem at all inclined to fly away, which made me nervous, so we trapped all of our animals in the house, and I started calling around to see who could come and rescue her from us, because there was no way on this green earth that I was going to try to capture that hawk; it may not have been flying, but the beak and claws all seemed in working order. I spent a solid half an hour on the phone, and had just gotten someone to give me a phone number to call, when she flew away. She only got as far as the lower branches of our oak tree, where she sits even now, so I am still a bit concerned, but I'll keep an eye on her. Meanwhile, I'm off to knit some more.