A Beautiful Morning!

Hello,

In the morning the doves were picking at left-over birdseed around a tree in our yard. The sun comes in at a sharp angle to create the stark light-and-dark contrast - almost too much for the camera to handle.

A winter morning in California!

The Hanami stole is progressing ... I am now working on the 7th repeat of the basketweave pattern. I will add an 8th repeat and also a few extra rows in most of the following patterns to balance the second half of the stole. And since I want to have more of the cherry-blossom "cloud", rather than the ordered blossoms at the end, I'm going to shorten the last pattern ("G") by 25%. That will result in enough rows of straight-laced cherry-blossoms at the end - to create the connection to the ordered basket-weave pattern.

Here is the current status:

Hanami Stole, 6+ Basketweave pattern repeats

My ironing board is now too small to fully show the pinned-out work in progress, and I was too lazy to bring out my blocking board, so I only pinned it partially.

Only 24 days to the Lace Making workshop at Lacis!!!

Take care!

S.F., Hanami Progress

As a belated birthday outing we drove to San Francisco last Monday. Here is is the Christmas tree in Union Square:

We went to the Rotunda restaurant in the Neiman Marcus building for lunch – it’s a beautiful place; you can see the tip of the NM Christmas tree and in the distance the Union Square tree.

Of course the main reason we wanted to eat there are their fabulous popovers! They serve these in place of bread before your main course!

Then we wanted to see the Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul exhibit in the Asian Art Museum. Among other ancient artifacts this showcases pieces from the so-called Bactrian Hoard. They were hidden by a group of people during the years of war to save them. It’s nice to know that there are still heroes among us. Unfortunately, the museum was closed. Maybe we can still make it. The exhibit runs to Jan 25^th.

I’m still working on the Hanami stole, now on the 5^th Basketweave pattern repeat. This picture shows it unpinned. It looks much better stretched (see my Ravelry page).

I also did a quickie knit (1 day) of a handbag, which will most likely be a gift.

This was the second time I made this purse, and even tough I forgot about it after I threw it in the washer to felt it, it came out beautifully. I was lucky!

Here is the new (red) purse, and my old (yellow) one which I now realize was not felted properly.

So I re-felted the yellow one ... it is now smaller than before, of course, but looks much better.

Best wishes to all of you for the New Year!