sweetened carrot, urgent deadline

Feeling guilty for your compliments on my goal reaching last post. Soon as I posted, my great intentions were interrupted by my real life . Books remain only partially kept. Which the accountants among you know is like being a little bit pregnant. Incentive yarn waits temptingly.

To help me keep my eyes on the prize, and since the knitting gods put me right by an excellent button store, I heaped a little sugar on my reward cast-on.

Do you love these as much as I do? Despite knowing that one of my sons offered this with a passing glance: " oh- pig noses carved from horn. Cool...I guess. "

Meanwhile my knitting attention turned to an impending meeting at the book publisher this Friday. On Sunday I was idly wondering what I would wear when the big red revolving siren in my brain went off : these are marketing and promotion folk! I need to make an impression as a presentable, fibery, knitterly , interesting kind of person, one that you'd want to chat with after the book comes out. I'm OK with the chat. I have all kinds of interesting tales to tell. But what to wear? I need to wear something from the book, duh!

So here's a challenge. It is too early in the season to wear a wool hat without looking a little crazy , the only finished sweater sample I have here is a heavy jacket a size too small for me, and there is no way I can crank out any of the other sweaters or vests this week. Don't even have the authentic yarns on hand. But! The unbelievably luxurious handspun alpaca from Victory Ranch I brought home from New Mexico, and the shawl pattern from that chapter. Perfect. Settled on the shawl , one with some lace, but worsted weight, so I have hope of getting it done. Not enough yardage to make the full flowing length as shown in the book - hopefully enough for a large wrappish shawl.

If you've read this blog for a while - or have peeked at my Ravelry projects - have you noted a distinct lack of lace? Yeah. And that would be why I knit to row 31 three times before I got it right and was able to keep going. I'm tootling along, glancing fearfully at the dwindling ball of fiber. Geometry being what it is, the triangle is swallowing so much yarn per row now that my bowling ball of yarn is speeding through the produce department: it's cabbage sized ! no it's a grapefruit, then an orange, an apple and presently heading into kiwi. Why oh why didn't I wind off the fringe yarn first?

My schedule isn't leaving me much knitting time . Yesterday afternoon the stress of worrying that I 'll go to a meeting with a luxuriously dorky handknit alpaca neckerchief prompted me to call the ranch and ask them to overnight one more skein. At Victory Ranch the handspun is made by one alpaca each, I mean if you buy a skein, it has the name of the animal it came from, and is only spun from that one fleece. I called and asked if they had more of Laurel. They do! It'll be here Thursday. I'll be the one sitting on MetroNorth Friday morning, using the 1 hour 50 minute train ride to attach fringe. That ought keep people out of the seat next to me! Maybe I'll wear shiny shoes to distract.