HipKnitsProjectClub

Della is revealed

- a close up photo at the Project Club Blog. I couldn't get a really good photo showing the stitches as it was windy out in the yard the day i took these and I needed to post it to Kerrie so she could get the official photos done and the pattern written up and out to the members.



Here's an action shot :o) Told you it was windy.





Plus a closer view (unstretched and preblocking) of the stitches of the main body of the shawl.


I really enjoyed knitting this, the deadline meant I had to keep at it, so it took just over a month of knitting every night, I had a week off for my head cold so I recon approx 3 1/2 weeks in all. Not bad going. Some things didn't work, I remembered why I should use stitch markers and lifelines and wondered why I hadn't! My pattern writing/adapting skills need some work *blushes*. I love lace (well, we knew that one!). HipKnits cashmere lace is gorgeous to knit with. It is soft and springy and it knits up like a dream. When you wear it it is surprisingly warm for something so light and floaty. It blocks well and can be vigorously stretched when wet without breaking (phew!) and variegated colours do work for lace (sometimes).

And my next project is ... lace :o) It's the Goddess Knits Mystery Shawl.

I have chosen my yarn - Gasp! PY Cecilia in Ivory from my obsession/stash and it is going to be gorgeous. I have the skeins caked and ready to go. just need to get to grips with casting on for a shawl knit from the centre out, before Elizabeth Zimmermann that would have been impossible, another thing I have learnt from the wonderful ladies at AY forum.

After that it will be Project Club Socks - off to invest in some Lucy Neatby DVDs on sock knitting, well, i needed an excuse :o) Meanwhile I am taking the Tess Dawson yarn on holiday to get some experimenting done. I'll let you know how I get on.

thank you for the comments about Tom, it's all a bit involved to go into here, was it a real rejection due to the high number of applicants? Was is prejudice? We'll never know. Kerrie posted a link to this article earlier in the week and it really made me wonder how she would have coped if her baby had been born with a disability. At one point she says

didn't think about any of this before I got pregnant. I wanted to have a baby.
Her colour and culture were immaterial then. But self-flagellation is not useful. I have more pressing concerns. I am now the mother of a 'black' child, even if she is more the hue of weak tea than espresso. This is a role for which I am utterly unprepared. Part of me thinks I should be playing sitar music to her in her cot, mastering pakoras and serving them dressed in a sari, but that would be fantastically fake coming from me.

Well, none of us think carefully enough about what would happen if our child was different, but some differences you can predict and some you actively choose them; some differences are given to you without you ever expecting them. But hey, Lady, if you are unprepared for a black child don't make babies with a black man. Oh, that's harsh isn't it? And if you can't cope with a disability, then don't have any children at all. You never know what you are going to get when you cast that die and it is telling that our first question on hearing of a birth is "is the baby alright?" She's only speaking what people think after all. But we are none of us really prepared, you just have to step up to the plate, Lowri, you have no choice now, she's here.

I remember howling in the night the day we first got Tom's diagnosis, but then the next day you have to pick yourself up and say, well, this is who he is and who he is is just the same as who he was the day before, the only thing that has changed is that piece of paper. That diagnosis. And that piece of paper gives you power, because it gives you knowledge and you can now go out and seek the truth and seek advice and find out about what you are dealing with. Maybe the two situations are not analogous, i certainly don't mean to imply that I in any way consider race to be a disability. Society prejudges both group nevertheless.

Actually, i don't consider disability to be a 'disability' in the way that society does either. It's just a different way of being human, no more, no less valid than any other way. But it's times when you suspect that people's judgements are based on the colour of skin, or on the piece of paper, that you have the reality of society's opinions thrust upon you and then you wish for a different society, not for a different baby! Nothing to do with the mirror.

If you need to do your grieving, do it, get it over with, have your howl and then pick yourself up and focus on the important thing in all of this, the important child, who relies upon you for it's guide into how the society is and how best to navigate it. Read this and stop whinging! I'm not entirely unsympathetic, I'm impatient with you, you can do better than this. I guess i am a lot further down the road that's all.