Oh, friends, the swine flu thing has laid me low. (But not too low to start my post with an accidental iambic pentameter, I note.) I’m flattened. This is partly – even largely – because the Feaster has yet to shake the last few symptoms: he’s unusually limpetty, coughing and snotty, and sleeping [...]]]>

Oh, friends, the swine flu thing has laid me low. (But not too low to start my post with an accidental iambic pentameter, I note.) I’m flattened. This is partly – even largely – because the Feaster has yet to shake the last few symptoms: he’s unusually limpetty, coughing and snotty, and sleeping like a baby … by which I mean, of course, that he’s up half the night, and hence so am I.

So it’s not too surprising that crafting activities around here have slowed to a crawl. Time to dig into the UFO files: that up there is a lace shawl in Rowan Kidsilk Haze, which I’ve been knitting since time immemorial, dammit.

If I ever knew what the pattern was called, I don’t now. It came by e-mail through a chain of friends, back in the pre-Ravelry dreamtime. I must try and trace it, in fact, because I’m uncomfortable using someone’s work without acknowledgement. I may even owe someone money, come to that.

[Edited: As evident from the comments below, this is Birch, by Sharon Miller, from Rowan 34, and it's available for free.]

It’s quite a thinky pattern, this, not really suitable for TV knitting – which is one reason it’s progressing so slowly. (Though that’s a Catch-22, because if I worked on it more often I’d eventually learn the pattern by heart, wouldn’t I?) I do like the fact that you start on the long side and work towards the point: by inclination I’m a front-loader of effort.

(The wine-glass thing looked better in my head, in case you’re wondering. There’s only so much setting up one can do in the 8-second intervals between nose-wipes and milk-feeds!)