Purple Rain

Last month, Hurricane Ike paid an unwelcome visit to my neck 'o the woods. We were personally spared any damage--not so much as a tree branch down or a shingle off the roof--but many friends and neighbors were not so lucky. The crews have just now made it by in the past week to clear off the pieces of fallen trees and building debris. The cleanup is massive, and we were not even in one of the hardest-hit areas!

We had left well before the storm to spare the kids from going through the storm and subsequent power loss (for a week)--and to spare ourselves from the prospect of being in a traffic jam for hours at a time with 2 young kids in the car! We rode out the whole week at my sister-in-law's house in the New Orleans area (yup, they had stayed with us during Katrina). The kids loved the bonus opportunity to play with all their cousins. As for me, I had a lot more time on my hands than usual. Luckily, I had brought my knitting! After finishing up Fifi, I finished all but 1 sleeve of a new sweater. That remaining sleeve, though, took me over 2 weeks. After I got back home, there was a lot of catch-up work to do and then I got absorbed in other things. Oh yeah, plus, I had to reknit the collar. But finally...



I like this sweater a lot. I had noticed, looking at my Ravelry project page, that there was a prominent lack of purple. It's a color that I really love, and it's an "in" color for fall, so of course I grabbed up some gorgeous Louisa Harding Kashmir Aran when I found it on clearance. More details are on Ravelry and in the gallery.

When I got back home, I was of course thankful for the lack of damage, but I also had a couple of knitterly things from Canarysanctuary for which to be thankful. She sent me a fab vintage pattern booklet! Check this out...


...they are so "me!"

And as if that were not enough, she awarded me this


Thank you so much! Now, I'm supposed to pass this on to 5 other bloggers, but I will instead follow the lead of another blog I read (I'm sorry--I forgot which one of you came up with this idea!) and pass it on instead to some non-blogs out there. The "regulars" at my weekly knitting group are blogless, but they are a wonderful source of inspiration. In fact, for a couple of weeks, the only knitting I managed to get done at all was on knit night. So if it wasn't for them, this particular sweater may have stalled out for good. Here's to you, ladies!