Another busy week

This week I've felt like a mouse running on a wheel and getting nowhere. :-)

I spent the first 3 days of the week charting and trouble shooting a pattern for a friend. This favor turned into way more work than I had expected.

I continue to work on items for the Pet Refuge bazaar. My goal is at least one item a day. Completed crowns, baby bibs, and scarves are all slowly piling up in my donation basket.

Thursday, I went to Valparaiso with my friend, Elizabeth, to visit Sheep's Clothing. Our normal just over an hour trip turned into a 2 hour tour fraught with inching and stalled traffic on the Toll Road. We decided to get off at the LaPorte exit (along with lots of other people), choosing to take other roads west to Michigan City where we got back on the Toll Road for the last leg of the trip since traffic was moving again. We hadn't a clue what the traffic delay was about but both us were unwilling to sit in stalled traffic when we could be moving. Arriving in Valparaiso, we found the main intersection torn up and redirected while they are installing a roundabout in it's place. What a mess! It took us some time to figure out where our road was detoured. Down that road we found more construction and had to detour yet again! We were beginning to suspect that we should have postponed our trip to another day. LOL! We finally arrived at the yarn shop and had to complete our shopping quickly to get home in time. I was wearing my Cascading Leaves shawl. I had hardly stepped foot in the shop before I was deluged with questions about my beautiful shawl. "Isn't it an Evelyn Clark Leaf Lace shawl?" they asked. "No," I replied, "it's my own design." (Though I'm sincerely flattered for my design to be mistaken for an Evelyn Clark!) I have learned to be prepared, so I whipped out a copy of my shawl pattern. Paula liked the pattern and asked for several copies to sell at the shop which I gladly supplied.

Elizabeth keeps asking me when I will design another lace pattern. I have several projects in mind but no time to work on them at the moment. Hopefully soon, as I'm beginning to get designer's itch again.

I now have one more book ticked off my wish list. Heirloom Knitting by Sharon Miller arrived in the mail this week. Woo-hoo! I finally found a used copy at a price much lower than it's normal $55 price tag. It's a beauty!

The kids crown pattern has been fixed. I apologize. Evidently, when I wrote up my late night scribbles I transposed a few things. I've taken care of the problem and written it out more clearly. There shouldn't be any problems with it. I've knit 2 more crowns from the pattern since I corrected it.

Some sad news on the yarn shop front. Cass Street Depot in Fort Wayne, Indiana has closed. I found out this week that the shop closed in mid-June. It was a very nice yarn shop. I am sorry to hear that it has gone out of business.

Sitemeter tells me that my blog gets a lot of visitors from the Triangle Shawl lists and my free patterns. I hope some of you take the time to read my ramblings too. Please post a comment once in a while so I know I'm not talking to myself. Thanks! :-)