Life's a Stitch

This is part two in the Catholic knitting category. As a child, when confronted by a daunting task, we were advised to "offer our actions up to the souls in Purgatory," the Catholic version of grin and bear it, except that as an added bonus, you were accumulating credits to get someone promoted from Purgatory, a holding area for those souls not quite good enough to enter the Pearly Gates. Got that?

In my last post I talked about undoing the bind off for my daughter’s wedding sweater and picking up the 350+ stitches. One row into the re-knitting of the shawl collar, I noticed that in the row below, there was a loose stitch every three stitches, from casting off with a larger needle, stretching the stitch below. So, I ripped out an additional three rows and picked up those stitches again. I started knitting again to discover a mistake three rows previous. You got it, I ripped it out again and picked up for the third time the 350+ stitches, thinking this would have been a good example of an opportunity to "offer it up to the souls in Purgatory." Someone surely would have made the transition into Heaven based upon 1150 stitches.

New yarn alert: I was in Michael’s the other day and saw Paton’s wool-soy stripes, new for the Fall. Interesting medium weight yarn, with a soft halo, in colours named of flowers. It would make a lovely multidirectional scarf. And knitting good news: I had a call from the woman at Marilyn’s in B’Ham (see my last post) and she has a ball of Touch Me in her personal stash that she is willing to sell me. Stay tuned for a photo of a finished Vintage Velvet scarf in the next two weeks.

Finally, does anyone know to which type of bird these feathers belong? Over the years I have picked up three of this kind in different neighbourhoods. The shaft is bright coral orange in colour. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and can’t think of a possibility in the wild. Could they be from pet birds?