It's all in how you think about it.

Yesterday we spent the entire day at the celebration of a friend's mother's wedding. It was a lovely day, beautiful weather, lots of love and joy in the air. It was also very, very social, and I think we're a family of introverts (even me! This would surprise most people who know me), so we were all left a bit tired. Today, the boys were just Not Listening to me. I'd tell them to stop doing something, they'd do it again. I'd tell one boy to knock it off, the other would then do the exact same thing. We were out on a walk and I ended up taking the boys home because of this, while DH took the girl off to poke sticks in the lake (a favorite pastime of most of the family). Instead of staying angry, or just tuning out, I decided that we needed a little running around, so I got out the cones and the soccer ball, and we played a soccer/tackle/rolling down the lawn game for the next hour, that left us all laughing and breathless. It was a powerful reminder to me that so much of life is truly what I make of it. I have been very influenced by Viktor Frankl's work (probably time to go reread it, actually!) and it's useful to remember that I have a great deal of control over how I experience my life.

And on to the knitting!

I got a chance to do some knitting, and I actually took a picture! My sister, when I told her that I'm currently obsessed with knitting shawls, asked if I'd be willing to make one for her. I immediately got excited, and did a little stash-diving to come up with this! The yarn is some yarn that my mom found for me at the local second-hand store: The yarn is Madil Rebus in sapphire. The pattern is Swallowtail and I'm knitting it on size 8s. Since the yarn is listed as a bulky weight, I'm sort of winging it on size. I've got 5 skeins (600 yards), which I am hoping is enough to give me a good-sized shawl. I really wasn't sure this yarn would work with a lace pattern, because it's a mini-boucle, but it actually really works nicely, in my opinion. It also just feels so soft and velvety! I think this will be a lovely, warm, but lightweight shawl. I'm interested to see how it blocks, with the nylon content that it has. It looks like it will felt, so I'm hoping to spit-splice the skeins and have fewer ends to deal with. I've done 7 pattern repeats, and am about to do a couple more. I haven't decided if I'm going to do the nupps or not, since it is a bigger and fuzzier wool, I'm not sure if they'd look good or not. I'll decide when I get there! Mainly I just have to figure out how many pattern repeats to do! And yes, I am using lifelines.

And in other news, my SIL asked if she could "hire" me to make my niece a cardigan! On the one hand, wow! I got really excited...on the other hand, I am not sure my skills (especially my buttonhole skills!) are really good enough to do something that she could actually wear. Scary!!