Too much work and not enough action

I have so many things to get done.  My garden is huge (about 1/4 of an acre) and it needs weeding.  I sprayed it to kill the grass and that should help, but I need to get in there and pull the broad leaf weeds.  I also need to finish burying the potatoes.  I have 1.5 rows done and 5.5 to go.  It takes me an hour to do one row!  I need to put my netting up for the beans and peas, plant more peas, put in the stakes for the tomatoes, spread mulch around, and weed the grass out of the sweet corn areas.  I can't do any of that, 3 days in a row I have been grounded from working in the garden, because we had a really heavy rain and the garden is still wet (I have heavy clay soil and it takes a while to dry out.)  That is just the garden.  There is also lawn mowing, packing up everything on the first floor because we are having the floors redone, and sorting through fleeces.  I am feeling very lazy, I don't want to do any of it.  I would rather sit here and work on my knitting.

This is my Lily.  I am using Nashua Creative focus Linen.  It is a linen and cotton blend.  I wanted this to be a little more rustic and I want it done for early fall.  This yard is rough like linen but, like linen, it will soften.

Amanda's swallowtail is coming along, but I ran out of the hand spun I was using.  I picked up some more top to spin for this at the lamb and wool festival this year and I should get to finish it up after I get through all of the fleeces.  Fleece first, spinning last.  For the non-knitting / crochet crowd.  This will look 100x more lovely once it is blocked.  All knits look better blocked, but for lace, it is pretty much a necessity.

My reworking of Wisteria has gone really well.  I will have to spin up some more yarn for it, but again, not until the fleece are all gone through.  I added quite a bit of length to this sweater and knit a medium for the bottom and a large on top and it fits really nicely.  It is comfy, not fitted, and I can hardly wait to finish it so I can wear it this winter.  It will be a hot one.  The top came from my sheep and it is so soft it is hard to believe it is wool.  No itchy feeling with this sweater.

One of the things I really like about this sweater is the hand spun.  It is more softly spun in areas and it creates a lovely texture.  It definitely is not an off-the-rack look, nor does it look like a home ec project.  I love it.  I think it is my favorite so far.  I have tried it on and every time I felt so snugly I did not want to take it off again.

I also have to fix No-No's sweater.  It will only take me a couple of days, so I am holding off for a bit, hoping I finish some of my real work first.

Indiski times 2

I am working on a traditional Russian shawl.  These shawls are supposed to be so fine that you can pull them through a woman's ring.  They are also knit on both sides, so they are reversible.  I decided to do two at a time because working with the cashmere in cobweb weight yarn was very difficult.  The pattern is not readily seen while you are knitting unless you pin it out as I have here.  Mistakes can happen easily, so I wanted to make sure I was familiar with the pattern.  I decided to use some hand spun merino, from my flock, in a light fingering weight.  So far, I love working on the merino and I may turn it into a large blanket for my bed.  The cashmere has not been enjoyable at all, but I look at it as an exercise in patience.  I hope no one ever asks me to knit them a veil, or if they do, they give me 10 years to complete it.  This is brutal.  I know I want to have this as an accomplishment of mine and that is why I am working on it.  Age will not make this any easier.  Still, it is beautiful.

I have looked at this book and they have some good patterns for this type of lacework.  The pattern I am knitting from comes from Piecework.  This magazine is nice to look at, but I rarely find things I want to do.  I picked mine up at the library and the pattern says you can photocopy the charts, so I did.  The library is one of my favorite resources for patterns and ideas, second to Ravelry.