Done, Done, and Almost Done

I managed to keep incredibly busy over the weekend. I kind of felt like a shark, you know if they stop moving they die. Except to be honest most of my busy involved sitting, so I suppose the analogy is false. Anyway the first thing I finished was the square border piece. I was right to be worried about joining at the end. I had not prepared well and on top of that the board that came with my kit is far too thin to push the needles all the way down. I made do and got it done anyway, but I had learned some valuable lessons for the the next time. This did come off the board fine and once I trimmed up the loose ends, it looked pretty good.

Not one to rest on my laurels and since we were spending a lot of time inside hiding from the heat, I got right to work on the next pattern in the book, a small mat. It has to be small because the author made sure that all the patterns could be worked with just 12 pairs of bobbins. Good thing too, because that's all I have right now. I used what I learned from the border piece and this one worked up rather quickly. I know I still made some solid errors, but it still managed to come out, I also came up with an awkward plan to push in the needles that involved placing the board on another large piece of packaging foam from a computer box. It looked ridiculous and it was pretty awkward, but it got the job done and this one joined with little problem.

All this time I was also taking short breaks to crochet a tunic pattern that I liked as well as read a couple new books. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention more major car issues. So you know that joke I made about finding a wealthy benefactor to solve our money woes, it's becoming less of a joke. I digress though, there was in fact more lace. I got a little further than the picture shows on this one, but not much. This one is bucks point lace, so I was actually hesitant to start it. I thought that it would be too much, but I made one change and I started. I left off the gimp thread. I know that it makes a striking design within the lace, but it's just such a pain the arse to deal with. My plan is to see what it looks like when it's done and if I think it needs the gimp, I'll just sew it in. Sure it's cheating and I can't even say that no one will know because I just told you all, but whatever works, right?

Today is going to be busy in a different way. The kids still have a few more days of school and they also have college for kids classes for the next two weeks which we'll be walking to partly because of the afore mentioned car issues. I'm sure I'll still get a little lace time, but what I'll finish I don't know. Well, I'm off to it then.