Made in March

With so much traveling, February was a bust for getting anything completed. I’ve done much better this month. Of course, I had incentives, since it’s birthday month for Tom and Dianne.

Three – no, make that Four shirts for Tom
I was hoping to have more shirts for Tom because I had lots of free time in Puyallup and my sewing machine, but I didn’t bring all the pieces to the cut out shirts, so only one got finished. But there was still time, so I did get two additional shirts done to give to Tom on the day.
  

As we have done the past three years, we celebrated the two March birthdays Sunday night, so it seemed occasion for one more shirt.

For Dianne
First there was the cute gift. I saw the pattern in the Jan/Feb 2009 Crochet Today! and thought of Dianne, who always serves tea after dinner.

Two years ago, we traveled to the Big Island of Hawai’i with Dianne and John. We had a great time and decided it’s time to go back. We look forward to the trip in October, and in anticipation of that I made Dianne a new swimsuit top. But since I forgot to take a picture, you’ll have to use your imagination. Here’s the top that I made for Dianne before the trip in 2007 and the fabric for the this year’s version.

And for me
In my stash was some white Calmer that I ordered for who-knows-what. I had used some for the I Do shrug a couple of years ago. The Air jacket in the Rowan Calmer Collection called to me so and in December Lamb’s Ear Farm had a sale on Rowan yarn, so I ordered the “white” yarn – without looking a the color number. You can probably guess that it wasn’t the same “white.” While my yarn was truly white (“bleach”), what I ordered turned out to be off white (“drift”). And my yarn, I found out, was discontinued. After much searching online, I found it at a shop in the UK, but they only had 3 of the 6 balls I would need; the balance I found at Alaska Knits. And still I came up short – just. So one more ball was ordered and I finally finished the darn thing. Had I had all the yarn, it would have been a surprisingly quick knit. I think that may be a property of the yarn; the I Do shrug was the same.