The Road to the Williamson Shawl

The road to the shawl has been entered upon.  I give you advance notice that this is the road TO the shawl ... it's not the road OF the shawl.  Here's what's been up since my last post:

• The yarn for the shawl arrived.  
• I knit a cabled, reversible cowl for my LYS and perhaps invented a new seaming technique.  
• Skrå-trøje has grown a lot.  There are only 32 rows or so left on the back, and then it's sleeves and finishing!  (Finishing includes plackets at neck and cuffs, plus regrouping on the entire bottom hem.  It's nothing simple like mattress stitch.)  I'm getting pretty decent at purling with 2 colors, too.  
• The yarn for Filius' Gotland Sohljul has been ordered.
• Tea has been ordered.  I usually order from Adagio, but this time I decided to order from Harney and Sons.  
• The downstairs has been rearranged (as of this morning) into a 'post-homeschooling', two computer set-up.  It's in flux, and will be in flux for quite some time.  I'm using a temporary desk found on Craigslist while I look for the Perfect Desk -- something more writing desky (but with a keyboard tray) than Huge Executive Hutch, but not so writing-desky that I can't run the house from it. 
• The weather has been atrocious.  Last weekend, it was so chilly on the paper route that Filius asked for a pair of gloves.  Monday afternoon, I gave him the finished gloves.  Yesterday, it was 87 degrees.  Bleagh.  We seem to be heading into normal fall weather now, though.  (The gloves were a modification of a WWII glove pattern.  A fun knit which came out beautifully, thanks to swapping the pattern-specified size 1 needles and fingering-weight yarn for size 2 needles and sport-weight yarn.  I just don't DO 7.5 stitches/" with Brown Sheep Fingering unless I'm going for gauzy.  And who wants gauzy gloves for a Minnesota winter?
• I made Spiced Chai Honey.  The recipe originated with Irene Wolansky and was published in the latest Mary Jane's Farm.  My mom was kind enough to flag it for me, and mmmmm, is it good!  Here's the recipe:

16 oz organic, raw, local honey

1 t cinnamon powder

¼ t clove powder

½ t cardamom powder

1 t ginger powder

Small pinch of ground black pepper

Mix everything together, and enjoy!  It's delicious on oatmeal, wheat berries, granola, yogurt, in tea, and probably many more places.  Good for sore throats, too, mixed with warm water and a squeeze of lemon juice.

I'm going to try to keep up with the weekly updates.  See you next week!