Happy Easter! And knitting...

I do hope you're having a beautiful and meaningful holiday.

Easter means a great deal to me.  I have lots of Easter memories, and probably the big one was my husband's decision for Christ on a Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter).  Then, a week later, we went to the Crystal Cathedral Easter event with my sister and her husband.  It was her idea - she has the best ideas - and we had our younger son, just a baby, and I recall she helped me find a sitter, too.  I wonder if they still do those amazing shows there?  Gosh, they had amazing costumes, a live tiger, and ladies who ride out on wires being singing angels. 

But no matter what we do, this is the most important Christian holiday and a tremendous reminder of how much God loves me. 

Last year, John and I attended a big, combined multi-church Good Friday service.  This year, we were going to do the same thing.  Because we went to something in San Antonio and figured leaving at 3 would get us to the downtown service at 6:30 with no problems, but then we had long traffic delays, and the service tickets were at home, which isn't on the way, we didn't make it.  Austin is becoming famous for its traffic, and not in a good way.  The town has just grown so much!

As we neared the house, I was searching on my smart phone for a service near our house, and I didn't find one.  Either the churches we are familiar with in our area were part of the combined service or they had already had a service at noon. 

Instead, we decided to watch a movie about Jesus.  When we got home, I searched on Netflix and we chose The Gospel of John.  This had narration directly from the gospel's words overlaid on scenes with actors speaking in Aramaic.  When we went to Israel, I learned that some people still speak Aramaic, in fact, our guides spoke Aramaic.  Some of the movie scenes reminded us of Israel, and some didn't, as it was filmed in Morocco, and the movie scenery is very arid. Israel is that arid in the dry areas - a kind of dry landscape I have never seen in the US.  However, the areas around the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem, where so much movie action takes place, is not so dry.  

I had not seen this movie before.  I enjoyed it, and it gave me lots of think about.

I knitted a little today, and tomorrow, we'll attend a church service.  I have the Easter meal planned, a plan that works for the healthy way I eat now, and also includes some of our younger son's favorites, since he's coming over.  He's thinking about going back to school for a graduate degree, and it's difficult, because he enjoys being out of college and working. 

I'm in the middle of quite a few knitting projects.  The local knit club is making Raggedy Ann and Andy as a learning exercise.  The mid-gauge book I've been working on is only about half done, but hey, it's a good half.  I've decided not to get in a rush.  I don't want to take all the joy out of knitting by letting myself feel as pressured as I get, well, at work.  This is why I don't do custom knitting - I like to take my time, be happy, and not stressed.

I also have the do-it-yourself seminar book I wrote.  It's written, and I like it.  It's about enough material for a weekend seminar, but I think it would be quite a nice resource when you're trying to come up with demos for a club.  I just have to film it, and edit the film.  Oh - and I better come up with a name for it!  So far, nothing has appealed to me more than "do-it-yourself seminar."

And then, there are the attacks I still get where I drop what I'm doing and run to the knitting room to try something.  Today, it was an idea I had about an industrial neckband.

If it were a real neckband, I'd have to figure out how many needles to use.  Typically, you just join a shoulder and stretch the neckline along the machine.  In my case, I just dug around the room for a swatch - I have lots of them - to be a pretend neckline.

Then I cast on the neckband stitches with waste yarn and knitted a few rows, changed to the garment yarn and knitted the rows for the outer covering of the edge, the did a loose row and took the whole business off on waste yarn.  I hung the "neckline" (swatch) on the machine, right side facing me, and then put the large stitches on the hooks, but inside the latches.  Closed the latches and pull then needles back through the neckline.  Then I knitted the rows for the inner neckline cover and picked up a hem!  After that, you can do whatever ribbing you want, just rearrange the stitches onto the ribber.  I think it would be cute to just knit a few rows of stockinette and bind off for a rolled edge.  Maybe I'll use it for one of the projects in the mid-gauge book.  This would make a good video, if I can keep it short.  Hmm.

The other attack I'm having this weekend, which has me off track from the mid-gauge book, was a cardigan idea for some yarn that jumped into my shopping cart recently.  It's a tweedy purple wool (now that I'm skinny, I wear colors), and I have the sideways knitted shrug-ish cardigan all planned in my mind.  Stay tuned!

Say, has anyone played with the new Lion Brand yarn, "Shawl in a Ball?"  Let me know what you think.  The colors are gorgeous, at least on my computer screen.