I fell in love with frog song during my first spring in Michigan. Growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, I had little opportunity to hear it. The watershed around the city is quite polluted and each year there are fewer and fewer amphibians of all kinds. I almost didn't recognize it when I first heard it in Michigan. Eight springs later, the first frog song marks a turning point in my year.
The frogs have been singing here in Iowa for almost two months now, and this week I saw my first frog, or rather toad, of the season. This week my car needed a new water pump and as I sat at the mechanics waiting for it to be ready, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. A small brown toad had hopped up on the path next to the glass door of the shop and sat there waiting patiently. He sat still while I photographed him and while other customers came in and out. He was still waiting when I left with my car. I guess maybe his car was in the shop too.
Which brings me to "frogging". When knitters make a mistake in their work and need to re-knit it, they "r-r-r-ip it, r-r-rip it". A lot of design work calls for frogging unsuccessful swatches and designs that didn't quite go as planned. As a process knitter I don't mind ripping out since reworking a design or modifying a swatch provides scope for creativity. Sometimes though, one can have two much of a good thing.
I finished my Triform Lace Shawl this week only to discover, as I was adding the edging, that one side of the shawl had four more stitches than the other. And so I will "r-r-rip it, r-r-rip it." Before I do, I thought I would share a picture of it. At least the colors worked out well.
The shawl pattern uses one skein of Cascade Heritage Sock Yarn and one skein of Noro Kureyon in a simple zig-zag lace pattern and will soon be available for sale. If only I had checked my stitch count a little more often I would be a little closer to publishing the finished pattern.
Walking Meditations
I have always enjoyed looking into mossy cracks between rocks. As a child of Norwegian ancestory, I imagined that they were the hidden doorways of troll caves. Even as an adult there is something mysterious about tiny passages into the rocks. I wonder who lives in here?
