Constance earthquakes

Oops, I need to snip that end in back.

One time when we had an earthquake about the size of yesterday’s, I was at the funeral of a 95-year-old friend and the bench I was sitting on suddenly jolted upwards hard while the chandeliers were swinging wildly overhead. I figured it was Al waving goodbye–I could just picture him laughing.  (And I was grateful for California earthquake codes.)

Thank you to those who’ve been checking up on us, but no, we’re an eight-hour drive north of where yesterday’s quake was.  You know why the US Geological Survey folks put earthquake predictions in 30-year increments?  Because 30 years is the length of the average mortgage.  They want people to realize that it will happen in their time–and we’ve definitely had a few, but nothing worse than superficial cracks in the chimney grout so far at our house.  The kid across the street can you tell you, though, about being swooshed out of his swimming pool during the 7.1 Loma Prieta.  Well, no, wait–after that one, our kitchen cabinet doors in a modern-circa-1950’s sliding style fell down at our heads rather than slid across every time we tried to open them: a good incentive to remodel.  Which we did.

Meantime.  This is the Constance shawl from Wrapped in Comfort, with a slight modification in the yoke pattern: I changed one pattern row from k1 *yo k1 sl1-k2tog-psso k1 yo k1, to a pattern row of, *k1, yo, sl1-k2tog-psso, yo, k2.  In other words, I switched places on the yarnovers and single stitches next to the double decreases–not a big difference, and simply for my own amusement.  I was using one strand of a fine laceweight cashmere and one of a fine laceweight silk from Claudia’s Handpaints (but not painted) that I bought at Purlescence.  (Where, by the way, you can order a copy of the book and I will go in and inscribe it for you if you’d like.)

Using a silk yarn with a cashmere yarn made for a far different effect than if I’d bought a blend: the silk sparkles and twinkles prominently around the visually quieter cashmere, a very pretty effect. The separate silk strand was a little slipperier to knit than a blend, and the doubled strands in such thin yarns looked a bit messy on the needles–but blocked! This is part of why I launched into the project I reknit yesterday–I like how  two laceweights play together, how they look finer, blocked, then a fingering weight of the same overall weight, and I wanted to play with the idea more, adding differing colorways to the idea.

Oh, and, since I was using finer yarns than the original Constance called for, and since the Constance is one of the least full patterns in the book, I widened the width by using the template for Tara’s Redwood Burl shawl (minus the two extra stitches at the end of the row on the Tara) and swapping in the other lace patterns.  361 stitches.

The recipient for this one is quite petite, someone who actually makes me feel tall (and that’s saying something); I think I got it a good length for her.  I’m going to show it off at Purlescence tomorrow night, and then it goes to the grandmother of my new daughter-in-law.