Happiness grows in red flowers

I showed this awhile ago in its earlier stages.  There was a lull in the knitting with that flu bug.  But now it’s done, blocked, the ends run in, and ready to go.

I wanted a one-off, something unique but familiar.  So I knitted the Kathy shawl through the yoke and from there in the Nina pattern, and I really like how they played together.

I love the arbors in Nina’s done in red: they remind me of the climbing bougainvillea that so surprised me when we arrived in California in March ’87.  We were coming from New Hampshire, where it had been snowing and snowing and SNOWING and snowing, five and a half feet’s worth in 17 days after a whole winter of the stuff.   The kicker was when my little girl wanted to play on the swingset: I looked out the window from the second story and challenged her wryly, “Try to find it first.” You could just make out the top bar.

Then we arrived here where it was in the middle of springtime, with these gorgeous flowers skipping around fences everywhere in cheerful red and bright fuschia, just an explosion of nature singing “I feel pretty!”

Which, you know, is actually how I’m hoping the recipient will feel when she puts this on.