Tara’s shawl

One of these days I’ll learn that the picture looks better if I take my hand out of my pocket or over the shawl and then in the pocket, but vanity aside, here’s the finished baby alpaca shawl I was working on. It’s the Tara’s Redwood Burl pattern, though more in the color (it’s greener than this in real life) of a tiny redwood sapling’s baby needles.

Burls are like pearls to an oyster: something interesting and beautiful created by the living thing’s reaction to an irritant.  I’ve been fascinated by redwood trunk patterns ever since we moved to California, and that pattern was my second attempt at trying to capture the essence of some of them.

Just some background on how that redwood-colored shawl in “Wrapped” got its name.

Oh, and that’s the baby plum tree my kids gave me for Mother’s Day last year, growing like a weed.

(Ed. to add for those who asked: the doctor at the ER said the bloodwork was clean, which I interpret to mean that as for This Little Piggy, Richard Had None.  He’s feeling a fair bit better today; thank you for looking out for us, everybody.)