In the Pink

Spring is finally here! The endless cold is gone (both the season and the virus). We have crocuses and rhubarb coming up in the garden. I took a long weekend to do all sorts of spring cleaning. I brought home a snarl of papers from work to sort (it took ages yesterday but it's sorted and papered with post-it notes of what needs to be done). I spent most of Friday scrubbing and washing--much of it clearing out the piles up from when we felt puny. We dusted the cobwebs from our brains at the Dunes. I feel so much more in balance.

I also finally finished the Plumeria Scissors Fob. Once I had the endless teeny stitching done, the rest went quickly. I found just the right beads in my baggie from Bluestem beads. I used a skein of DMC variegated perle cotton for the twisted cord and solid floss for the tassels. Done!

I got in some stitching on the crewel. Now that the wools are sorted, I find the going much easier. I seem to be working from the outer edges in. One stitch called for is a half feather which I haven't yet been able to find out anything about. I have no idea what it would be. My inclination is to leave it off. (It should go around the darker upside-down spider-web stitch in the top right.)

I also finished the first birdie from my new yarn to send off to Cooper's Flock. He sure is bright! I have birdie #2 about half-way done. This Blue Sky cotton yarn is nice to work with. It's lightly twisted so I thought it might split easily but I didn't have any problems. (It also rips out nicely.)
He's so cute!

Cooper's flock

When blogging around I always check out what Annie has to say at ModeKnit and at the bottom of this post, she mentions (and provides a pattern for) Cooper's Flock. Cooper was only here on earth for a short time and his mom has a blog, luc ends, where she talks about life, grief, healing, and knitting. Lucinda has a project going to knit baby birds for the hospital where Cooper was. More on this here. She's hoping that every baby having heart surgery can have their own birdie.

So I decided to knit a bird and made one up yesterday. Lucinda prefers the birds be knit in Blue Sky Cotton yarn because she believes the cotton will have fewer allergy problems than wool and she knows their dyeing processes and trusts it. My birdie, above, was knit in wool I had on hand. I hadn't read that part of the posting until today. I also didn't print a photo of the finished bird and once I saw it today I realized my tail goes a different direction, but mostly it's pretty close.

I've ordered some of the Blue Sky Cotton from KPixie. The bird was fun to knit and I plan to make some more.