Birthday bounty

No. 43 was last week. My honey got me (among other things of no interest to fiberish types) a second Bohus kit! The new one is Blue Shimmer, which I believe was the most popular Bohus ever produced. It is so gorgeous and intricate and subtle ... I can't tell you how much I love it. Honey did very well ;-)

The picture at left is one I stole from Solveig's website. Don't be intimidated by the fact that most of the site is in Swedish - the pictures are worth ogling even if you think you'd never want to knit your own.

But if you did...

Ordering is not hard. Go to the section labeled Nyheter, have a look around, decide which one you want, then go to the tab that says Kontakta Mig and fill in the form. Don't worry, Solveig's English is quite good. The first kit I ordered she had in the mail the very next day. As I recall it took nine days to arrive, which is pretty good considering it's coming from halfway across the world.

The woman wearing the Shimmer is Kerstin Olsson, who was one of the designers of the original sweaters. I'm not sure if Blue Shimmer is her design or one of the other designers' but whomever designed it was out-of-orbit talented, that much is certain.

I am not going to start this new kit until Forest Darkness is finished, but that shouldn't be too terribly long. My hands are cooperating at the moment; life is good. I'm well past the colorwork and into the gajillion miles of green stockinette. I knit the yoke circularly, of course, then split it into a front, back and two sleeves, knit flat past the underarms, and then joined it back up so I could knit the body in the round.

Progress now is quite respectable, especially considering we've had buckets and buckets of rain lately. Warm sunny days in Vermont are too precious to waste; outside stuff takes precedence over knitting when the sun's out. But lots of rainy days = lots of knitting. Either way, life is good.

In other news, Frank's birthday was yesterday. His is exactly one week after mine. I decided that for us to do the Full Vermonty, I really needed to pimp out his ride, so I got him a bike rack for the hatch and a Thule kayak rack for the roof of the car. All good, considering I gave him the kayak for his birthday a couple of years ago but it was such a pain to drag around without a rack that it was used not at all.

I not only got him the rack, I installed it all by myself, which made me so absurdly, ridiculously pleased with myself I puffed up like a toad. Believe it or not, I can be tricked into thinking I am quite clever by the simple ability to follow clear printed directions.

We motored out to the lake yesterday, kayak securely strapped to the car roof (Look, Frank, it's still up there!) and spent a nice afternoon swimming and paddling around. The car looked happy. Very nicely tricked out it is, especially with my NSK - Notorious Sock Knitters bumper sticker from Blue Moon on the rear.