Let The Sun Shine In!

We had unusually warm weather last week in New York.

I enjoyed every minute of it.  Spring may be my favorite season, although it's got a strong competetor in fall.  A lot of people claim to like summer the best, but not me.  What I mean is that summer's nice, but it's obvious, and in some ways a little base.  As a season, it lacks subtlety.  Spring, on the other hand, is fresh, dramatic, a little unpredictable, yet you know how it wil end: warmly. 

One of the things that I particularly enjoy about Spring is that it affords me the opportunity to lunch outside again.  For most of the late fall and winter, I eat my lunch at my desk while cruising about on the Internet, so I feel absolutely liberated when it's nice enough for me to take my lunch and sit outside. 

A favorite spot of mine is the cemetery across the street from my office.  It's very old (Alexander Hamilton is buried there) and is set up more like a park than most American cemeteries.  It reminds me of a smaller version of Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen, where I once enjoyed a lunch of smorrebrod after visiting the grave of Hans Christian Anderson. There are paths to wander and lots of benches on which to rest, and while it's right on a busy street in lower Manhattan, it's really green and calming.

It makes me happy that it's so well utilized, by both New Yorkers and tourists alike.  The grounds keepers keep it up so well, and there are always different plants blooming and coming in to their own. Can you tell I'm a little in love?

In addition to eating and people-watching, I do a fair bit of knitting in the cemetery, including work on my most recent FO:

Details:

Pattern: Damson, by Ysolda Teague

Yarn: Okay Knits Sena & Muthoni

Needles: 3.75mm

I've got a little bit of a shawl thang goin' on.  I just counted, and this is the 12th one I've made since last May.  Wazzup?

(see bag of yarn purchased at Marias Garn in Stockholm last summer, lower left of photo.  Oh! That was some fun shopping)

Damson is the third project that I've made from Ysolda Teague's collection of patterns, Whimsical Little Knits 2, which means that purchase was officially a good investment.  One of the things that I liked about it was that it consisted primarily of garter stitch, making it a perfect project for subway riding and foreign film watching.  As with Ysolda's other patterns, it was clearly written and had both charted and written out instructions.  The mistakes that I made were entirely knitter's errors, and for once in my knittig career, I ripped back to fix them.  I decided I've been kitting for too long now to walk about in a garment with noticeable errors, and the yarn was sticky enough that I didn't have to worry about the entire thing unravelling on my.

And about the yarn: it was an unusual color choice for me, but I won it is a yarn swap and immediately felt very, VERY possessive of it.  Something about its speckled golden color made me happy (photo 1 is the most accurate representation of the color).  Easy to work with, Sena is 100% superwash merino that was soft while knitting, and it fuzzed up slightly and softened even more after blocking.  I'll most definitly buy more once I'm off this yarn diet.  Based on other people's Ravelry notes, I knew that I wouldn't have enough of the Sena to finish the shawl, so I worked the last three rows using Muthoni, another of Okay Knits hand-dyed yarns, that was leftover from my Spring Cable socks. I'm rather pleased with the result, if I do say so myself.