(First I will divert your attention from the fact that I haven’t been able to start on my Project Spectrum Red & Pink items by sharing a picture of a stargazer lily that I took last summer when visiting a tulip farm in Holland, MI.)

Participating in the Knitting Olympics gave me a chance to reflect on why and how I knit. I knit to relax..I knit to carry on a craft that my Grandma does…I knit as a way to give personalized gifts for others that show I’m thinking of them…I knit! Just yesterday I received an email from a friend that reaffirmed the joy that I find in knitting for others. Here is a snippet about a blanket I made for “Baby Grace” who is now 3:
“I forgot to tell you…the only other thing she has a hard time parting with for any period of time is her blanket that she calls (appropriately) blank… the blanket that she won’t let anyone touch is the sweet blanket that you made…she will not sleep without the blanket and the only one she will let touch it is her pup. she and pup and blank sleep together every night or…no one in the house sleeps at all…thank you so much for that sweet blanket!”

In other knitting news, I’ve made a detour into pale blues, greens & purples for a quick knit – details to be posted later. This evening while commuting home on the EL I spotted a fellow commuter knitting & discovered she was knitted the fabled Jaywalker that has been seen all over knit-blog-landia – I think the woman got a kick out of someone recognizing the pattern – she commented that it was an easy knit but she has had to frog several times – in fact, at lunch her co-workers give her grief when she pulls out “the same sock”. I took a sock class 3 years ago (& never finished the second sock) – one of my knitting goals for this year to to complete a pair of socks.