Pebbles in the Sea, Cobwebs in My Head, and a Happy Anniversary to Me!

What nicer way to spend an anniversary than home in bed...sick?

This isn't even the good kinda sick, the kinda sick that all those 1940's movie heroines got where they looked absolutely gorgeous with their hair flowing over their sickbed pillows, the wide lapels of their satin dressing gowns contrasting every so beautifully with their pale-yet-glowing complexions. Of course, they always wind up dying -- still looking ravishing right up to the very end, and saying something marvelous and witty and romantic to the hero as their dying words, something that he will remember always and which will make him, no matter how strongly the heroine has urged him to find someone else after she's gone, remain faithful to his one and only love forevermore.

This ain't that kinda sick.

No, my kinda sick is the go-through-a-box-of-tissues-in-an-hour kinda sick, the kinda sick that has me snorting Zicam like it's going out of style and wishing I were dead but not nearly getting there. Replace our 1940's film heroine's flowing golden locks with a rat's-nest wafro, her satin dressing gown with a ripped Hard Rock Cafe sweatshirt and the handsome husband/lover at her side with a somewhat smelly German shepherd mix and you've got me today.

But I did manage to finish my weaving before all this went down.

































That's how Pebbles in the Sea looked shortly before completion. In person, the stripes are somewhat more subtle and the color deeper overall, but what the camera's flash tends to wash out in terms of color it seems to enhance in terms of contrast.

Here's a shot of the finished product:
















Pebbles in the Sea in all her glory. I've been calling this a shawl but I'm not really sure that's what it is, or what it will stay. It's pretty big...big enough to be a throw, but long enough to do the whole shawl-wrap thing. And, I must admit, I like it enough that I'm thinking of keeping it, in which case it will most certainly be a throw for the livingroom. Never mind that our living room has not a shred of navy-blue in it; I could make it work. Of course, that won't help me get my Christmas gifts made. Maybe I'll live with it for a little while, just keep it draped casually over the back of a chair and see how strongly it asks to stay where it is. As long as I keep Baby M and her peanut-buttery fingers away there's no reason I couldn't wrap it up a week or more from now and put it in the gift pile.

Am I a bad person? I mean, shouldn't I just be able to toss this into the gift pile without a second glance, secure in the knowledge that I can make another one -- another as-many-as-I-want -- for myself? And of course I do know I could, which is why this one will probably find its way to the gift pile eventually, although I don't know that I'll be making another one like this for me. First I'd try to find colors more suited to my livingroom...then I'd balk at the price, because of course I found all this yarn at the dollar store and I will never, ever find it there again, especially not in colors that match my orange-and-red livingroom...then I'll debate about buying the yarn a skein at a time or something like that...and eventually I'll back-burner the project, at which point I'll move on to creating something completely different, giving this idea of a Pebbles shawl just for me only the most cursory of thoughts. Isn't that always the way?

For now, though, as I'm feeling somewhat fortified by carrot juice, a buttered bialy and half a pound of bacon (I should not be left to my own hunting-and-gathering devices when ill), I think I'll try finishing off the Beethoven's Variations on a Dickey (something I finally, finally knit all for my very own self!) so I can wear it sometime before fall is over and the true coldness of winter is upon us.

Oh, and as for my anniversary present...the small, light box from Washington State...?

Photos and story to come. :)