Ye Olde Swimming Hole

The weather was lovely yesterday: warm but not too warm, a gentle breeze, and lots of sunshine. We had a farewell lunch for a dear friend who is leaving Newfoundland for the mainland. Happy as we are for him for daring to make big changes, we will miss him terribly, especially Finn and Lucy who think of him as their Newfoundland uncle. On the other hand, now we have an excuse to finally visit Toronto. Toronto is a city in Ontario - I think it is fairly large. I've heard there are a few things worth seeing there.

After a bittersweet good-bye, Finn and Lucy insisted on going over to "the overfalls", which is the local swimming hole in Gillams and just a short walk from our house.





By the time we arrived there, it wasn't exactly warm enough to swim in my opinion but Finnian took the plunge.




Here's Grammie...holding up the front to Veronik Avery's "Marcel's Sweater". Grammie aka Mom offered to knit me a sweater. I gratefully accepted and asked if she would knit Marcel's Sweater, a design I have had on the top of my wish list for some time.



My mother is a very experienced knitter, with 70+ years of knitting behind her. She has made several Alice Starmore designs as well as two - TWO - of those "Map of the World" sweaters that were all the rage some years ago. We're talking cotton intarsia, people. But this Marcel's Sweater is kicking her butt.

After she had trouble with the tubular cast-on and then needed help from her knitting friend to get the pattern down, I decided I had better look on Ravelry to see what people were saying about this sweater. It has a four row pattern, for goodness sakes, how hard can it be?

How hard, indeed! I should have had a hint when not one of the nearly 200,000 knitters on Ravelry has made this sweater! Many have swatched, none have finished. But my mother has perservered despite each row taking upwards of 25 minutes to complete and mistakes taking upwards of 1.5 hours to tear back and repair. A four row pattern! Has Veronik made this sweater? I am beginning to wonder.

At one point I was begging her to stop, saying I would choose a simple cardigan pattern but she has reached the I-will-knit-this-damn-sweater-if -it-kills-me stage so there is no turning back. I just hope it doesn't kill her...