As the thousands and thousands of stitches I put into the Ichida lace project get sucked up into the deceptively massive outer borders, I’ve put out this incentive to keep me knitting.

Recent Acquisitions
Just having it out and visible helps me rush along with Ichida. This latest purchase is a yarn called “Angel Face” from Briar Rose Fibers and the color is a rich antique gold. Chris at Briar Rose had sent beautiful yarns as door prizes for the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat, and this alpaca laceweight yarn was gorgeous. I had no idea how difficult it was going to be to pick from all the colors she had in this yarn.

I also recently received my last shipment for this season’s Black Bunny Fiber – Fiber-of-the-Month-Club (or something like that).

This one, in addition to having gorgeous colors is a blend of merino and alpaca….yummm. Carol is a demon…each fiber she sends is better than the last, and I want to drop everything each time a new installment arrives to work on only that.

But I restrain myself.

Current Knitting
I was able to do a LOT of knitting this past weekend, and I’m still only up to round 30 out of 76 for the outer border areas of the Ichida lace garment.

Each round takes an average of about 35 minutes, so while I’m making great progress, it doesn’t really look like it so much.

It seems I will have to post one more progress picture before showing you the final blocked piece.

Readers’ Comments/Questions
Regarding availability of candy in the U.S., Barb asks, “If you don’t have those 2 mainstays of the junk food diet, do you at least have Caramilk bars?

No, but those are easily accessible through Amazon groceries at the link above. I love how they advertise it, “over a pound of caramel & chocolate from canada” for only $15 (that’s U.S. dollars).