Good Works and Hard Work

The good works is farther down and is done by someone else. Hard work though, is me. Photographic evidence of the non-knitting time-wasting hard work mentioned in the previous post and continuing this week:

The chair about half way ripped or un-upholstered or whatever they call it:
It's down to just wood, the seat springs, and bottom webbing now. I get to learn how to tie springs next week. I am actually excited about that. Time to worry?

The tree part way done (at least this one started bare and is working forward from the get go):
I am not an artist (probably not in any medium but definitely not in paint or drawing or etc.) That would have been my brother. But he's no longer with us, so if a gal wants a faux tree - she's gotta do it herself. The blue lines are painter's tape so they'll be gone before DD moves into this room. But there's more colors to go on the bark and also a bunch of leaves and stuff to go on before she can move in.

And this relates to knitting because this room was my fiber-and-other-arts "studio" and when DD moves into it I get to rip out and redo her old room to become my "studio". I keep telling myself that insulation in the walls is worth it, but my inner whiney child keeps saying, "What do you need insulation for when you have all that wool fiber and yarn? So what if the kid was cold in the winter." The chair is also sort of knitting related, in that when finished, it will be my knitting chair. Eventually, in my fiber studio. With luck the two will be finished at roughly the same time. And before I have died of old age.

I also lost some knitting time to a good cause this past week. Gretchen is having a contest to drum up support for the American Heart Association. Read about it on her blog. I offered some goodies towards the prize packages she is offering since heart defect issues run in my paternal family line and when I was pregnant with DD we had to have an ultrasound done of her heart to make sure she was ok. (She was, thank goodness.) But I feel a bit like I could do more to at least get the word out, if not inspire folks to consider contributing. On the other hand I don't really like to push folks to donate to a particular charity or cause.

So if you're reading this and haven't seen Gretchen's posts about Nova, go visit her blog. Mention in the comments here or in an e-mail to me that you've visited her blog or the American Heart Association or your favorite health charity and regardless of whether or not you decided to make a donation at this particular time or to this particular cause, I'll enter your name in a spreadsheet from which a random number generator will pick someone to win a little basket of knitting goodies from me as a reward for spending some time thinking of others. Knitters and other fiber enthusiasts seem to do that a lot, but it doesn't seem quite as prevalent in the general population, and I think folks who do spend that time thinking of others deserve a reward for it now and again.

In actual knitting content: I've finished the first chart of the Spring Things Shawl. Now I just have to decide which beads to use. So I knitted up a sample of the second chart with the three possible choices I have in house. I can't decide for sure which I like best.
If you have an opinion, please share it. The cubes in the middle are, I think, closest to what is on the wedding dress but I'm not sure what I think about them in this shawl. I think the clear with silver on the right is out but I'm not sure between the pearlized rounds on the left and the crystal cubes in the middle. The cubes have an opalescence which didn't come out in this photo (and this was the only clear photo I got) so they look prettier in real life I think. But I'm not sure about the shape. I need to get me a t-shirt that says "Indecisive much?" I think. Or you know, maybe not...