A Bluestocking Knits

It's the tenth of the month, so here is my November progress update!  I've finished the Nurmilintu scarf, but some of the ends popped out so it's spot-blocking at the moment ….

The Turkoman carpet continues, slowly but surely.

I started the Regina Marie scarf-shawl with the forest-green Rustic Merino, but am having the dickens of a time with the lace.  The construction is very clever, using a short-row of one stitch (in effect) to "pick up stitches" for the center section as you work the border.  That is not my problem, which is apparently a combination of dark-colored wool, slightly splitty on occasion, and a sixteen-row repeat that is different every single row.  This is my third attempt — the others were frogged all the way back to the ball — and then I discovered that somehow I made the same mistake in the same row four times in succession!  Honestly, I hardly know whether to laugh or weep.  That should be a line of clean faggoting there, running alongside the eyelet M1s, but there is clearly something wrong — but for the life of me, I can't figure out what, or on which row (3? maybe 4?), and there was certainly no way to fix it on the needles.

Yes, I used the past tense just there, as I ripped it all out soon after taking the photo, though I did manage to console myself afterwards by doing a pretty good job of adding sarcastic red arrows to the image, if I do say so myself.  I have since restarted the whole thing yet again, and still have no idea what I did wrong those four times, as I now have six and a half new repeats on the needle with a tidy line of faggoting just where it should be.

I am also in the middle — actually, about three-quarters along — of putting together a NAME Day armoire.  Apparently every year the National Association of Miniatures Enthusiasts has a day where all of the clubs work on the same project, sort of like Knit in Public Day — this year the project is this armoire.  It is certainly the most complex piece I've put together, by far!  It's a bit more modern-looking than anything I've got, but I think it will be rather handsome nevertheless.  I chose the cherry-wood version.  It's leaning backwards a little because it doesn't have the back feet on yet!

It's planting season for us now, so I went to a California-natives plant sale at our local arboretum and bought a few things for a shady spot.  It's not much to look at just yet, of course, but this one is a fragrant pitcher sage (Lepechinia fragrans), which I'm really eager to see in bloom, as it has very pretty trumpet-shaped flowers that hang in little clusters of delicate lavender.  Now for a bit of rain …