Sometimes I think Bonne Marie has been sent by God to help us use our stash in productive and fashionable ways. I happen to have some Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in my own stash - in purple - and it would look so nice as this. I"m thinking purple with a white trim, though I believe I have black BSCF in the stash so that would be more sensible. Either way, this goes onto the to-do list.

The procrastination queen finally got around to doing taxes yesterday morning before work. God, I love Turbo Tax. My husband used to do our taxes - it was his thing, and even when he was very sick last spring he insisted on doing it himself, manually. It took him a week because he would tire and have to take breaks. I'd offered to buy him Turbo Tax last year but he didn't want it - stubborn man, determined to do it his way, like everything else. I'm math-dyslexic and can't even be trusted to operate a calculator, so now that it's my problem I immediately bought Turbo Tax, but I still had to psych myself to sit down and do it. I was dreading taxes this year, not sure how complicated it would be with the whole "married filing jointly with deceased spouse" angle, but TT had it covered and walked me right through it. The sophistication of that program knocked me out, it has forms for every obscure contingency imaginable. It's just too cool. I will never dread doing taxes again.

Knitting was strictly the before-bed variety - the green cat blanket is nearly finished. I have enough yarn for a couple more, and I think at this point I will switch to crocheted styles. Or maybe not, I've got the diagonal blankie thing to the point where I can knit virtually in my sleep.

Marlo's Crochet Corner has some very nice felted bags - it occurred to me that for those who are not that comfy with crochet but want to learn, a felted pattern might be a good way to master even stitches and hide your mistakes when done. (No affiliation, yada yada, I just happened to wander across her site.) Personally I find it much easier to design my own things in crochet - I can visualize it more easily than I can when knitting. Right now I want to make a crocheted puff-stitch tote in cotton, and I can easily make up the pattern I have in mind. I can't do that when knitting - I think it's the math-phobe in me, but the calculations seem more complicated.

I can't wait until the books I've ordered arrive - not that I don't have a ton of patterns on hand and things in the works, but the idea of starting a Shawl Ministry group just keeps nagging at me.

Last week I got word that another former co-worker has had a recurrence of breast cancer and must undergo further surgery. Of the four paralegals who worked in my building at my old company, two of us were widowed and a third developed breast cancer in the past year. We're all in our mid-40s, trendy and youthful professional types, and three years ago our biggest issues were redecorating our houses and losing ten pounds. It's breathtaking how life can change. Call us severely karmically challenged, or something.

So when I think of making prayer shawls, women like these two come to mind as the recipients. While the Homespun prayer shawl is cozy and warm and lovely, these two are definitely fashionistas - black belts in shopping and always look like they stepped out of a fashion magazine. Making a shawl women like these would actually use could be a challenge - I'm thinking Homespun is not the right yarn. Besides, this is Florida - I think I need to find a ribbon yarn and make something like this wave and shell shawl, or perhaps crochet something light and airy. It's a project that just won't get out of my brain. Now I just need to win the lottery so I have time to do these things.