Finished - on to #2

Well I finally finished the hand towel from hell.

I looks very pretty, but I just didn't enjoy knitting it up. I just could not get the pattern down so I could just get into the knitting groove. I am working on a second one in yellow. This one is a stockinette hand towel with a monogram "W" on it (my own design).

It's knitting up fairly quickly as I'm halfway done. Good thing, too. I need to get it done by tomorrow to get it in the mail so it'll make it to Colorado in time for the wedding. I'm knitting them with Plymouth Yarn Wildflower DK. It's a Cotton/Acrylic blend which means they can be machine washed and dried.

Oh, and today is my great-aunt Myrtle's birthday. She's 100 years old today! That's so old. I love my Aunt Myrtle. She's the one relative I met and found relief that there is indeed a reason why I'm as practical as I am. I'm sure every one feels like they are alien to the families they are born into - then you meet the relative who is really the most like you and it just clicks. That's who my Aunt Myrtle is for me. One of my favorite stories about her is that she broke her hip when she was 90. Usually that's a death sentence for folks of that age - I think the statistics for people who die within a year of breaking their hips at that age within a year is pretty high. When I called her to see how she was doing, she said that she was doing just fine and that she told the therapist to give her a walker right away because she was going to walk out of that hospital, thank you very much. And she did. :)

There was a ten year difference between her and my grandmother. My grandmother never did know her father as he died when she was 3 months old. My Aunt Myrtle was basically my grandmother's second parent. They got along really well - I know they spoke on the phone with each other at least once a week. Considering that Aunt Myrtle lives near Defiance, Ohio and my grandmother lived here in Texas, I think that was really wonderful. I don't even do that with my own sister - and she lives 17 miles away (which is close in Texas terms).