Faroese Shawl

Over the past couple of weeks, little progress has been made on a lace shawl I have been knitting because I have ripped out more stitches on it than have been accurately completed. But FINALLY, I'm about 10% through it.

It should end up quite large, if perseverance continues, roughly five feet at the top edge tapering down to a modified ending point four feet from the edging border.

The pattern begins by casting on 423 stitches and continues row by row for a bit less than 200 rows. Here it is at row 20 on size 7 circular needles:

The Faroese Shawl was named by Marily van Keppel as she translated the pattern from the Faroese language and has it published in A Gathering of Lace (complied by Meg Swansen). This shawl has its own thread on ravelery. Moderator Diane at Bella Vita Farm has been a great help in interpreting this pattern. Thanks, Diane.

House Finch: New Family Arrives

SIL Jack asked what kind of finch we had nesting in the arbor. Here is what Birdsource had to say:

The identification of these three finches of the Carpodacus genus can be extremely difficult. Each species is about the same size and shape, each is colored red with varying degrees of brown streaking, and each is common to feeder areas. What's more, the ranges of these birds overlap quite a bit, primarily owing to the ubiquitous distribution of the House Finch.

The picture of the male house finch, courtesy of Larry McQueen, appears to have similar colorings to the one I see going in and out of the nest.

Dragging out the ladder again, here is a picture of the newly hatched finches this morning:

It's off to fill the finch feeder again, so the hatch lings can receive supplements to their diet of insects from their parents.

Finches: Their Diner and Nest of Four Eggs

Look what I found in our honeysuckle arbor today: a tiny nest of finch eggs!

I have been feeding finches for about two months from one of those bird feeder net socks. The feeder sock is about five feet from the honeysuckle arbor, so it is a convenient diner for mom and dad and soon-to-be kiddos. There are four eggs in the nest, and I was very careful in not leaving my scent too near the nest.

Catherine wrote this blog post about wrens nesting in cactus, and it spurred me to get a ladder out and look up into the honeysuckle branches where finches seem to be nesting. Sure enough, there were the pretty little eggs in a wee little nest.

It takes 21 days for chicken eggs to hatch, but only 14-16 days, according to Yahoo Answers, for finch eggs to hatch.

What is hatching in your neighborhood?