My Diadem - Finished

It was a bad week, hormonally speaking, so I didn't get a lot of knitting done.  Most of the week I was dealing with an on-again off-again migraine that never really went away.  Friday afternoon it came back with a vengeance and with visual aura.  I mostly managed to get it under control Friday evening with a combination of Exedrine Migraine and meditation/biofeedback, but it still hasn't completely gone away.  I did manage to finish one of the sleeves of my Barcelona Pullover and get about half-way through the second.  I also managed to knit about half of Clue 7 of my Golden Phoenix shawl.  And I managed to finish my Diadem.  I thought about making it a little larger and even expanded the final chart, but I had so much trouble focusing on the last lace row of the existing chart that I decided I just wanted to finish.

And just for comparison, so you understand the transformative power of blocking, here is a picture of the finished shawl before I dunked and blocked it, a purple squidgy pile of yarn.

It hasn't helped that our house has been invaded by what I am pretty sure are wolf spiders, apparently they come inside in the fall looking for a warm place to winter.  I just captured one (literally, it ran across the floor of the room and I had to stop blogging and catch it) and released it outside.  Here it is on our deck.  He (she? not sure how to sex spiders, I'll stick with "he" seeing as how we have no neuter gender) is at least 2 inches across.

This is the third one that I have captured and released this weekend, I don't think that I have been catching the same one over and over, because I swear they keep getting bigger.  I spotted the first one yesterday morning.  It was on the floor right next to the day bed that I sit on, less than two feet from me.  It crawled onto one of my (many) knitting bags, so I picked up the knitting bag and took it out onto the deck and shook him off.  Then, yesterday afternoon, while Bruce and I were sitting here watching an episode of Farscape one ran across the floor, and stopped under a mini chaise that I picked up in Philadelphia.  I captured him in a plastic container and we released him outside, and now, this morning, number three.  You have to admit, he really is a gorgeous spider, and pretty well behaved and easily captured.

And lest you be grossed out by the spider story, here is an amusing picture.  We found this in our bag of goldfish that we snacked on yesterday.