Decisions, Decisions: A Short Harry Story

A few weeks ago,I emailed Harry to see what he's been up to this winter.

He told me that he spent the winter knitting hats for everyone.


After he found most of his efforts adorning cabbages in the garden, he stormed off to the bathroom in a snit.

Not feeling very sociable after the hat debacle, he spent the rest of the winter making extensive renovations to his web. Although most of his concepts clearly missed the point of webness, he felt the creative flair would make up for the lack of practicality.


He could scarf some fly snacks from everyone else's boring, utilitarian webs while they were off slaving in the workshop.

After complimenting him on his originality, I suggested he cruise the laptop thoughtfully left under the table for something more, um, traditional.

His little heart is now set on completing Sharon Miller's Unst shawl for this year's exhibition, but he was having trouble deciding what yarn and color would work best with this exquisite design.

We hooked up a video conference and he did a virtual crawl through my stash.


Most of my puny pile received eight thumbs down, but he did like the the Dark Ruby Gentle from Yarn Place.

"Rich color," he said thoughtfully. "Goes well with my complexion. A bit too warm-colored for Unst, perhaps."


Harry dug deeper into the pile, falling fast asleep inside a skein of alpaca silk.

After an hour of snoozing, he resumed his perusal.

"I kind of like that Zephyr in Marine Blue," he said, "But the yarn is way too heavy for the Unst shawl."


"However, this Grignasco Merino/Silk is the perfect weight and it's almost as soft as spider silk, so do you think you could maybe get it dyed Marine Blue for me?"

We did some bickering that involved mosquito removal and web dispersal before my arrival, to which he agreed with rather good grace for a spider (that is to say, a bit snarfy).

Harry's yarn arrived the other day, and the blue is just stunningly gorgeous.


Still undecided, Harry did some Unst Photoshopping and emailed me two pictures:


Harry asked me to post his pictures and see if his eagle-eyed audience might weigh in with their opinions.

In the meantime, he's now busy designing another Shetland shawl. Here's a snip of the center:



And a bit of a border:



He's still fooling with it, but we'll both keep you posted.