I've been trying to write this post for several days..

.. yeah. Sorry!

I finished the front of Peek a boo this weekend:



The little peek-a-boo bit in the front looks messy to me, but I'm hoping that once the ends are woven in and it's blocked, it will look better. I'm really glad to have the two big pieces of this one finished. Like I said, I do like it, but I'm either bored with it or with the yarn. :/



This is the start of one of the sleeves. The peek-a-boo bit here looks much neater to me and I have to admit that the fact the each sleeve only has 3 of the cable panels is rather nice so far. I hope to have the first sleeve at least mostly complete by the end of the week.

And since you were wondering (I knew you were; it's okay! *smile*) the front is modeled on the bobbin lace pillow stand that my dad made me for Christmas:



He made it from a pattern someone had posted on the web (which I can't find anymore or I'd like to it) and since the picture in the pattern showed the stand with a pillow, he also made a pillow to go with it. I own a small cookie pillow with a small pseudo-roller insert - and there's a small lip on the front edge of the stand so that I can use it with the stand - but it's no where near as large as this one. Unfortunately, I wasn't expecting dad to make the pillow or I'd have warned him to put stiffer stuffing in it. I think it will be fine as it is if I'm sure to use sharp pins, but if not, the pillow can still be used as a gorgeous display stand. (And as I said, I can use my smaller lace pillow with the stand to work with, so it's just an issue of swapping one for the other.)

The stand collapses pretty well and is pretty much completely adjustable - I can make it higher or lower, or change the angle of the arm to be steeper or shallower. I've been too tied up with knitting lately to try it out in action, but I'm contemplating some options and might get something simple started soon to get back into the hang of things.

And because Dad keeps track of these things, he made the stand to match (stain and pillow cover) the colors he used when he refinished my rocking chair several years ago:



The two pieces together look wonderful, but I couldn't get a shot from a decent angle to show them both.

(If you look in the lower right hand corner of the pillow stand profile picture, you can see the end of the tablet weaving loom he made me last year; I've not abandoned it, but am stuck at the moment trying to figure out something to use as tensioning bands because everything I've tried seems to snap under the tension I like to use. Ironically, the thing I can think of that would likely be best would be short bands of tablet weaving done in silk, which I'd prefer to make on the loom, but can't because the tension is too loose without them!)