Here I am again!

I apologize for not updating a little more regularly - and, unfortunately, I think that it may happen again a time or two this summer.  But I'm here now - partly because of some unpleasant news that we received Saturday evening.  A very dear friend of mine has been diagnosed with a brain tumour.  That sort of news hits hard, especially since she's the perfect mix of surrogate mother and best friend....
I've been re-reading Debbie Macomber's "Blossom Street" series - the stories (mostly) revolve around a yarn shop, and the people who work and shop there.  Most of the books include a knitting class as part of the story-line, and a pattern that's used in the class is also provided.  Why bring this up now?  Because I just finished "Back on Blossom Street" - and the project that the class worked on was prayer shawls!  I've been wondering what I could do to help Ila get through the testing and uncertainty that this diagnosis can bring (for both of us), and the idea of knitting a prayer shawl came to me during church yesterday morning.  I spent some time looking at online patterns and came across this one on Ravelry.  I found some yarn in my stash that I'm hoping will be just the right thing, and I got started on it this morning.  This is my progress so far:

The yarn is soft and light-weight - perfect for this time of year, and I love the colour of it.

I also needed a birthday card for another friend, and, of course, there aren't any made up in my box.   I've posted a lot of cards to my Pinterest boards, and I found one that I decided would make a wonderful birthday greeting.  Fortunately, I had some great designer paper, and matching card-stock, so it didn't take long to come up with this: 

I even discovered some "jewels" that come close the the rusty orange C/S, so they were added, and the card is ready to mail!