Run-away With a Friend

It was the perfect day weather-wise so my friend Cookie and I saddled up and went off to a bead shop in Cedarburg, (I didn't buy anything there, oh wait, I bought an orange lotion bar in a tin)














a quilt store next door where I bought a couple fat quarters and some sale "tubes" of fabric,











and a llama farm and yarn shop in Cedar Grove where I found 3 skeins of kid merino and 7 skeins of chunky wool.






























We went to Sheboygan to have a prosciutto pizza for lunch at Il Ritrovo.














I cast on and knitted on another preemie hat. It's a terrific "car" pattern.





At home I found that all 3 surviving primroses are blooming. It was a beautiful day.

Distractable

Sometimes I think I have adult-onset ADD because I can't concentrate on a single project. I was determined to finish one of the myriad (ooh, good word) projects OTN and have been working on my Socks X2, but Friday night I just couldn't knit around those socks one more time, so I cast on the second Mitered Cross/Bandwagon Blanket block. It was the red orange yarn that did me in, I confess. It's so restful sitting knitting row after row of garter stitch. I promise that I am sock knitting at work but at home I'm knitting this.

All Better

So you don't think that we're sitting up here in a tundra between drifts, here's a chronicle of post-snowstorm mornings. By Wednesday morning most of the depth was gone and by this morning the only snow left is in the thickest places. My question is, did we really need this last storm? Huh? You can't answer, can you? No one can because... because there's no excuse for that kind of snow insult in the middle of April.












I added a couple inches of sock leg at work this week. I think it's very cool that I can watch them grow and be making them so different at the same time.











The Red Marl sweater front got some rows added too.

Double Gah!

I am seriously considering climbing into bed and pulling the covers over my head.

Gah!

I did not order this and I better never find out who did. It has been downright cold the last couple of days but today--today it decided to snow, and not just a little, a lot. It's been snowing since noon and there's probably 3 or 4 inches of wet sloppy stuff. Yuk. And it's cold enough that I had to go down and carry my winter coat upstairs again. It's the middle of April, people, the daffodils are blooming in my front yard, and it's freakin' snowing. Why do we live here? Why???? Oh, yeah, we're too poor to move.

Before it snowed too hard I went out and filled up the birdfeeders and the squirrel corn.







Here's a little fiber content...

last night I added a couple rows onto the front of my first attempt at Fair Isle knitting. It's this sweater but I'm making the sweater red and the designs in a marled gray I got at a fiber fest in Valders. The way the weather's going I might be able to wear it before summer if I knit faster. Sheesh.

I Been Knittin'

This time of year if it's sunny people come into the dive shop. If it's dreary, chilly, or rainy nobody comes. It was crummy Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday last week so I got a bunch of knitting accomplished. I got a lot of goofing off accomplished too but I don't have pictures of that. (I was tempted to put one of those emoticons at the end of that last sentence but then I realized that I'm not really a fan. Too cutesy, I guess.) I didn't finish anything but...


Look! Heels! I found a pattern that tells how to make short-row heels without all the wrapping and turning and no holes so I followed that and made lovely heels on my Toes Up X2 socks.














I already told you about the mega-save of the Red Marl Sweater front in the last post, so the only other knitting I have to report is another preemie hat got started at FNKC last night.





I did have some adventures yesterday though. Skully and I try to meet to walk twice a week. We walked Tuesday at Baird Creek and we came within 40 ft. of finding a geocache on our way back to our cars, but it was across the creek and we didn't have time to go around because I was already going to be cutting it close to get to work on time. So yesterday we took a mountain bike trail on the other side of the creek and, dodging fallen trees and logs and skirting brambles, we got to the place, but after long searching didn't find it. I think it got knocked down in the windstorm last week or swept away on the spring snow melt flood. Skully wants to find the planter and sit on him until he shows us where it is. I think we should email. But instead of turning back we kept going, hoping to find a narrow place or footbridge to cross over. We didn't. We found this. It's a logjam about 30 feet across. We crossed it. We were careful, well, after I fell taking the first step we were more careful. I found a good sturdy stick to use to poke where I wanted to step next and we made it, slowly and with lots of laughter. I was just happy that no one came down the trail when we were doing it to witness our lunacy. We need a keeper.

Dodged a Bullet

Only metaphorically, but still it was a close one. Remember last month I swore I was going to work on my fair isle sweater and I picked it up and knit one row? Well I got serious with myself the other night and picked it up again.

I looked at it (on the left), looked at the chart, looked at the knitting, looked at the chart, squinted at the knitting, grumbled over the chart, only to finally realize that, after the ribbing, I had used red when I should have used gray and vice versa. Gah! Happily it was only 7 rows into the pattern so I frogged the bad knitting, rewound the balls and plunged back in. I complained about it to Durwood, about how my nearly 60 year old brain made it hard for me to remember to knit red when the chart says black and gray when the chart says red. He said, "why not just change the word on the chart?" If I hadn't been afraid I'd mar my classic beauty, I think I would have banged my forehead on the table a few (dozen) times. So I got my black gel pen and... fixed it.











Look, look, look! Daffodils! Crocus! Some other white bulb-type flower whose name I can't remember! Pretty!

Hip To Be Square

I finished my first Mitered Crosses Blanket --for Japan block yesterday. It's a fun and fast knit. I love watching the colors emerge and stack up and the log cabin edges go fast. I decided to call it the Bandwagon Blanket because so many others started it before me. I fully intend to put this aside for a short time so that I can finish up some of my (many) UFOs (UnFinished Objects, for those of you not up on knitting jargon).

I'm starting with the 2 socks on Magic Loop. Because I'm almost to the heels and because I'm using a borrowed needle. You remember these, right?

Spring & Knitting

On Thursday I took a tarp out back to gather up the raspberry canes I had pruned off and drag them out to the curb and I found something so unexpected that I have to show you. The backstory is in, like, January 2010 my friend Lyn said that Home Depot was selling primrose plants for a dollar each so I went and bought 5 of them just to see some green life in the middle of winter. I kept them alive (amazing!) until I could plant them out back close to the house. I forgot about them. They're coming up and blooming! Right now! Look.

I fell prey to Kay Gardiner's Mitered Cross Blanket pattern this week. She wrote it and is selling it and all the proceeds go to Japan disaster relief. I figured I can afford to give five bucks so I bought the pattern. Then she said on her blog that she's going to have a random drawing for a bag of yarn out of all the blankets posted on Ravelry. Well, that meant I had to cast on and get my needles flying, didn't it? I went downstairs and pulled out a few skeins of variegated wool with long prints and a couple light natural colors of wool for the background. I'm knitting into the home stretch of the first block and then I'm going to put it down and concentrate on finishing what I have OTN. I am, really. Cross my heart.

The other day I finished my latest preemie hat to take to the knitting guild meeting next week. It's so tiny and so cute I can't stand it. It'd fit on a peach, I think.

Spring is Coming!

Look at what's peeking out at me when I come up to the door. This hyacinth lives in the corner by the mailbox and sometimes sprouts in February. I watch and I watch hoping the cold doesn't hurt it. So far it hasn't disappointed. This was Dad's favorite.






I planted a bunch of crocuses last fall because my previous crocuses forgot when to sprout so I had the little leaves but never any flowers and never any flowers when I need them in the early spring.









Last weekend my Aunt B brought the little white china slipper that had been the wedding cake topper on Mom's cake and my cake. DD had it set in the middle of her bouquet. It belonged to Mom's favorite neighbor when she was growing up. I get to be custodian of it for now.








DD and DIL2 gave Durwood and I this beautiful bowl made by one of DIL2's friends. I was so afraid it'd get damaged on the way home but it made it in one piece. Whew.









Here's the little preemie hat I knitted on the way home. This is a great car pattern.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-jig-jig

Well, that was certainly a whirlwind of a weekend. I feel like a starter's pistol went off early Thursday morning and I didn't cross the finish line until 8 PM last night. It was fun, I loved seeing everyone, I wouldn't have missed it for the world, but I am dog tired.

I spied this in the back corner of the hotel parking lot. It's an entrance to a walking trail that goes down a gentle slope to the left or off to the right, under the highway and along the fences of Kentucky Horse Park. Wouldn't it be fun to walk along with thoroughbreds and their foals running around in pastures? We saw some mamas and babies doing just that along the highway on Friday. We were driving too fast to get pix, of course.

It was amazing to drive from winter into spring in a single day. It wasn't a lot warmer temperature-wise, but a world of difference greenery-wise. Of course there was the whole driving back into winter thing yesterday. Not nearly as amazing. Here's Mom and Aunt B before we drove off. Sisters reunited for a weekend. It's a wonder they're not both hoarse.

I did knit a bit. A tiny bit. You saw the preemie hat I knit on the way down, well, I knit another one on the way back.