The Cure for Cabin Fever

While sitting and watching the snow fall on Saturday, I got a pretty good start on that Trinity Stitch hat I saw on someone's head in Ikea the other day. I have made one before without great success as it turned out ENORMOUS. I have modified the original pattern to exclude the extreme slouchiness and hopefully will have just enough room in the top to fit my old lady bun/topknot. I hate wearing my hair down with a hat. Hate it.




I also managed to spindle up another bobbin of the Merino that I am in desperate need of to finish my Swallowtail. I am actually experiencing sore fingers from all the intense spindling on this project. I have been tempted to see if I could duplicate this weight on one of my wheels but so far I have not caved in to the temptation. If this turns out to not be near enough to finish however, that wheel may just get try. May 1st is right around the corner although it is hard to believe looking out the window right now.

It Wasn't Just a Dream

I woke up to my front yard looking like this.



My poor bushes and trees looking like this.



And the deck that had been shoveled at least 5 times looking like this.
That's a lot of snow out there and they say to expect more on Tuesday. They've got to be kidding.

Back In Line

My rather garish Palette Cardi has become my best friend during these cold, dark months of winter. The bright colors just make me happy. Slipping it on at the end of the day, just before throwing myself on the couch for the night, is like taking a trip to springtime. It has become my knitted bathrobe.
I never noticed that the front patterns were not aligned until I looked at the photographs I posted over on Ravelry. The patterns were way out of whack until I took advantage of a recent snowy Sunday morning to straighten them out. I had to take off the buttons-all 10 of them-and replace them in order for the horizontal patterns to meet where they should. I remember last summer counting the pattern stripes in the front bands and thinking how easy the button placement was going to be. Silly me.

Winter Storm Warning

I see a red trinity stitch hat, an alpaca scarf and a pair of soy socks in my future. While everyone else in the Washington DC area was standing in line for bread and milk tonight, I was standing in line for yarn. And I wasn't the only one.

Serious Bummer

Spoiler Alert: If you are the only person left in the world who has NOT read this book or the Harry Potter books yet, go away and come back later because I am about to totally ruin them for you.

I bought this book several years ago after hearing lots of good things about it but it ended up forgotten amid my bazillions of other knitting books. In my ignorance, this Christmas I downloaded the holiday sequel from audible and then went on to read the first installment so I would have a clue as to what was what.
For crying out loud could someone PLEASE explain to me how there are 2 more books in the series when the main character DIES in the first book? I am so bummed by Georgia Walker's sudden death that I have no interest in continuing with the rest of the series. I suppose someone will say that it is about the bond formed by the other knitters in overcoming their loss, but jeezy peezy the woman owned her OWN knitting shop. You just CAN'T kill off someone who owns that much stuff left to knit. It really shook me up.

That book should have come with a warning like this:

Gathering Dust

My two spinning wheels are seriously in danger of becoming nothing more than objet d'art.



These two projects have been languishing on the wheels since LAST SUMMER.



Ugh. This pink and green Finn Top, that I bought at last year's Sheep and Wool Fest, looks more like someone's insides than wool. Why did I buy pink? I can't even remember why I started spinning this in the first place.



Even worse, my pretty little Merino sample is going to turn out to be not enough to do anything with.



This is all I have left from a 4 ounce bag of unwashed fleece that I had so much fun washing and combing this summer.

I suppose the lesson learned here is that I am not very good at spinning just for the sake of making yarn. Unless there is a specific project planned for the yarn-to-be it drops way down on the To Do list. It's a wonder the moths have not made a meal of it yet.

Now You See It

Just when I thought things were going well in Knitville, I had my bubble burst by a fellow Raveler who pointed out a boo boo in my Swallowtail. That is a rogue yarnover that somehow ended up smack dab in the middle of supposed-to-be-solid thingy.



Good thing I am using that lumpy old handspun because sewing up that boo boo was too easy seeing that the entire thing is full of lumps and bumps. Gone are the days when I would rip back because of something stupid like this. I know full well this shawl is going to end up in a bag in the bottom of the closet with all of my other "masterpieces". And process person that I am, that is just fine by me.