Greetings from far off places

On Monday it snowed. Not the winter snow that looks permanent and makes you feel cold; it was a wet snow that won't last but is still disappointing at this late date in the spring. Not that I noticed it much. I was very busy doing many important things. Like laundry. And cleaning. And more laundry. And then some packing.

And now morning looks like this:





The day goes on to look like this:







And this:



Or, if you're feeling nostalgic, like this:




We're staying on the boardwalk at Hollywood Beach (well, not directly on the boardwalk; we do have a hotel room you know). The boardwalk extends for two miles, which means that the round trip walk is four miles. An ideal morning walk with an ocean view the entire way and an outstanding way to start the day. The only conceivable drawback is that everything looks the same at first, so that it is -- and I speak strictly hypothetically here and not from any personal experience I might have had on my second walk -- possible to continue walking right past the street your hotel is on and go a good way down the board walk again before you realize that the walk is getting very long and that you are no longer sure whether the hotel is ahead of you or behind you. I do not recommend this.

Life hasn't been all beaches and laundry his week. For starters, I seem to have broken one of my lesser toes. It looks nasty, but as long as I keep my shoes on, it doesn't hurt too much.

Vacation knitting has been productive and I managed to get half way through an extremely cute baby sweater before my luck gave out. On row 41, just as I was thinking about finishing the sleeves and dividing them off from the body of the cardi, the tip of my size three circular needle pulled right off of the cable. "Shhhhhhhhhhhoes and stockings" I said (my kids were in the room; they had seen part of a Jerry Springer show earlier and I really couldn't subject them to more profanity, no matter how thoroughly justified) as 30 stitches made a bid for freedom. I pulled a size four circular from my bag, recaptured the errant stitches, and on row 42 watched in amazement as the size four needle tip separated from the cable entirely, liberating a whole new set of stitches.

Here is the stalled sweater, now held together by two failed needles, with the offending needle tips and naked cable ends clearly visible. Please take a moment to express your disapproval of this dreadful state of affairs.





I tracked down the address of a reasonably local yarn shop and we intend to remedy the problem this morning. Right after a restorative trip to the beach.

One last bit of eye candy. I won the door prize at the knitting guilt meeting a few weeks ago. 660 yards of worsted weight alpaca. It is marvelously large and soft Yum. If only I knew what to do with so much brown.

Lots of Pictures, But Nothing Much to Speak Of.

Weird. It's been a month since my last post. I'm not sure what I accomplished over the last month, which might be why I didn't post anything. Or I could just be a lazy bum, which is more likely since I sat down at the laptop today claiming that I was going to do some work, and here I am with a blog post instead. Some days (and weeks, in my case) are just like that. I even took a bunch of pictures for use in blog posts, but most of them seem irrelevant now, particularly the depressing pictures of a late season snow we had recently.

Here they are:

I made them small so we wouldn't get too cold looking at them, but I do like the way the snow stuck to the netting over the coop and made a kind of igloo for the chickens.  It reminds me of the tents my kids like to make, in a cozy kind of way.

One thing I have been doing (a little bit) is goofing around with the Hipstamatic app for my phone.  Here is a picture of three little sheep we made after the last spinning guild.  My kids saw some sheep like these for sale by one of the vendors at the meeting and I refused to buy them.  In addition to being the worlds biggest Meanie, I am also painfully cheap and I just couldn't shell out money for something that we (a) could make ourselves from the miles of yarn cluttering up my house and (b) would probably have more fun making than possessing.

They are ridiculously cute and we did have a lot of fun making them, so I was right about point (a).  Plus, they live on my desk and nobody plays with them except for my yarn-thieving cats, so I'm pretty sure I was right about point (b) too.

They also make excellent models.  Here they are--still looking cute-- posed on top of some polwarth wool that reminded me of ducks and daffodils and therefore could not remain unpurchased. The kids agreed with my assessment of the polwarth; it is so soft and skwooshy that I have been forbidden to spin it until everyone is sure that they are done hugging it.

Here is pretty much the same picture taken with Hipstamatic.  The sheep are still cute, but the picture looks all old-timey.

Same with these flowers, which were a gift from the hockey team (the parents, really; I'm pretty sure hockey boys don't think this way) to thank me for sharing El Husbando with them for 4 months of the year.

And I think Timmy looks very noble through the Hipstamatic lens. It's almost enough to make me forgive him for sitting on my laptop and butt-typing some mysterious key combination that rotated my screen 90 degrees on the night I was trying to wrap up some work on a deadline.  Almost. I'll probably forgive him for real when the crick in my neck goes away.

He likes that polwarth top too, which is why he's made a nest out of it for the picture.

Not much going on in knitting.  I finished a pair of socks that I started in September. 



Clearly they were the socks of never ending toil and I'm glad to be done with them.  The first sock was the real bastard of the pair.  I worked on that one from September 6 until March 24.  The second sock took from March 24 to March 31.  Go figure. I worked out what I hope is the most durable heel in the history of knitting by doubling the yarn, adding a reinforcement thread, and using a Dutch heel.   The doubled yarn/Dutch heel combo is the only one I have not been able to wear out.  The reinforcement thread was added in a moment of sock insecurity that followed the premature failure of not one but two pairs of socks that I finished in the fall.  If this fails, I will give up knitting socks and find some new use for the basket of sock yarn in my office, such as tootsing up my garbage bin.

I have gotten a little weaving done.  I finally decided to finish  the placemats that were on the rigid heddle loom.  A little while back I declared that I hated the placemat design I had come up with and I refused the weave the second one the same way. Oh ye of little faith!  Here is the first mat, which I hated on the loom and really really like now that it's off the loom. Too bad I have only one of these now. 

Finishing the place mats sparked a brief weaving frenzy, during which I warped the loom with what I hoped (wrongly) was half of an odd ball of yarn that I earned at the knitting guild's unloved yarn swap and made a scarf for Matty. The scarf came out a little shorter than I had hoped, but Matty is a pretty short guy, so it worked out ok.  He views it more as a security blanket than as a cold weather accessory, which explains why he hugged it more than he wore it when he first got it. 

I had so much fun with Matty's little scarf that I ordered a ball of Chroma fingering weight yarn from Knit Picks and popped that on the loom next.  I got a good chunk of the way into the scarf before the weaving frenzy fizzled and now this is hanging on my wall (still in the loom, which I store on wall pegs) to brighten my office:

And really, that's all. Or at least all I have time for without ruining dinner.