So much fiber, so little time

Why didn't this happen here?

So close, yet so far - coulda taken some eedjits out of the gene pool with all the illegal fireworks (bought in PA) that went off around here last night. Fortunately, none of the critters cared much. Unfortunately, I haven't heard of any local Darwin awards yet.

Reality disconnect

There's something wrong with a weather forecast that calls for an overnight low of 15F when the temperature is already down to 3F. Just saying.

We did get some lovely sun, though, after all the snow yesterday. That will be nice before the next round of snow starts tomorrow morning.

Deep(ish) thought for the day

I'm so glad I live on the snow side of the storm. Best wishes to Albany with the horrible ice!

OMG, they're breeding

More FiveFingers! And a nice place to buy them is gotyourgear.com. I've been wearing them a lot and I have such happy feet!

On the fiber front, I did buy a bunch of the Webs cottolin. It makes me wish I were a machine knitter because I could whip off a bunch of summer tops in a real hurry. Still, I will sample for the huck bath/hair towels soon, perhaps over the weekend of the 4th.

Also, I should have a new shawl/wrap pattern available for sale shortly. It's fat(ish) commercial yarn and thus is knitting up pretty quickly. And it will be on Ravelry (my id is cdevine). I broke down and joined because a whole bunch of my patterns were listed there. Of course, hell will freeze over before I list stash, projects, and such.

Funky feet

Oh, what a poor, neglected blog! These are my new weird shoes, the Vibram Five Fingers Sprint. My feet and I loathe shoes. (Very narrow heels, narrow forefoot, very high instep, very active toes and long feet = bad fit in standard sizing. The only other tolerable brands I've found are New Balance and SAS.)

The Five Fingers are wonderful. I've walked over gravel, asphalt, grass, wood and concrete, both dry and wet, with wonderful grip. I've got a nice blue/tan/brown colorway in Schaefer Anne for a pair of toe socks - toes are much shorter than fingers, so I'd rather knit toe socks than gloves any day!

Other fiber news: I'm working on a wrap in the Webs tencel/merino. No pictures yet, because I think the stitch might also work well as a cardigan, and I'd prefer to sell any eventual pattern :)

Spring is here?

I love this picture from the Telegraph of sheep herded into the word "spring". Note the ovine wandering out of the dotted "i" in the second picture - definitely a black sheep in spirit, if not in color.

On the other hand, in my neck of the woods, we got four inches of very heavy wet snow yesterday, and today the temperature hasn't risen above freezing. But the robins are going to town on worms floating out of the swampland in the back yard. There must have been fifteen of them at the "all you can eat" buffet!

And for more English sheep fun, visit this BBC game. You might want to turn off the sound, but I find I react faster to sound than to sight.

A tree no more

The maple that appeared in recent photos is now just a pile of sawdust. It had been unwell* in the last year because of damage from a really bad thunderstorm in 2003, so I called in the tree guys. They estimated, given the local storm damage, that they'd get to me in two to three weeks. In a mystery of space and time, they came the next day. But, no, I'm certainly not complaining!

*I love the phrase. It reminds me of one of my favorite lines from My Favorite Year: "Ladies are unwell, Stone. Gentlemen vomit."

Cock-eyed optimists

These are my psychotic daffodils, which are growing in the midst of snow, sleet, ice and deluge. I'm sure their good buddies, the crocuses and snowdrops, are also out there under the snow, but they may float away before they get much taller.

Ghost tree

It's been snowing like crazy, and this is one of the maples outside the front door, photographed hand-held at night. Given the weight on the branches, I'm contemplating keeping the heat up a bit overnight in case the power goes out.

The gloves are finished (in fact, I've been wearing them everyday for the last week and a half) and I've been knitting swatches with the Webs tencel/merino. Interesting stuff - I can see a spring cardigan in a stitch pattern that maximizes the shine.

Why, yes, I am still alive

Things have been a little crazy around here. I'm working three part-time jobs and spending another large chunk of time on some volunteer work. Hence the blog silence.

Some fiberish things continue. I set out to finish the silk shawl that I put on hold over the summer, but once I worked the edging all the way around the first side and then some, I realized I would run out of yarn. So I redesigned the edging to be narrower, but was and am too disheartened to frog it. (There's a lifeline in place, but still ...) In the meantime, I've knitted another item to submit to the next One Skein Wonder book. All it needs is blocking and a few more words added to the pattern.

Bits and bobs

I've only been knitting small things lately, although there are larger projects brewing in my head. The most recent work is a pair of ribbed bed socks in Keesmere. See, despite the new furnace, I still don't heat the house very much, and shoving bare feet between a comforter and a futon can suck the warmth right out of them. At any rate, It certainly makes me understand the colonial bed warming pan and the British hot water bottle! The other knitting is just a mind-numbing swatch to weigh and estimate yarn usage for a pattern that needs to be sized up.

Oh, for fun and good works: I've gotten hooked on FreeRice. It's a website set up to donate 20 grains of rice for every correct [English] vocabulary word you pick. So far, my word geekiness has managed 2500 to 3000 grains a day. This is much more fun than the charity sites which accumulate funds by the single click!

Heat!

Yay! I have heat again. Good thing too, because we've got a lake effect snow advisory tonight and the wind is already howling.

Spit take

This photo made me snarf all over the keyboard. But inquiring minds want to know - where's Pokey?

Indian summer

Oh, noooooo!

Tomorrow is "Death By Freshman" day, when the little buggers move into the dorms. I must run my errands this afternoon and then hide for the rest of the weekend!

The relative peace and quiet of summer is officially over. The next quiet phase won't hit until December.