Finally Springing

Spring is finally springing here. The temperature rose to 20 degrees today. Combined with all the rain we've had, the garden has really taken off.











No knitting pictures today as I have been working on my Susie Hoodie (sorry, it's a ravelry link) from More Big Girl Knits. I'm doing it in Charcoal Donegal Silk tweed from New Lanark Mills, so it photgraphs badly. It's slow going too as each round has over 300 stitches. Stll, I'll be smiling when I don't have to do endless seeming.



A knitting-related link, though: If you are a on ravelry, have a look at what Krystofer is doing to raise money for Aids research. He's taking part in the 2008 Aids Lifecycle. If you're not on ravelry, you can find his donate page here. He's holding a draw of the people who donate at least $10 towards this. Prizes are amazingly generous. If you have $10 to spare, pop across there now.

Socks

We got a new camera. It's lovely - much more sophisticated than my previous one. Does lots more things, including macros.



Don't these Knitpicks Harmony needles go well with the Bearfoot yarn from Mountain Colors. I started off making Friday Harbor socks from Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush. Unfortunately, the yarn just ended up looking a bit lumpy in that pattern, so they are plain K3P1 rib socks with a Friday Harbor cuff.



Speaking of socks: I need to say a big "Thank you!" to my HSKS partner,Yvonne (also known as Emma Gorodok). Yvonne sent the most wonderful sock project bags, filled with goodies. I'm afraid I can't post pictures of everything here now as the little bags are at work, where they will live in my desk, holding stress-relieving and sanity-restoring emergency sock projects.

Warming up

Feels decidedly springy today. I've finished my International Scarf Exchange 6 scarf and after blocking, took it outside to try for a background different to one of my usual sofa shots. Here it is dangling in one of our olive trees:



Some more garden picture:


A miniature flowering cherry.


Each year more and more moss and lichen finds a home on J's pondside Buddha.


The grass is full of tiny aconites and grape hyacinths.

Brrr

A wild and windy couple of days - horizontal snow much of the time and gritters on all the major roads. Why do I remember getting summer clothes and sandals at Easter as a child? Is that one of those trick childhood memories that turns every Summer holiday into a Famous Five book or is the weather really shifting so drastically?

We walked on the beach, dressed like we were walking across Antarctica, and drove up to the Heugh Breakwater, near my new school, to watch the waves in action.





What a person needs, when the weather is like this, is a bright, bright, bright cosy wool sweater:



Terrible picture, but lovely sweater. This is my take on Chinese Lace Pullover by Angela Hahn. My modifications were: longer body (about 3 inches more), merino dk instead of cotton/silk, added some rows of garter stitch around the neck as I felt the neckline was too low when I had finished it, only did 1 repeat of lace around the sleeves so they weren't too fussy.

Back into the light

I feel like this lovely anenome that is flowering in the garden - as though I've been down in the dark, underground, for a while now. It's one of those things that I don't always recognise until I start to come out again. Not a depression, I think, but a head-down, coping-by-putting-one-foot-in-front-of-another period.

Things at work have been very hard for a while - I got the job, we had an inspection and had to weather with the response of some colleagues to the inspection findings, lots of things have been difficult and everyone has been very tired. It's been a long, hard term and I'm glad it's my two week break!

I have responded to the stress of it all by eating chocolate (consequence - weight gain of 4lbs, I was lucky!), sleeping and getting in some knitting - not as much as I would have liked, but it all counts.

I finished my Chinese lace pullover. No pictures yet, but I'll get some done this week.

I have cast on for my International scarf Exchange 6 scarf.

Here it is:



I'm doing a pattern called Forest Shawl or Scarf, which I printed out from t'Interweb. Unfortunately, I didn't bookmark the page or note the creator. It's in James C Brett Merino. The colour is darker than it appears here - more a dark Merlot shade. I love the way this yarn shows the lace pattern and love how soft it is.

I've been making small (and I mean small) woollen hats for Save the Children. They are easy to do and can be finished really quickly - even when my brain is fried and I can't keep my brain focused on anything complicated.



I read, on the Save the Children website, that half of all babies born in Tibet die in their first week - mostly due to hypothermia. What terrible statistics!

Finished objects sighted

Two, to be precise. Just under the wire before I go back to work tomorrow.

The first is a small felted project bag for me to carry socks etc in while they are in progress. I made it from 1 skein of my large stash of Twinkletoes sock yarn. I may try more felted projects from this as it worked out well and I still have lots of the stuff left. I felted it in my washing machine and dried it into shape over a plastic cereal container.



It's lined with a lovely piece of Kaffe Fassett fabric. I love the fabric but am trying to reduce the amount of pattern I have in our house as it easily feels cluttered, so I'll confine it to small things like linings.



Next up is my Hogwarts Sock Kit Swap project bag. I've enjoyed making the bag, which is done in Wendy Fusion and lined with Liberty tana lawn in a knitting print. I haven't had as much time for the other swap activities as I would have liked and I'm worried that I may have annoyed the organisers with my lack of participation in the treasure hunts and quizzes, but I haven't had time.





The bag is off to my swap partner with a skein of hand-dyed Ravenclaw yarn (apologies, I can't remember where I bought this), a set of stitch-markers I made myself and a set of Lantern Moon sock stix. I hope she likes the kit.



*****

Back to work tomorrow. as usual, I don't seem to have got half as much done as I wanted to this week. Never mind. Is it 6 weeks until Easter?

One of the things that has been occupying my thoughts, work-wise, recently has been the fact that the post, to which I have been seconded, has been advertised as a permanent vacancy. It came up shortly after I started my secondment, allowing very little time for me to make an informed decision about whether to apply for it or not. If you have visited here any number of times in the past, you will realise that I don't do change!

Anyway, since I had started to do the job already I decided to apply. The interviews (2 days worth) are in a week, so I've still got some time to work on my ideas and presentation.

A hint of Spring

Well, it's now much warmer than it was at the start of the week and I am quietly optimistic that winter might finally be easing itself out.



We finally got the living room put straight after having new carpets laid; much trauma and heartache invested into finding two matching curtain poles that would fit the two (non-matching) windows in this room without having to buy the hideously expensive largest size and saw great chunks off them. I am finally knitting again.

I have pulled this back about 4 times now, being unhappy with the shapings. I wish I was knitting it from the top down...



It's not pink. It's red.