Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Strange Weather

In my last post I promised pictures of the snow, so here they are!

First, a picture taken from Ryan's window of one of the garden areas:

This is between downpours.

Here's the same area, less than 24 hours later. It continued to snow for about five more hours.


Here's the neighbors' dogwood with snow:


And a view from front porch during a slight lessening of the snow:



And finally, Greg's truck. By the time the snow stopped, there was about 9" of snow on the hood of his truck.


By Sunday afternoon almost every bit of it was gone and it was 70º! I saw kids throwing snowballs at each other while wearing short-sleeved shirts.

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In other happenings, I made some progress on my Monkey socks:


And here's one of them on my leg:

I'm ready to start the heel as soon as I finish this pattern repeat.

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I'm also testing a pattern for a friend on Ravelry. They're about twice as long as in this picture and I'm really enjoying this design.


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A while back I participated in the Crop Scene Investigation that was sponsored by some scrapbook-supply companies. It turns out I won one of the weekly drawings, and here's my prize:


The item on the left is a cleaning tool and I'm looking forward to using it quite a lot! It sweeps up small things like glitter, small pieces of paper, etc and if I can steal it back from Ryan I'll get a lot of use from it.

The item on the right is for un-sticky-ing things like stickers and pop dots. I'm not sure how much I'll use that, since that's not usually something I do, but we'll see. :-)

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I've been hard at work on a customer's quilt and hopefully I'll remember to take some pictures to post before she picks it up. :-)

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I hope all of you are having a great week!

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Yet *another* catch-up post (long and very picture heavy)

It's been a really busy few weeks since I last posted. (Shame on me!)

My parents came for a visit and we had an absolutely lovely time! We did a lot of sight-seeing, including the Tulsa Air and Space Museum (a HUGE hit with everyone) and the Price Tower in Bartlesville.

I also managed to finish quite a few things.
First, a quick pair of booties:


That's just one booty (obviously), but I finished the second one pretty quickly after that. These booties are for display at Ewe-Nique Yarns in Sapulpa. The pattern is from the book Easy Knitted Socks.

I also finished my Hyrna (Ravelry link)!
Here it is before blocking. I just couldn't pass up spreading it out and admiring it before I blocked it.


Here it is pinned out:


And here's my lovely mom, modeling with some help from Lenny the Cat.


The fence was a good model for a little while, too.


My Mom took some pictures and did some very nice styling!

The pattern is from the book Three Cornered and Long Shawls, which is actually a set of two books: the original book in Icelandic, and the English translation of the chart symbols and notes about each shawl. I wish they'd translated all the history in the beginning of the book because I'd love to have details about the pictures.

I started crocheting again and I finished a hat:

It's the Gulf Shores Hat pattern and I've made three or four more. I'll keep one and the rest will go to Caps for a Cure to be donated to a cancer treatment center. I see more of these in my future. I managed to memorize the pattern and it goes really quickly! I have a lot of nicer acrylic yarns since people have been giving it to me left and right.

I finished a pair of socks but I can't talk about those quite yet. Maybe in a week or two, depending on how quickly the mail moves.

Because I got a pair of socks *and* my Hyrna finished, I started the Hey Teach! sweater.

I'm using Lion Brand Cotton Ease in the "stone" colorway. I'm a bit farther on than in the picture, but not by a whole lot.

Instead I also started another pair of socks and those have been nicely portable, so they've gotten more attention than the Hey Teach. These, too, are a lot farther on than in this picture:

They'll be put aside for the moment while I test-knit a pair of socks for a friend on Ravelry, so they won't have much progress for a while either.

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Last night it started snowing and it finally stopped a little while ago. I think we got about 8", which is pretty amazing when we've had temps in the 70s and 80s for the last two weeks!!!!

We'd planted a whole bunch of things and I put plastic over the tomatoes, beets, onions, broccoli, and a couple of other things, but I suspect the potatoes, corn, and garlic might not make it. I noticed however that the plants available at the garden centers around here are bigger, so if these don't make it then we'll go buy more and put them in.

I'll post pictures of the snow (and how things looked before it snowed!) tomorrow. This post is long enough!

I hope you all are having a great weekend.

Monday, March 02, 2009

She's Dead, Jim

The postman brought death in the mail.




They're a bit small, and I really have to struggle to get them over my heels, but they're nice socks.

I got to be one of the final five people left standing, so I did pretty well.

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I'm off to nap. The kids had their final basketball games this weekend (THANK GOODNESS) and they were both up for most of the night last night coughing and stuffed up, so I kept them home today. They've perked up a lot in the last hour or so, but I'm going to attempt to nap for a few minutes.

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I hope you're all having a great Monday!