Thank You for Voting! & Shoes

Thank you so much to all who visited and voted for my yarn ball decal. I think I came in second (although I'm not sure because I was so tired when I came home on the 25th that I didn't check my standing). I'm pretty thrilled to have done so well!

My wonderful Aunt Louise sent some really neat shoes for the kids. Thank you, Louise! Both kids immediately tried them on and have been wearing them since.

Pretty things

We finally had good enough weather for me to get some pictures taken this morning! All weekend was icky weather, with lots and lots of rain. Not so good for taking pictures but great for the plants. First up (speaking of plants) are some pictures of my amaryllis. This is such a gorgeous plant! Greg had been teasing me about watering an empty pot, but we finally got this: There's still one blossom to come. I'm really enjoying this plant!

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I promised better pictures of the yarn for the Yarn Dash, and here they are: This picture is in strong light and is probably the closest-in-color to the yarn in real life. (Monitors vary, of course!) This next picture shows the slight variations from the kettle-dyeing technique: It's 880 yards/100 grams of lace-weight merino wool. This will make a gorgeous shawl! (Or anything else you'd like to use it for. LOL!) Go sign up for the Yarn Dash if you haven't already, and this skein of yarn could be yours.

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!

I won a contest!

There hasn't been a whole lot going on around here, but I did manage to purchase the Spring Things Shawl from Susan of the I'm Knitting As Fast As I Can blog.

She was celebrating her birthday in part by putting some of her patterns at half off, and at the end of the week she was to draw out a name from everyone who'd purchased one of her patterns during the week. That person would receive the yarn to make the item in the pattern they purchased. SHE DREW MY NAME! I'm so excited!!

So not only did I get a great deal on the pattern, but one ball of Zephyr is on its way to me!

I had to really think about the color I want to use. I've been on a blue kick for the last few years and now I'm kind of tired of it. I was on a red kick for a while, too, but red gets hard to wear sometimes. I have so many red shirts that a red shawl just blends right in. Purple is the obvious blend of blue and red so I didn't want to go with that.

I decided on green, a lovely, slightly-yellowed green. Mmmmm yummy! The color is called Basil and you can see it here. I blame my interest in green on Rebecca.

I can't wait to cast on for this project and I think I'm going to push myself to finish the Hanging Garden Stole before the yarn for the Spring Things Shawl arrives. I'm almost done with the eleventh repeat and I've decided to go to twelve repeats, do a few rows of garten and then bind off. I'd originally been planning to pick up stitches along the sides and do a knitted-on border, but I've since decided that I like it the way it is (and I might slit my wrists if I have to pick up 1,300 stitches for a border). Yeah. It's going to be beautiful if I can just get it finished!

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My allergies are getting better, especially since the kitties have been in the garage for a few days now. They've got their own little area set up, and we've been letting them take forays into the great big wide world--with very close supervision. They LOVE being outside although they're very cautious. We're all going to be happier with outside kitties, and I won't have to die from not being able to breathe.

My not-very-happy eyes are getting better and I was even able to wear my contacts for a few hours yesterday. Oh happy day!! I HATE wearing glasses especially since the pair I have is from the late 1980s, I think, and the prescription isn't totally up to date. It's not bad, but it's not perfect either. The frames are also a fairly bright green. And kind of large. No, I'm not going to post a picture right now. Maybe later, when I don't have to wear them.

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Thanks to everyone who's left comments about the kitties/allergies/dander. It helps to know there are options!

Contest Winner, Mystery Stole progress

I finished the first clue of the Mystery Stole 3 a little while ago. I couldn't resist pinning it out and taking a picture:

Right now, just slightly stretched, it's 26" wide and 19" long. MUCH bigger than Melanie's 20" wide stole, which I'm very pleased about. I'm not a small woman, and 20" just doesn't quite do it.

The yarn (to recap) is KnitPicks' Bare, hand-dyed by me on Thursday. The needles are Crystal Palace US 4s and unfortunately they're not my favorite bamboo needles. My faves are from an eBay seller named JoyceSuperShop (which always cracks me up) but I haven't acquired any 4s yet.

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Since we lowered the front rail, the kids LOVE to climb up and sit on it. The other day they decided to have some yogurt while sitting up there, and since I had my camera with me they both wanted to have their pictures taken. They were even being cute for me!

That was in one of the rare sunny afternoons we've had around here lately. Right now the Tulsa area is way above normal for rainfall, and the ground is so saturated that the water is running down the lawns and over the curbs, even this evening after the last rainfall early this morning. I've never seen it do that in the (almost) four years we've lived here.

The kids talked me into letting them play in the rain (what kid can resist a puddle??) so here they are, looking guilty because they thought I was calling them in. I wasn't--I just wanted them to look up at the camera.

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I should've posted this on Friday but I got caught up in the first-clue-posting excitement (for the MS3): Knitted Zebra (Delores) won my contest! She'll be getting some yarn. :-)

So, what was the difference between my Swallowtail Shawl and the original? Only one: I changed the direction of the Lily of the Valley section. All other changes (longer points, etc) are just blocking.

Here's the original (from the magazine, Interweave Knits):

And here's mine:

Thanks to everyone who participated! I'll have another little contest in a few weeks.