Day 12

.....that is, this is the 12th consecutive day we've been out of school due to snow and icy roads. The month of February has yet to see students in our school. I'm still parked at the bottom of our driveway and the poor Explorer has been getting triple use, as three drivers share it to safely get up and down our road.

Yep, there's been no school, but there has been knitting. Lots and lots of knitting. Today, most likely my last day at home this week, I'll finish Clue 5 of The Enchanted Wood KAL shawl.


Last night, I finished Clue 1 of the Evenstar KAL -


and also knitted a little on my Opening Ceremonies Shawlette, a Ravelympics project.


I've enjoyed these snowy days, but now I know it's time for reality to rear its ugly head....time to get back to work and back to school. :( It's back to knitting at night for me!

Snowed In - #3

We've had more snow...this time from Friday until about mid-day yesterday, Saturday. There was less accumulation this time, only 9-10 inches, but it was a very heavy and wet snow and coated every little branch and twig. Some branches got too heavy - like this one across our driveway.



I took advantage of being confined to the house, and finally finished Clue 2 of The Enchanted Woods Shawl KAL. This was only accomplished with the help of my Knitting Guru, Janice, who read her pattern to me over the phone while I compared it with my written instructions and my stitches. After we discovered the error - did I have the wrong copy of the pattern...don't think so....it was easy-peasy to finish.



The rest of the day was spent with friends who came to visit....from here:



Thank goodness for Knitting Gurus and Ravelry - with them around, a knitter will never be stuck or lonely!

Another Snowy Day....

......hooray!


That means lots of couch time watching movies, staying warm in front of the fireplace, and knitting on this:

In this photo, I'm a little upset with the project, so it's on time out in the basket. It's The Enchanted Woods KAL shawl beginning at Clue 2. I have been fighting with it for a week now, but thanks to the magic of several dozen stitch markers, things seem to be going a little better. I'll not give up just yet.

In other knitting news, I've been gathering yarn for other 10 Shawls in 2010 projects.
This is Tosh Lace in Iris. It's for the Evenstar KAL that's coming up in February.


This is No Two Snowflakes merino, silk, & cashmere in Spicy Foods. It will be for a Citron shawl and will be my project for the opening ceremonies of the Raveylmpics/Winter Olympics in 13 more days.


There's a little more yarn pron to share. I kept reading about these Zauberballs and just had to see what all the fuss was about.



Oh - so that's what all the fuss is about! Lovely, aren't they? I can't wait to pair them with a project.
My break from knitting is over. It's time to head back to the warm of my knitting - and hopefully even more progress!

Half a Century

....yep - that's me. I've crawled, walked, sung, played, performed, shucked, jived, taught, knitted, spun, and loved my way through 50 years of life. Here's hoping for many more years of fun....however, I hope we can delete the 'crawling' from the list!

Many friends helped me mark the B-I-G day:

• last week, Janice & Ken cooked a wonderful dinner for me and another January b'day friend, Larry.
• all of my 4th graders made me cards.
  

• Janice & Kim took me to lunch....(there was an ant in my soup - lol).

• I enjoyed reading 40+ Facebook greetings :) - thank you all!

• DH & I enjoyed a nice lunch together.

• ...and today, we have a day off from school due to heavy rains and flooding. :)

There were nice gifts, too and I'm only posingt the fiber-related photos. Last year's vacuum cleaner was an exception...lol.

Here's a yummy thing - a Ken Ledbetter spindle. It's made of purple heart wood and lacewood and has an inlay of some sort of crushed stone and a metallic wafer or disc. It's very lovely and spins well, too - so it's functional art and a gift from DH.


There was one frustration on my big b'day. It involved and still involves this.


This is the beginning of Clue 2 of The Enchanted Wood KAL. I'm now starting row 9 - after knitting-tinking-knitting-tinking-knitting-tinking all day yesterday....and it's not even a hard pattern! After getting off to a rocky start due to errors with the charted pattern, I started following both the corrected chart AND written clues -double checking my numbers with every little section - carefully marking through each section I knitted...and I've still ended up with a shortage or overage of 1-2 stitches on each row...gaaaa.....it's making me crazy! I will NOT frog....no trips to the pond b/c it's too cold for a swim! It's just going to be what it will be. When I post the final blocked shawl photo, please don't look too closely!

2010 Thus Far

For one reason or another (travel, sports, laziness, etc...) I have not yet blogged this year. Time to get to it because there's a lot of exciting knitting news going on.

First of all, I joined a Ravelry group called 10 Shawls in 2010. I figured it would be a good way to knit down my yarn stash a little and learn a lot more about lace knitting. I have completed one shawl thus far - so I'm on track! I used Wollmeise WD 80/20 in Der Letze Versuch to make the Traveling Woman shawlette. Here are the results:



The colors in the yarn are amazing - all different shades of purple. Here's a closer look.



Traveling Woman is a really easy lace pattern. It was very predictable and I enjoyed knitting it very much!

In other Ravelry-related news, I'm also knitting in The Unique Sheep's Enchanted Wood shawl KAL. I just finished the first clue this morning. Here it is in their Luxe yarn, custom-dyed for me by Kelly. The color is called Winter Sunset.



This yarn came in a set of six skeins in a gradient colorway which The Unique Sheep ladies call Gradience. My next skein will be mostly apricot with a little brown and lavender. Lovely!

...and because life isn't exciting enough, I'm also getting ready for the Ravelympics' events with Team Cindy....see?



I'm planning to work on finishing some WIPs - one in particular which I will not mention because I've mentioned it enough before.....really....enough said.

(many of the above hyperlinks access Ravelry pages. If you are not a Ravelry member will you not be able to see them....sorry. :( )

As you can see, 18 days into 2010, there's been lots of knitting going on. Here's hoping that holds true for the rest of the year!

The Day After Christmas

We did it! We survived last week's BIG snow and had a wonderful Christmas, despite the last minute rush to get gifts and the horrible roads in C'ville. Because I was basically snowed in last weekend, I managed to finish this.

The pattern is called Victorine and it's designed by Cindy Guggemos. You can find it HERE on Ravelry. This one is for a co-worker. I have plans to knit another one for me as part of the 10 Shawls in 2010 group, also on Ravelry.

This is the first non-snowy Saturday we've had in three weeks. A little later, I'm going to brave the shopping centers in W'boro for size-related gift exchanges - but for right now I'm content to work on this..

...the oldest WIP in the history of the world....I've blogged about this one at least twice before, so I'm a little embarrassed to even mention it...so I'll stop now. :)

Not everyone needs to go out to have fun. The cats have plenty to do. This has been their second favorite past time this past week - the first being napping, of course!

I think I'll add napping to my list for later on today - hope you can, too!

Snowed In!

It seems that we're a bit snowed in here at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It's been snowing HARD since about 3:30 yesterday and the forecast calls for continued heavy snow throughout today.


Snowbound! Yippee! Since I can't finish Christmas shopping and our party for this evening had to canceled, I think I'll turn my attention to other finishing and preparatory details.

First, we'll finish de-cluttering the dining room and kitchen. Then I'll put on a big pot of beef stew to simmer all day. After that I'm planning to indulge in fiber related activities like winding these for the 10 Shawls in 2010 and The Enchanted Woods KAL.


Maybe I'll finish this today - fingers crossed - so I can get back to my Bobbie gloves and Circular Vest.

I'm not going to panic about not having our Christmas shopping complete. It will take care of itself once we can get out again and into town. I hope you will enjoy a safe, warm, and wonderfully fibery day - even if you're not snowed in!