Sunday, February 24, 2008

February Freeze

The following photos where taken after a Friday night ice storm. I meant for the pictures to be in color, but I didn't realize Dancer had her camera set to black and white.








Friday, February 22, 2008

Cure for a Yucky Winter Evening

Newly finished socks!! I love them. We'll see how well they do tomorrow. I'll probably be on my feet a lot during the afternoon. They feel soft on my feet now, but we'll see how they do tomorrow. A pair of socks I knit two years ago felt fine for around the house, but inside a shoe the yarn was too coarse for my feet. If I wear them all day, I swear I can feel each individual stitch by the end of the day. Hopefully these will be different.


Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Lunacy

Tonight is a total eclipse of the moon! I love it. I'm a geek in that way. I love watching the night sky. I get very excited over happenings in the night sky. In the list top 10 of most awesome experiences in my life is an incident involving a meteor. One night while taking a walk on a November evening, I heard a whistling noise behind me. I turned just in time to see a meteor streak across the sky. The whistling stopped at the exact moment that the meteor disappeared. I heard a meteor!!! It was so cool!

Honestly, I don't know a whole lot about astronomy. One of these days I will get myself a telescope. I've tried learning the names of various stars and constellations, but I can't seem to make them stick in my brain. But that doesn't matter. Knowing the names doesn't affect my appreciation for the beauty. I might have mentioned it in an earlier post, but sitting out on our deck during the summer and watching the stars is a summer ritual for us. It is just too bad the light polution is so bad around here.

15 minutes into the eclipse and the moon is looking like a cookie with a bite taken out. I think I'll dig out Ed's binoculars, bundle up, and head outside for a closer look. This is too cool to watch from inside, even though is is about 15 deg F.

I know. I'm nuts. The family thinks so too.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Keeping Up Acquaintances

I finished the baby blanket on Sunday (I think) while watching the Super Bowl with Ed. After trekking to 3 different yarn shops to get 2 more skeins of yarn, I decided the 6 I had made the blanket large enough. It's finished dimensions are 26x32. Large enough to cover an infant and for dragging around with a toddler. I'll save the two extra skeins. Maybe a baby sweater is in the future.

Now that that project is over, I'm considering my next major work. I have my New Year's socks still in progress. I also still have the Berroco Duo sweater I started over Thanksgiving while in Tennessee. I'll work on that to fill the gap.

Because of the internet, I've been able to keep in touch with someone from my childhood. When I was 9 years old, my family and I were camping in Saskatchewan. My younger sister and I met a girl who was in-between our ages. She lived in Michigan and we in Ohio. We became pen-pals. We were able to keep up our correspondances all the way through our youth, college, and even up to when we each got married. Over the years things dwindled to a once a year summary included with a Christmas card. The pen pal moved to Canada, which was actually her native country. Like most childhood relationships things seemed to fizzle out. Then one day while taking a break at work, I googled her name and came across a website that I thought might be related to her. I sent a message and sure enough the webmaster was related. He kindly forwarded my message and since then we've corresponded regularly and have tagged each other as friends on Ravelry.

What does this have to do with my next big project? Well, I'm glad you asked. When I joined Ravelry a few weeks ago and found Cat's page, I saw she had queued a pretty short sleeved sweater. I added it to my queue also. Cat suggested we do a knit-along for it. I'm going to start looking for a suitable yarn. A knit-along will be a great time-filler since club volleyball tournaments are starting in March.