Spring, Technically

According to the calendar, spring is here.   According to me...well, it's dragging its feet getting here.   While much of the snow has melted, the grass is still brown, and there are still snow-bank remnants suppressing the crocuses.  And this afternoon at lunch my husband looked out the window of the restaurant and said, "It's snowing."

"No,"  I replied firmly.  "I disbelieve. I'm done with snow."  Apparently firmness was all that was required.  There were no snowflakes to be seen when when we finished lunch.   It was still cold enough that I wore my mittens, but I was heartened to see my first crocus in a flowerbed almost ready to bloom.

We were out in western MA to visit with in-laws, so naturally I took knitting.  I'm doing finish work on the vest- finally cast off the 344 stitches of the bottom edging and am knitting the second sleeve edging.  After that, a zillion miles of i-cord edging and it will at last be done.

It's a little unwieldy though, so I got more done on the socks today.  Here they are:

Nice warm colors for a spring that mostly hasn't been.   I was also amused to note that the color of these socks- which I started on the Dallas trip- are surprisingly close to the colors in the pretties  I brought home with me.

Clearly I had leaves on the brain, don't you think?

This week isn't expected to be a whole lot warmer than the last one, but the days are longer, the cats had some time on the sun porch over the weekend, and I know that however hard winter tries to cling, it's doomed.  I just wish it would doom a little faster!

March-ing On

I was all ready to tell you about the signs of spring in my neighborhood, the excitement I felt the first day the snowbanks were low enough to see over when I backed out of the driveway, blithely leaving the house without a coat in the balmy warmth (it made it up to 45 F, yay!) ...and then today I got up and looked out the window and it was snowing.

Not serious snow, but still.  If I were in danger of forgetting that it's no time to get complacent, there it was.

It's been a hugely busy month, March.  Not long after my last post, we left for our annual pilgrimage to get a preview of spring in Dallas, and take in some Irish music.  Not as warm as some years, but the Saturday was gorgeous, and Sunday wasn't terrible.  The music was outstanding as always.

Jiggernaut, onstage at NTIF 2015

We got home and found that Cookie was undisturbed by our absence.

Jake was also pretty laid back, but Biscuit spent the next week following me around more assiduously than usual, and either sitting on me, or putting a possessive paw on me when I wasn't moving.

I took the slip-stitch rib socks to Dallas. I wound up running out my first skein of yarn, and not being happy with the partial skein I'd brought to finish them.  The main color is an orangy red, and the partial was more of a pinkish red, and they just didn't work together.  I switched to my backup skein of sock yarn, and finished the red socks after I got home.

The second red was darker, but a better match for the first in tone, and then I switched to a charcoal/black tonal yarn for the toes.  So- one full skein used with no leftovers, one partial skein used up, and most of the tonal charcoal.    I've got a couple of ideas for more partial skein projects but more on those later.  (I also lack a photo of the backup skein socks.  Again, later.)

Last but not least, I couldn't leave Jake out, since everyone else has had a photo cameo in this post. This afternoon, Jake was our literary lion:

Most of the rest of the busy-ness has been work-related- there has been a sad dearth of crafting projects.  But the seasons turn, the days are getting longer and the more sun I see, the happier I am. Spring is coming, and not even a little snow can hold back the turn of the season!

Now They're Just Messing With Us

We finally seem to have broken out of the cold snowy cycle we've been in.  Just imagine, three whole days with daytime highs above freezing!  Why, it's been positively sweltering!  Of course this morning we got another dusting of snow. We're over 100 inches for the year, we don't actually need more.  But this was nothing much, just enough to freshen up the look of the snowbanks, which had been getting a little dingy.

Yes, the black spec in the snowbank at center left is my mailbox.

Certainly there hasn't been a lot of motivation to stop knitting winter wear.   Here's the hat:

There have been more mittens- one pair of kid mittens, and another pair for me.  Come to think of it, this is the second pair for me.  I don't think I took a picture of the others- they were off the needles and onto my hands too fast!

And for the housewarming gift, a set of draft excluders.  Traditionally these are filled with sand, but dry sand is hard to come by this time of year- the yard being frozen solid- so I copied my mother's winter innovation and stuffed them with cat litter.

And now it's bedtime, and I should go stick my feet under a cat and go to sleep.