Magic Yarn Ball

So this month I've participated in a Magic Yarn Ball Swap. You choose lots of cool goodies and wrap them up in a ball of yarn to send off to someone else. I think originally one was expected to unwrap as they knit with the yarn, but who can wait to see what's inside. Here's a link to the one I sent . It was not round to say the least. I stuffed in anything I could think of. Here's the one I received:


It's round, I'm not sure how she managed to make it round. Except that it's lace weight yarn. That's a lot of wrapping. What was I thinking, asking for lace weight? What was she thinking, offering it? But I love it, I've already cast it on the needles for a scarf.


And here's the rest. All of this stuff was wrapped up inside. Well there may have been more candy, but it took a while to unwrap. Lots of good smells. A strawberry masque that will have to wait until the fall, I don't think my stomach will withstand that intensity of smell for 10 minutes. Some Burt's Bees cuticle cream, lip balm, post-its, a mini sheep! and stitch markers. Since she asked what knitting gadgets I might like I admitted that I have no stitch markers. Now I do, 4 each of two different colors. They are standing by for the pattern part of the lace. What fun! I can't wait to do another one.

Baby Sweater

Yeah! two finished objects in one week. This is a raglan baby sweater. I dyed the yarn myself. The stitch pattern is the same as the socks from the previous post, the pattern itself was made up as I went along. I still need a button for the collar. There's probably one in the stash.
The next baby knit is on the needles, yellow this time. I'm waiting for the next Sock Madness pattern to see if I want to cast on pattern 4 or skip that one for now and do pattern 5 with the rest of the pack.
For tonight though I made too many pots and my fingers are tired, no knitting for me.
I thought I had a good belly shot to post, but my husband took a batch of really bad pictures the other day. Maybe later.

Flowers!

No one has ever sent me flowers before. Thank you dear C !
Wouldn't you know that the delivery man got lost IN my driveway. I could hear the van going back and forth when the phone rang.

And I finished a pair of socks this morning! The pattern is completely obsured by the fun yarn colors, but I like them a lot. The yarn is Lisa Souza's Emerald City color. This is the round two pattern from the Sock Madness competition. If you want to try it out, it's available to buy here. I'm using the same spiral pattern for the sweater that I pictured before, it looks lots better on a semi-solid yarn.

You say it's your birthday???

Well it's my birthday too, yeah!

It's somewhat of a tradition in our family lately to make ones own birthday cake. I certainly don't mind. I got to try out this new recipe for a steamed cake. I purposely undercooked it a bit, the doughnut hole in the middle is all just undercooked fudginess. YUM! With vanilla ice cream of course.

It's an interesting week to have a birthday with so many national tragedies (and some personal ones) both old and new. I was wrapped up in high school life in '95 for the Oklahoma City bombing. I certainly knew it was happening, but it was a long way away, physically and mentally. Not having a TV for the last 10 or so years changes your prospective. I was in school at Haywood when the Columbine shooting took place, so lots of NPR coverage. And I guess that's where I've been this week as well listening to the coverage of the VT shooting. Paying attention, but it's all pretty abstract. What a mess. Here is the Wiki list of April 19 happenings there are some interesting things on this date.

In a happier note this is my front flower bed. Samuel's Garden. We dutifully covered everything up for 9 days of cold weather, the plants thought it was death by squishing, but they're all standing up nicely now. After thunderstorms tonight it should be bright and sunny for at least the next week.

The columbines will bloom in the next week or so.

The purple one (pulminaria I think) has been blooming since the end of January and it just keeps getting bigger.

We thought the lilac's were surely lost to the cold, they are 12 feet tall and way too large to cover, but it looks like though some leaves got singed the blooms must have been just small enough. I think they'll bloom in the next week as well. Yipee. Mom and Dad did suffer a major garden loss this week though. After covering their blueberries for the cold, a massive tree fell and managed to flatten the whole row in the wind storms this week. Oh well, we just have to hope those roots are strong and ready to pop up more canes.

Knitting pictures next time. Both the green socks and the purple baby sweater are nearing completion.

Snow Cream!!!

I don't see many sunrises. I'd rather sleep most mornings, but two inches of snow was enough to get me out of bed just after 7 on Saturday morning. Especially since that was the most snow we've had at one time all winter.


We faithfully have been covering the flower beds every night for now 7 nights in a row. The daffodils have to fend for themselves though. So far they are still perking up every morning. It's almost the end of their season anyway. It will be a few more days before the fate of the lilacs and azalias is known. And of course the flowers in the beds are looking pretty flat from the sheets, but they still have blooms, so I think they are doing fine.


I have learned from years of experience that waiting for a reasonable time of day to eat your snow cream is futile, so after eating a bowl of cereal I made snow cream for breakfast.


Usually it's not quite this mucky tan color, but I added a shot of chocolate syrup just to be totally decadent.
Never made snow cream? It's a tradition in my Dad's family along with banana pudding and oyster stew.
5oz can of evaporated milk
a few heaping teaspoons of sugar
half a cap full of vanilla
mix it up until the sugar is less gritty then dump in the snow and stir until it's pretty stiff. That bowl in the first picture, I used about half of it. It takes a lot of snow to make a little snow cream.

Seven years ago the weekend was bitter cold, windy and snowing, but Sunday April 9th turned out to be beautiful and only a little cold!