But Wait, Wait there's more!

I finished up a long overdue pair of socks last week. These are the Slippin Stripping socks from last year's Sock Madness competition. They are the third round socks and of course the round I got knocked out on. They are knit with double strands of laceweight yarn from Tess' Designer Yarns. No self stripping for us.

Slippin' Strippin socks

I was anxious to finish them up and free up some needles since Sock Madness 3 was beginning. Last Thursday morning the round 1 pattern arrived in my email. I finished the pair this Thursday evening. One week and half a day. Not bad around here since I spend much of my knitting time standing at the dining room table watching to be sure the kid doesn't jump off something.

Tropical Mer-tini socks
Mama E C*eye*ber Fiber Sock

And finally-
But Wait, Wait there's more!
I'll be a contestant on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me on NPR this weekend!
I'm only a little nervous.
OK since it was taped last night I'm only a little nervous to hear it on air, last night I was a lot nervous.

6 Week Sweater

It only took 6 weeks to knit, but then it took another 3 to actually get around to taking a photo. I have a sweater idea in my head, I've searched for the right pattern for a few months without finding just the right one. Then Christi posted a finished sweater at the beginning of the year that seemed to fit the bill. It's more of a theory than a pattern, and it has it's own book. Barbara Walker's Knitting from the Top. I ordered it the day I saw Christi's sweater and started my sweater the day the book arrived.

I did the V neck version with a seed stitch border around neck, cuffs and hem.
Yarn is Karabella Aurora 8 Space Dyed
bought on sale last summer at Yummi Yarns.

It's not quite THE sweater I've been thinking of, but it's a good start and I've already worn it many times. Next up, I'm going to refine the pattern a bit and try again.
This time in Cascade 220 Heathers, the color is Mystic Purple.
I got this in the mail from The Loopy Ewe yesterday. It was so hard to choose a color, they sell all 200+ colors of Cascade!

Swimming

We had our first swimming lesson today. It was fun! The boy woke up cranky and didn't get over it until the class was almost over, but after it was over we did hang around and splash a while.

Before and ....

Before.....

After

Individual shots later, I've got my 'photo studio' all set up, but I will have to wait until after dark to actually take the shots. There's just too many windows in my showroom.
It was a good load over all. And I've got another ready to go as soon as I can get a few more pots glazed.

Snow!

We finally got some real snow around here, around 4 inches here at our house, though amounts vary widely around the area. It got warm enough in the afternoon to melt off the sunny spots on the driveway and completely melt off our cars before freezing solid again by 4:00.

Helping gather the snow for snowcream

Boys in Blue

The snowcream was a little cold for him. He made this face for every bite then begged for more.

What is snow cream? you ask

I started to describe it in detail before remembering that in fact I've done it before. Check this old post for all the details.