How I Spent

Last Weekend...

Looking at this view...
While eating Grotto pizza...
"living" in this lovely hotel...

And sampling wine at this winery...

A quiet weekend in Rehoboth Delaware. Good food. Warm sunny day reading on the beach. Local wine. A good way to spend a couple days together.

Creideamh

Lots has been happening around here which I may or may not blog about at some other time. In the meantime, I am thrilled with the new shawl I just finished. I think it's much better than it looks here. Lovely, soft, drapey, sandy colored yarn - a real pleasure to knit with and to wear. The yarn is from the indie dyer, Miss Babs and the pattern is Creideamh by Renee Leverington. They are from the WoolGirl Embrace the Lace club.

Two Little Girls

There's new fun at my house now! The Princess is here to visit for three weeks. It is wonderful to have her here and especially with the Peanut here too. They have been inseparable.


No matter which one wants to do something, the other one wants to do it too. And they are so cute playing together.

They days are going to fly by, I'm sure!

I'm Baaaack

I have been so negligent with the posting - as you know if you have checked here in the last three months. So much for my resolve to post more frequently in 2009. Life has been hectic here. I think it is knitting that has helped me keep my sanity.

This year I almost didn't sign up for Sock Madness. I didn't think I would have the opportunity to knit in the competition. I did sign up and surprised myself with how well I did. Truth be told, though, I stayed in as long as I did because I was not placed (randomly) in one of the fastest groups. The patterns this year were excellent and a lot of fun to knit. The family kept urging me on, checking on my progress, and cheering me to finish the socks before the round ended. Amazingly, I made it through to the sixth round where I was eliminated only an hour after the first finisher (only one of us could advance in this round). Socks knit in the competition rounds have to be knit to pattern specs. There was something new, different, or unusual for me to learn and do in every round, in addition to knitting quickly enough to advance to the next round.

So here are my first six pairs...

Round 1 (blue) - Tropical Mer-tini
Round 2 (grey & red) - Tokena
Round 3 (small green) - Talia's Wings
Round 4 (black & multi) - Lucky Diamonds
Round 5 (red, white, blue) - Dimpled Diamonds
Round 6 (brown & orange) - Fire on the Mountain

For the seventh and final round, I was out of the competition so I modified the socks to better fit me. I changed the short row heel as written in the pattern to a gusset and flap. This pattern was so fun to knit and the socks are quite different from any other socks I've made to date. I love them!

Knitting Completed

A pair of warm and cozy socks for Wayne. The color gradates from brown to grey.



My lovely Syncopated Lace shawl. The color gradates from orange to pink and purple.

The BEAST

Have you seen this TV show on A&E? It stars Patrick Swayze and airs on Thursdays at 10 PM Eastern Time.

Our godson Ben will appear in the episode on March 5. His acting career is taking off. He's been in several commercials, this TV show, and has filmed a movie with Rob Schneider that is scheduled to be released in the fall.

A few summers ago he and his brother were in a community production of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." We were thrilled to be in the audience.

That's Ben on the left.

The View

from my windows this morning...



The biggest snowfall this winter! It's not really that much snow - maybe three or four inches and the roads are much more treacherous than I would have thought with that amount. Schools are canceled. Seems like wet, heavy snow. The wind is supposed to pick up when it quits snowing (it's just about done now) and some blowing and drifting is predicted. We canceled office hours for this morning; don't know about this afternoon yet.