As luck would have it, my office is closed today for President’s Day–for the first time ever–and it conveniently coordinated with about 8″ of fresh snow. It’s even luckier that I didn’t have to be to work at 8:00 because our driveway wasn’t cleared of snow until12:30 . . . my Volvo is good in the snow, but getting past that heap left by the street plows would have been too much for her!

So, I’ve spent the morning cleaning off my car, throwing snowballs for Chappy to chase, and then giving him a bath to melt the snowballs he brought back inside with him. And reading. There is something very nice about curling up on the couch with a sleepy dog and a good book. (The Liaden series by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller–one of the only books/series written by a team that I actually like. Very “space opera,” but fun . . . good snowy-day reading.)

I filled up my first bobbin of purple wool yesterday. (Or, well, finished filling it–I’ve been working on it for about a week. How do some people spin so fast?) I’m really happy with the way this is coming out. The singles is more regular and even than any I’ve spun before, and while still not perfect, that’s an encouraging thing. It’s very nice roving, too. (I apologize for the photo being a bit blurred–it was the closest to “real” color of any I took.)

  I also did the heels on my Koigu socks. Here’s the picture I took after the first one. I love doing both socks at the same time, via the Magic Loop method, and I definitely prefer the short-row heel method, but trying to do both heels at the same time is a little too difficult, so I do one entire heel before moving onto the second sock. It’s only once both of them are done that I go back to knitting both socks at the same time. I’ve knitted a few rows past the heels now, and am going to do ribbing for the rest . . . I just haven’t quite decided which kind of ribbing!

And anyway, I’m still tired from yesterday. My sister, brother-in-law, and nephew all came down to help celebrate Mom’s birthday (and to pick up my niece, who’d been here since Friday.) I made goulash for dinner, per Mom’s request, and of course, there was birthday cake which I unfortunately did not think to take a picture of . . . a heart-shaped yellow cake/chocolate frosting, using my grandmother’s recipe (which is forever known in my family as “Grandma Cake” despite the fact that she’s been gone for almost 20 years).

It was a nice weekend, and a special treat to have my niece here. We had wanted to pick up a movie on Saturday, but forgot, so on the way home from dinner, we pulled into Barnes & Noble and picked up an assortment… Ray, Shall We Dance, De-Lovely. Ray was our first choice for the night, but it’s 2.5 hours long and there wasn’t enough time, so we went with Shall We Dance . . . put it in . . . hit Play . . . wait, there’s a Japanese logo on the screen. Okay, it’s based on a Japanese movie maybe they’re just giving credit . . . um . . . why are there subtitles? We picked up the wrong one! Instead of the Richard Gere/Susan Sarandon/JLo version, we got the Original. Now, by all accounts the original was better (Mom and I had actually seen it, but haven’t seen the remake to be able to judge) but it wasn’t going to do for our family viewing tonight. (Dad has no patience for subtitles!) But . . . how silly is that?? Oh well! We ended up watching “Little Black Book” . . . again . . . because Mom loved the Carly Simon and Dad and niece hadn’t seen it. Twice in one week is a little much for that movie . . .

Okay, I think I’m going to go make some banana bread with the overflow of yellow fruit downstairs. And if I’m really smart, I’ll work on the zipper in my green jacket for the February Fix . . . I’m running out of weekends!

Tags: Family, General, Knitting/Spinning, Weather // 3 Comments »