smatterings

saturday sky

last Saturday..

lace

I can't resist, Beth.   I know that you are right when you tell me that everyone else is tired of winter pictures, of anything having to do with winter.  I know people want to see flowers and pictures of green grass.  Even in the Kingdom, there are signs of the changing seasons.  You have to look closer, spring starts slowly.  The temps drop into the single digits (and below) at night, but the days are heated by the growing strength of the sun.  The ground underneath the snow isn't frozen.  Four feet of snow is a good insulator, and now, the melt has begun from below.  I can hear it.  The streams are racing under their winter blanket.  This is the best time of year for walking in the woods.   I wear my smallest snow shoes, the layer cake of winter supports my weight.  I stay on top, my point of view changed, like a child  riding high on his parent's shoulders, watching the parade of the season passing by.  I am a winter person.  This is my time.  The woods are pristine, bare bones.  I can see through the trees to skylines that will soon enough disappear. 

There is lace.

the other lace..
This post would have been pictures of the Diamond Fantasy herself, blocking.  However,  I ran out of my first skein as I was doing the I-cord bind of.  There are 37 more stitches to go.  I've set up a new skein on the swift.  When I finish this post, I will begin to join the yarn together, using my favorite sewn Russian join.  Then, working with the yarn still on the swift, I will finish.  She is beautiful.   

Happy Valentine's Day

I've a long drive today.  With luck, I'll be the passenger, not the driver, and can get another repeat or two knitted on Oh! Canada.  Three more to go. 

cables and lace

At the rate I'm going, I figure it will take me 7 days to finish Oh! Canada.  Seven!  Then there is the graft.  Knitting is for the evening.  Dyeing is left for daylight when I'm not in the office.  But... dreaming.. that is all the time.  Dreaming, I do!  Lately, I'm seeing cables and lace everywhere.  Something is brewing. 

Cables and lace.

It is there, isn't it?  Just in case you don't see it, please shake your head quietly and be kind.  I can see it.

walk with me wednesday

Have you ever thought about a name, a song, a color, then begin to see or hear it everywhere you turn?  It happens to me with patterns, not written instructions, but shapes that stand out and say "look over here, see me.. I'm one of them", as I walk on by.  So it has been with the patterning of the side panels of Oh! Canada.  The repetitive beating of wings, in places where I'd never thought to look.

About the otters... some of you have asked if the otters returned this year.  Yes, and no.  After surveying the perimeter of the pond last summer, I felt sure that the otters had eaten themselves out of house and home.  The pond would need time to restock.  This theory was further strengthened by the shorter visits of the Blue Herons.  I have seen an otter this winter.  He/ she ran along the snow covered bank of the pond until he reached the open water at the spillway.  I watched as he dove in, came up with a fish and then ran on to more open water at the overflow.  There, he dove and surfaced to eat several more fish before scampering over the dam and down the backside to the stream.  Most likely a single otter passing through.  I haven't found any otter slides or caves or any other evidence of residents.  Porcupines.... well, that is a different story.

winter lace

Snow, freeze, melt, freeze, snow..  After another week of above freezing daytime temperatures, the snow pack was once again down to barely a foot.  The same old story  for this winter.  All of the woods flug, if it were water it would be flotsam, had worked its way down through the layers to settle on top of the snow.  The woods looked dirty, interesting, but no longer the pristine of a snowy winter.  Then came more snow.  Beautiful sparkling clean fluffy white snow.  Nothing dresses up the woodlands better.  Lace for the landscape.

What could be better inspiration for an Ice Queen?

and lace for me!

Saturday sky

Have a great weekend, wherever you are.

shades

Tonight's full moon is the "Worm Moon",  I love it.  It will rise, and it rises early, as a full lunar eclipse.  Easy to catch this one!