Liar, liar, pants on fire!

That rascally groundhog lied.  Phil promised an early spring.  Instead, we have this:

For the 4th or 5th time since he made his early spring prediction, we found ourselves driving to a bowling tournament in the snow yesterday.  Today, the snow continues.

Despite the weather, it’s been a busy week with lots of little accomplishments or experiences.  First & most exciting, I went to bread baking class last week.  For the life of me, I can not bake bread.  I end up with cinderblocks every single time.  Even with the bread machine, if I take the dough out & make rolls, I end up with hockey puck shaped cinderblocks.  My lack of ability makes me absolutely crazy.  So, I turned to a professional.

First, she taught me how to make & knead the dough.

Second, she was great about not making me wait for it to cool completely before cutting into a loaf.  Yum!

I haven’t had the opportunity to try making bread all by myself in my own kitchen yet, but I’m looking forward to the chance.  Maybe tomorrow if things go well.  

I finally blocked the Pond Water shawlette that I mentioned here.

A close up:

I absolutely love how it turned out and am going to have a hard time listing it for sale in my shop  but I promised myself I would, so....  If the sun ever shines again, I’ll get it properly photographed & listed.

Meanwhile, my fish tank of little, tiny balls of scrap yarn reached the over-flow stage so I started another mitered square afghan.  I really do love making them.  Even the ones knit in all garter never get boring because of the constant color changes, plus, I feel very self important by being all green & frugal while using up scrap yarn.

I had hoped to be a lot further along with it by now, but I found myself in the driver’s seat all weekend instead in the knitting seat.  Normally, my husband & I take turns driving my son to the bowling alley (he bowls Friday, Saturday & Sundays.)  But this weekend, my husband got called away for work.  It wasn’t even the good kind of called away where I get a few days vacation from cooking (the kids would just as well rather eat sandwiches or frozen pizza than a real meal.)  Instead, he got the call around 11 p.m. on Thursday that he needed to go to NY on Friday.  He left Virginia mid day on Friday, drove to upstate NY, did the requested repairs on Saturday morning, & drove home that evening.  By 2 a.m. on Sunday morning, he was home & wanting to know if there were any dinner left overs.  Argh!  I am glad he got home before the most recent snow storm hit though.  But the point of this was, I ended up having to drive to the bowling alley each day.   And to make life even more fun & less knitty, my son was bowling in Richmond while my daughter had places to be in Fredericksburg, 60 miles in the opposite direction, each day.  Basically, all I did all weekend was drive up & down 95.  And for once, I didn’t even hit any horrible traffic jams where I could pull out the knitting & get a few rows in before traffic moved again. 

But, if I stop rambling & wrap this post up, I can go knit for an hour or so.  

So......

March in Virginia

So far, it's proving to be a pretty typical March in Virginia.

We had a snow storm followed by several days of temperatures in the mid 60's.  The snow started Tuesday night & continued through Wednesday evening.  As is typical of Virginia weather, the storm couldn't make up it's mind what it wanted to be - rain or snow.  It would snow like crazy for an hour or so & the snow would accumulate to 5 to 7 inches, then it would rain like crazy for 30 minutes  & compact/melt the snow down to just a couple of inches, then it would change back to snow & start accumulating again.  Those periods of rain sure did a number on the travelers as it turned the roads into slushy, icy disaster zones, but it sure helped keep the total snow accumulation down.  If it hadn't been for the rain, we'd still be trying to dig out.

While it snowed, I knit.

It's a chevron scarf desperately in need of a good blocking.  I've also started another mitered square blanket.  I have several of them in the works, but I think I like this new one the best.  I'm not exactly happy with the square size of the other two, one's too large & one's squares are too small.  This new project is the Goldilocks of them & seems to be just right.  I've only gotten eight squares done so far so there wasn't much to photograph.

I also finally got around to blocking Sarah's scarf.

It looks much better in real life.  The light is horrible in that picture, plus the gray mannequin does nothing for the bright colors of the yarn.  Sarah seems to be happy with it and I think she'll be able to get a lot of wear out of it.  It's wool so it should be warm in the winter, but it's extremely light weight & lacy so I think she'll be able to wear it in the summer too.

For non-knitting news, I need to take a moment to say how proud I am of my son.  I've mentioned before that he bowls.  This past Saturday, he rolled an 820 set.  His coach thinks it's probably a state youth record, so that's pretty exciting!  A 900 would be three perfect games (36 strikes) in a row.  If Zack's information is correct only 17 people have rolled a 900.  Sixteen of them were adults & one is a youth with an unconfirmed score.   Also, with only three more weeks to go, his youth travel league remains in first place with quite a few points separating them from the second place team.  It's a little too early to start bragging, but ....  Go Sunsetters!

Well, I hear scrap yarn & mitered squares calling me.  And unfortunately, I think the laundry may be making some noise too.

Racing

I'm racing to get this blog post done.  I have 10 minutes before I need to go get dressed for today's grown up lunch with grown up women.  Grown ups!  I get to go see grown ups!

Yes, motherhood has been kinda getting to me lately.

I've been knitting like crazy lately & finally finished Sarah's scarf.  Which I haven't blocked or photographed.  I finished a cowl that I also have not blocked or photographed.  I'm excited about the brown cowl though - I have left over yarn.  Enough to either knit a pair of fingerless gloves or a pair of boot socks.  I can't decide which.  Feel free to chime in with your vote.  And of course, I still have not blocked the "pond water" shawlette.  The blocking pile is steadily growing and it mocks me.

Instead of blocking, I'm knitting another chevron scarf.

The colors aren't showing up well, but it's light grey, pale slate blue & green.  It screams "wear me with your favorite faded blue jeans" so of course, I love it!

Well, the clock is ticking down & I'm outta here!  Going to grown up lunch with grown up women & we'll eat grown up food & have grown up conversations.  I am so excited!  So excited, you'd think I was 12 & headed to Justin Bieber concert.  Good grief!

Don't forget to vote - fingerless gloves or boot socks?