Storm Warning

Once again, south-east Michigan is under a winter storm watch. The sun is shining out there at the moment, but starting sometime this afternoon and continuing overnight, we are scheduled to get an additional 7 to 8 inches of snow - and that's on top of the 4 or 5 inches that are already on the ground!.. Enough already!! I've got my packets of flower seeds, I'm ready for spring!.. Speaking of spring & gardens, I just called the local elevator where I get my vegetable seeds to see if they could order Top Crop green beans this year. The store order was already in, but they're ordering me a pound via special order for around $3!! Yippee!

I was in a bit of an organizing mood yesterday, so following the suggestion I'd seen on a few blogs, I gathered up all the knitting needles I could find and started entering them on an Excel spreadsheet. I have quite a few pairs or sets, but there's no guarantee that any given set are the same color or even the same manufacturer, and I was left with a handful of singles without mates. I guess the next step is to start digging through looking for PIPs (Projects in Progress) to see if the missing needles are thus occupied. I did find one baby sweater started many years ago that got frogged leaving me with a ball of white yarn and a set of 10" size 5 needles. I also ran into some skeins that had been Moki-ized. Our eldest cat has a "thing" for yarn skeins and in his enthusiasm tears them inside out. Here is a skein of Bernat Coordinates that has been Moki-ized. It's going to take a while to get straightened out. I've started to either roll skeined yarn into balls (at which point, Tiger gets interested and I find yarn wrapped around the furniture) or slip the skein into a knee-high stocking which keeps Moki from tearing it limb from limb.



On the FO front, I finished knitting the Llama Along hat - photos to come when I get the crocheted edging on. I finished the first sock for the 1st Sock KAL - the yellow on the toe is an attempt at the Sock Toe Chimney method of grafting the toe shut. The yellow will turn inside the toe and hold the grey stitches in place until they can be grafted to each other, then the waste yarn is unraveled. It's all explained here: Sock Toe Chimneys I'll be casting on for sock #2 probably this afternoon.



And here is the second Clapotis started in the Rosy Forecast colorway of Caron's Rainbow Dreams. I'm using size 10.5 needles this time and the resulting fabric already has more drape than the completed one with dropped stitches on size 8s. For some reason, with the flash, my camera doesn't pick up the greens in the yarn, so you'll have to imagine that there's a lot more deep green and the knit-up yarn reminds me of my Grandfather's rose garden.



I'm also still working away on another crocheted baby afghan which will, hopefully, be done by Thursday and the K4 meeting. If we get all the snow that's predicted, I don't think I'll be getting out of the house before then, and then may be a bit iffy.