Went over to the neighbor’s place to borrow their gorgeous wild daisy field for my photo shoot on Easter evening. Thanks, Peg!


These are my Set Fire to the Rain socks that have finally become a pair. The pattern is Chamfer by Hunter Hammersen. This was not my favorite pattern to knit since I couldn’t seem to memorize it, however, I’ll probably knit them again at some point since I think they look wicked cool on! Other people seem to have memorized the pattern just fine, so I’m sure it’s just me….and I’m certainly not going to let it stop me from making another pair cause the more I look at these, the more I love them…..(sound of me digging through stash to see what color I want to do next).

I like the feel of Handmaiden Fine Yarn Casbah Sock yarn and the color, Saltspray. If you have a chance, I recommend trying Casbah out.

The one below might be my favorite picture since I just decided to lay back for a bit and relax and enjoy the daisies. Taking pictures of your own feet is a workout, people.

I hope everyone had a beautiful Easter!

The goal of the Iknitarod is to pick a project and start with the Iditarod racers and finish before the last musher crosses the finish line (and the red lantern is awarded). Iknitarod racers could also opt to pick several incomplete projects and complete those as long as they felt sufficiently challenged.
I cast on February 27. Since the Iditarod started ceremonially on Saturday, March 3 and for real on March 4, this might seem like I jumped the gun a little bit, but since the first blanket took 31 days, I managed to start early and still feel challenged.

Other things that help me sleep at night include the fact that I spent my Friday night knitting time knitting and then unknitting the same rows. I had pretty much just finished the border by Saturday morning. It seems that when doing a second blanket that is identical to the first one, you should still check the pattern regularly and not assume you have it memorized. We all know where that will get you. Ahem, it will get you some unknitting practice anyway.
Saturday (March 3), I knitted and watched TV/movies (London Blvd, the Prince & Me 4 [which was surprisingly better than the Prince & Me 3]) and was THIS far along by the evening.


Sunday (March 4), I knitted and watched more TV/movies (TH wasn’t feeling that great so I watched BCG, Once Upon a Time, Real Steel[which I recommend] and From Prada to Nada [which was cute]).


Monday (March 5), it looks like Lance M. is picking up speed and Aliy is in the top 5.
Aliy gets to number 4. I knitted Monday night during The Bachelor and more Once Upon a Time. I’m starting to pull for Aliy to win!
Two rows of Scotties done!

Tuesday (March 6), I’m about to start the third Scottie row and Aliy is number one followed by Kelley Griffin and Jeff King.
Mid-way through the day, it looks like Lance, John, then Aliy.
That night, it was Aliy, John Baker, Lance, Hugh Neff, and Ray Redington, jr.
Finished another row of scotties that night.

Wednesday (March 7), knitted during the hockey game and made quite a bit of progress.


Thursday (March 8). During the Iditarod, there is a mandatory 24 hour break, so I elected to take a 24 hour break myself to keep with the spirit of the thing.

Friday (March 9), the Leaf was getting a software update, so I did some knitting at the Nissan dealership in town. At this point, I was getting a little nervous, so I looked up some details and the fastest Iditarod was almost 9 days. That seemed a little soon until I recalled that I had until the red lantern was awarded (last musher crossed the finish line) to knit.


…and so it went until Tuesday (March 13). Aliy was trailing Dallas Seavey by about an hour and it looked like he’d win late that night unless something untoward happened. As soon as I got home, I knit like the wind for a while and then got ready to watch the finish.
As I opened the web feed up on my reliable PC, it black screened.
Now, let’s be clear. TH’s PC misbehaves. He upgrades hardware and he changes out things and he asks a lot of his PC. He’s a hardcore gamer. I do things like blog and tweet. As long as I don’t get a virus, I expect mine to work or at least not die when it is MOST inconvenient.
I rebooted it……pulling up the feed and…..black screen.
Imagine profanity here.
TH was busy gaming with folks online and I didn’t want to seem like the crazy high-strung person that I am (even though I’m fairly certain he might know), so I shrugged my shoulders and went in the other room to just cast off and resigned to check twitter later. But, genius that he is, given that I’d been slightly obsessed for almost two weeks, from the depths of the Blizzard ‘verse, he said, “why don’t you just go get my laptop and watch the finish?” Genius! THAT kind of problem solving is why I married him! (Yes, I should have thought of it, but I was too busy being disappointed to think).

So, I set the laptop up on the bed where I could see and began to cast off as I was waiting for Dallas to get to Nome. The world was in perfect harmony! It turned out that I was a little bit excited as my first cast off was seriously tight, so I ripped it out and as I was casting off for the second time, Dallas Seavey won the Iditarod 2012. It was sooo exciting to watch him cross the finish line. Having not watched this before, I was struck by how few people were at the finish line, but then I realized they might stand in the cold for 3 hours and only see 3 people cross the finish line this year. Dallas thanked and congratulated his dogs and then my feed died, so I didn’t get to see Aliy come in second, but I took it as a sign from the universe that it was time for me to hit the hay and went to bed gleefully.

….and so each twin has a blanket – completed before their arrival and I am MORE than a little pleased with myself.

Ps. Happy Birthday, Grandma!