Snow Minions

I was out lurking in the snow and I came across an unbelievable sight. The ever elusive Snow Minion. And I was completely shocked when I found a pair of them out in their natural environment.

I stayed in the background and watched. The elder of the two lost one of his handdyed handspun handknit mittens and knew that it must be found immediately.

Success!

The Snow Minions began to accept my presence and the elder of the two was brave enough to show me where he found his lost mitten. "It was right here."

After a while, the Snow Minions' Father came into the mix after braving the weather to get a hair cut. The Snow Minions wasted no time in their attack.

However, the Father is very skilled when it comes to throwing projectiles, especially at close range.

After getting dressed for the occasion, he takes time to instruct the younger Snow Minion in the art of making perfect snow balls.

And throws a few himself... Must've been a hit.

Anyone in the know knows that when it snows, a Snow Minion Pot must be made.

The younger minion takes to the new Pot immediately and settles in to relax while the elder provides support for the base.

Then it was back to snowball fights and then in to dry off.

Completely unrelated, here's a pic of the new handspun handknit hat in action.

A few more pictures of my Snow Minion encounter can be found here.

Snow!

Look! It's finally snowing a little bit :D The minions are beyond excited regardless of the fact that it will probably all melt off before we know it. This Winter has been rather disorienting. Despite the cardio it provides, I am not overly sad that I haven't had to shovel repeatedly this Winter or that I haven't had to drive in a lot of snow but there is something to be said for the Season. Winter is a quiet and introspective time and I have missed that cozy feeling of snuggling in blankets in front of a fire knowing that there are mounds of cold and ice outside. It's been too warm for that. It's bizarre. Frankly, if this is the new Winter I am terrified to see what July holds...

The minions have been busy at school and the hubby has been busy coaching his USSSA team, and I've been busy working and attempting (and failing miserably I might add) to get everything else caught up. Little man has decided that he wants to play baseball again this Spring and he will be moving up PeeWee this year. Little miss decided that she wants to play "kick". I am new to the world of "kick". When I was younger, soccer wasn't a sport that girls my age played; it was more of the guy sport. But the generation after me, holy cow they took off with it! My cousin K was always a soccer player and is now coaching at various levels. After realizing that I had missed the registration deadline for "kick", I called her up and asked her what my options were - are there other leagues I should look at or just try to persuade her to play baseball this season and look at soccer in the Fall since I dropped the ball with registration... In my defense though, who starts registration in December??? Thanks to cousin K, who made a few phone calls, little miss will be playing "kick" this Spring. Thanks K! It should be fun! Between my work schedule and my dye/pattern schedule and the hubby's work schedule and the hubby's baseball schedule and little man's baseball schedule and little miss' soccer schedule I doubt I will have any hair left by May. Maybe April or late March.... I'll also have to obtain a Soccer for Dummies book or something to familiarize myself with the rules and things.

I do have a few fiber-y photos to show you this time though. Here is the R2D2 hat that little miss chose to make for little man for the Holidays.

Yes Mom, I will stop what I'm doing and stand still long enough for you to take a picture but I'm not overly thrilled about it...

These are little miss' Valentine's Day socks for 2012. She's stolen them and worn them already but that's alright. The yarn is Fresh From the Cauldron's Silk Sock in the Gaia colorway - it's vintage and you can't get it anymore but you can still look at it here!

Little miss had been on my case for quite a while to make a pair of fingerless mitts "with thumbs". She was very clear on the thumb thing. Little man decided that I needed to make her a pair with his help for the Holidays and I can't tell you how funny it felt to make a pair of fingerless mitts this size with thumb gussets. He chose the yarn special from the Dreaming Pickle Pot's Taboo Club (myself and 2 other dyers team up for collab clubs) because it has sparkles in it. She loves them and is asking for another pair. Actually, she has been eyeballing the pair of Endpaper Mitts a friend of mine made for me and wants a wee pair like those. We'll see.

This past weekend was the annual Sticks and Strings event. A whole weekend of knitting! Always a good time, I was very proud of my Thursday Night Knitting Ladies - we got a beading technique by Cindy, and Sue started colorwork for the first time and her mittens are looking great, and Tracy was working on a gorgeous beaded cowl... Lots of fun and conversation and knitting of course. I finished up a beanie for myself out of a skein of handspun I've had languishing about for a while. I was worried that I might have made it too big but it is so squooshy and warm and lovely and the ribbing makes it fit me perfectly! I love it. Sorry about the crummy photo. This fiber is Falkland and was dyed by Color Craze Fiber. I spun it up to a traditional 3ply.

I also CO and finished this colorwork hat at the Sticks and Strings event - I needed a quick colorwork project to show Sue how to hold the yarns and things and I didn't have one on the needles at the time. I got a bit of flack for finishing it so quickly but seriously, worsted weight held double on US 10's and a simple colorwork pattern; it basically knit itself. I still haven't blocked it yet and I don't have a destined recipient for it so I figure this will be a stock hat for anyone out in the snow shoveling - assuming we get enough snow to have to shovel... Perhaps we need to move up to northern Minnesota next year so our Seasons make more sense!

I have a few other projects/patterns in progress/finished so I will show some of those next time along with the Lord of the Rings skeins :)

Until next time...

Actually, an addendum is in order. In the time it's taken me to sit here and compose this post, the snow has tripled and it doesn't look like it will be stopping any time soon. Thick heavy wet snow and it looks gorgeous as it's falling. The minions are suiting up to go outside. I guess that colorwork hat will be put to work sooner than I expected and it may or may not all melt off in a few days. How exciting! I don't have to drive in it until Monday so I'm all set - time to get snuggly in front of a fire!!!

eta:

Back in the Saddle Again

So... how have you been? ;)

I don't know about you but I have some serious separation anxiety with my computer. Isn't that awful? I have been ranting here and there about how things need to get simpler and less impersonal and I was thrown into a massive wake-up-call that could have been avoided. BACK UP YOUR STUFF. Do it now, I'll wait. All done? Good.

The day after Thanksgiving we lost everything on our computer thanks to one of those lovely viruses that (insert not-nice word) across the world think up. The kicker is that I knew I was behind on backing things up and had put it off to the new year when I would buy either an external hard drive or some zip drives and that would be that. Nope. Had I done it when I knew I needed to I could have just bought a new computer and reloaded everything (which would have been the cheaper and less painful route). We didn't recover all of it; some of our pictures are gone and my patterns are in a state of unfinished chaos that I am working on cleaning up/re-writing. Lesson learned.

But, I am back now and wanted to say a public THANK YOU to the public library system that allowed me to get online at least once a day (on most days) so I could get my quick internet fix. And thank you SIL K for that last post explaining my unnecessary absence.

A brief summing up of the last few months: The minions are doing well in school. They had lots of fun decorating for the Holidays and we all had a nice time with family and friends. It's Winter so there was illness here and there which is to be expected. My RN gig is going. I'd rather be home enjoying fiber-related pursuits full-time but the paychecks are helpful and I have been busy dyeing up a slew of skeins for our local Knit In (though it's officially called Sticks and Strings now) next weekend and for my first shipment of the Lord of the Rings Club that a few other dyer friends and I are putting on. I am behind on photos so I will post the first two shipments of that when I get a few spare minutes.

Really, I don't have that many photos to put on the blog right now. My "day job" has killed some of my productivity but I did manage to get some photos taken of some of the Holiday gifts I made and of a test knit for an upcoming pattern of mine.

One of my personal Holiday traditions is the handmade ornament. I was looking at our tree this year and was rather pleased to see that about 80-90% of the ornaments we used were handmade - some by me, some by others. I love it! Though it's no secret that I am all for the handmades...

This year's ornament was the sweater. I can't tell you how addicting these things are to make and this isn't even a full display of the ones I made. I will be adding a few more for next year though I'm rather excited about the ornaments I will be making for this year!

Sometime during the Fall, I sat down with each minion and asked what they wanted to give their teachers this year. They both chose handmade objects (such a proud Mom moment for me!). Little man knew that his teacher loved to swim so he sat down with me and we worked out a simple wave pattern and my rule is that they each have to help me by actually knitting some of the stitches. He chose the leftover yarn from his Gansey for the main color. (Cascade 220 in the Atlantic Colorway).

Little miss has the same teacher little man did last year. She still wears a lot of black and white and other neutral colors so little miss decided that she needed a pair of mitts "with a thumb" so we looked through the stash and she saw the mitts I gave to my SIL for part of her Holiday gift and decided that her teacher needed a pair of those too.

Shortly before little man's birthday, it became clear to me that his feet are growing at an alarming rate and he needed new socks. Again. He chose to use a skein of Silk Sock by Fresh From the Cauldron in the Charlie Colorway.

I am working on a new pair for little miss right now as well but I am just getting started on her second sock. Actually, I'm working on 2 pairs for her right now so stay tuned for that. One of them is a new pattern of mine that I will be releasing soon hopefully - it depends on how much bonding time the computer and I get over the next couple of weeks and how many of my patterns I can recover.

These are a pair of mittens for my MIL. She chose the colors she wanted a while ago and I dyed it up, paired it with a textured pattern and voila!

This next project I did not knit. One of my Thursday Night Knitting gals was kind enough to test knit a blanket for me. A blanket that eats up yarn. She gave it to me to photograph and it is warm and squishy and lovely and I might just have to make one for myself sometime though it might take me a few years. This was knit out of Cascade Ecological Wool.

The Midwest has had an unusually snow-free Winter thus far and according to the weathermen that will change in the next few days so the minions will finally be able to go out and play in the snow. Hopefully. The weather has been cold and windy lately and everything is brown or gray and it's rather depressing. What I would do for some color... We even had a freak warm front where the temps in January were in the 60's. It was glorious! Right now it's crazy cold and I need to go find some mitts to wear around the house.

Until next time...