Friday, October 26, 2012

First Snow and an FO!

It started yesterday morning, and continued heavily through the rest of the afternoon.

The wind was cold and unforgiving, and the ground isn't frozen yet for accumulation, but the flakes were big and fluffy and beautiful and perfect for a (quick) dance outside!
It's been pretty disgusting the last week or so outside, so having the cold rain turn to snow was a relief.  The snow has stopped for now, but if it starts up this weekend, I'll happily look up from grading these:
and refill my coffee mug to warm my hands!
I finally took some time to grab pictures with my latest Christmas present conquest- the Jamaican Me Crazy Mittens!
I love how these turned out- the colors are bright and perfect for the recipient, and the fair isle allows for extra warmth.
Pattern: Pearl Chain Mittens (free) from handepande
Yarn: Dale of Norway's Dalegorn Falk in Black, Yellow, and Green
Needles: Size 1 bamboo
Modifications:  I took out one row of "pearls" in the cuff, and instead of having all of the pearls connect, I made them separate little circles.  I thought this was a little more reminiscent of the Jamaican flag, which is the recipient's home country!
Worst Part: Definitely keeping all three colors from tangling numerous times.  I almost had second mitten syndrome with these, but one long drive in the car fixed that. 
Best Part:  This one is easy- I know it's going to be her face when she opens them up!  She has the same type of loud laugh as me, which will hopefully come out when she opens these up.  I'm excited to give them to her!
Besides a large pile of papers to grade, I'm heading down to the cities this weekend for a family Celebration of Life.  It'll be nice to see the family again, despite the circumstances.  I'm hoping to get a fair ways on the Kleio shawl, since that's much more transportable than Kim's wedding shawl.  I'll have to start reserving a night a week (at least) to knit a snowflake background, since that particular deadline is creeping up on me...

1 comment:

Mark said...

That stack of papers to grade looks like an hour of reading for you at your usual pace for reading, but I suppose grading is much slower. Is grading slower per page than knitting is per row (for multiple colors)? Had some coffee named 'Jamaican me crazy' that I bought because I liked the name. Those mittens came out very cool. So which is Jamaican you crazy more - tricky knitting or grading papers?