Ah, Spring!

We got a big snowstorm yesterday. It dropped about a foot of global warming everywhere. Thank goodness I have lots of wooly warmth!

 I love my knitted blankets especially. Right now I have four that I am sort of working on. There’s the crochet ripple afghan that I had to quit working on last fall because I didn’t have any more worsted weight scraps, but now I have more, I found the hook I was using, and sometime this year I’ll finish it. It’s hibernating right now. Also in hibernation is the Bakery Bears My Favourite Blanket KAL. I just have to wait for the March (or is it April?) part to come out, so that’s why it’s in hibernation as well. Finally, also hibernation is the Rectangle Granny square that I started with the remains scraps of DK/sport weight yarn, which I was excited to begin, but I found that I didn’t really have enough scraps of that yarn to go further. I mean, I have enough yarn, but I need more colors. So I will wait.

But I do have enough colors of fingering weight scraps to work on my Bits and Bobs blanket, which is another Kay Jones design of Bakery Bears. I work on this every night, and I already have a foot done. I love it. 

This blanket is so soft squishy! It’s all knitting done in a way that looks like brioche but isn’t. It uses two strands of fingering weight held together, so it blends the colors together beautifully. It’s easy enough that you can watch TV and knit. In the beginning I made tons of mistakes but I just left them and kept going, and they’re really not that obvious. The more you do, the faster you go, and the more you absolutely love this blanket. So, it’s my night time WIP.

My other WIP which I started yesterday on size 1 circular needles is a pair of cabled, beaded socks by Heidi Nick. They’re a little slow going because I am not used to cabling with such teeny tiny needles, but it’s getting better.

Also, I’m not used to using two circular needles. I’m using a lovely yarn that I bought on sale recently. It’s Capretta, an 80% superwash fine merino wool, 10% cashmere, and 10% nylon. It’s squishy and has the soft feel that only cashmere imparts. 

I have one finished object: my Festive Shawl I was using my Advent Calendar yarn to knit. This is it unblocked:

It will be gorgeous when it’s blocked. It’s also huge and lovely. It will be lovely to wear.

In other non-knitting news, I’ve been enjoying the results of indoor gardening. I had an amaryllis from 2021 that I was going to try to get to bloom again, so in December it got repotted and I waited. And waited. A few leaves sprouted finally, and I waited some more. Then finally boom! A bud appeared! And in about four days it was this big:

I am very excited and happy to see it bloom. A few days ago we finally got around to planting the 2022 Christmas amaryllis and it has gotten its legs under it and is raising its head and beginning to look around. It was fairly pasty and white when it started out, but it has got some green in it now:

I’ll let you know how it turns out! I think it will be spectacular.

That’s all for now. Gotta get back to my sock! I hope you are knitting something wonderful!