Pink is the Color of Spring

Spring is springing out all over the place here in Middle Tennessee.  It's in the upper 70s (still Fahrenheit) and last week's snow and ice is forgotten and forgiven.  Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

It's so pretty outside I voluntarily did yard work yesterday.   I know.  I was shocked too.

On the knitting front, I finished up the thing I was being vague about last week.  I promise once it reaches it's intended recipient I'll read you in.  How boring is "I knit a thing, but it's a secret"?  This is why I'm an inherently selfish knitter.  It's so I can blog about what I'm knitting.  I do it for you, so you'll have something interesting to read about.  In fact, if you think about it, it really isn't selfish at all.  I'm a giver.

I do have a bit of knitting I can show you, though.  I've picked my Hitchhiker v3 back up (remember, I cast this on January 31st, so I could work on it during February if I wanted to?  Yeah, I picked it back up for the first time earlier this week.  Totally skewed my numbers for nothing.)

I've also gotten a bit further on my Monkey socks.  How is it that I've been knitting for as many years as I have -- have been knitting socks specifically, for as many years as I have, and this is my first Cookie A pattern?

I have no explanation for this, save that I default to vanilla socks since I tend to stuff them in my purse for on the go knitting.  I solved for that this time by printing the lace pattern and gluing it to an index card.  I'll just pop the card into my knitting bag with the sock, and Bob's yer uncle.

I seem to be in a bit of a pink phase at the moment.  I'm attributing it to the weather.  I'm so tired of grey and brown and neutrals, it's time for the pop of some brights.

The socks I was knitting for Bu (note the use of the past tense) were a bust.  I cast this wee little toddler sock on no less than four times before I came up with a stitch count/needle size combination that worked, only to realize that there just wasn't enough yarn left to make it work.  I cried uncle, and am frogging the little blighters.  It was a complete knitting fail.

My first shipment of the Miss Babs 2015 Knitting Tour came in on Friday.  I love the yarn, and am not crazy about the pattern that's meant to go with it.  (This is a far more favorable outcome than if I had hated the yarn and loved the pattern.  I'll take it.)

The destination was Sri Lanka, and the yarn is two skeins of Miss Babs Yummy 2-ply (the colors in the photo aren't really accurate -- it's much more of a lovely blue-green in person).   I've spent a fair amount of the weekend looking at two-color shawl patterns.  I'm considering Taygete by Romi Hill, but there are lots of great options on Ravelry.

And of course the spring weather has me itching to cast on a bunch of new things.  I may have a bout of startosis coming on.  I want to do a spring sweater, or the shawl I'm day-dreaming about with the Miss Babs yarn, or ....