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Sheep, Feb 20:

Sheep, Feb 27:

With any luck, all this icky white stuff will melt in the next couple days and we’ll get back on track towards having an early spring.

Don’t laugh! That’s what the groundhog said, right? And Phil is at least as qualified to get my hopes up as any other weather guesser!

The sheep seem fine, albeit a little put out that they can’t get to the grass that they know is down there somewhere. They’ve got a de-icer in their water bucket and lots of hay to keep them busy munching.

The chickens, on the other hand, aren’t really equipped for the cold and the wet. I feel bad for them, and do what I can to make sure they have good places to hunker down and stay out of the worst of it. Poor girls.

Me, I’m just cuddling up to Wally to stay warm. He’s a seriously toasty boy.
The man tried to get some photo documentation, but sweet Wallace seems to have developed an aversion to the camera.

I keep thinking I’m going to start a new sweater project,, but haven’t gotten down to it yet, so in the meantime, I’m just going Brioche-

No idea what it’s going to be yet,, but it’s fun to do, and feels fabulous, so I keep doing it.
Soft and squishy and stretchy. Love Brioche stitch.

And the spin of the week is mystery wool (probably BFL?) from the stash-

That’s all I’ve got, besides a cold.

I’m going to go take my NyQuil now and call it a day.

Guess I spoke too soon,eh?

No. We didn’t go to Hawaii 🙂

The weather guessers were wrong. We didn’t get snow. Yea!

So, it was the Big Tree Fruit Pruning Weekend.

Here are some highlights-

Before:

After:

More Miscellaneous Afters
Rosa Rugosa:

Quince:

The “Orchard”

Boo Kitten supervised from a distance

And Wally mostly chatted with the sheeps through the fence

Afterwards, I went out to hang with the sheeps and try out my new fancy-schmancy smart phone (HTC EVO). I’ve never even had a phone with a camera in it before, so I’ve got a lot to learn-

Here are the boys, racing across the pasture to see my new gadget-

Edgar coming in for his close-up

And the rest of the gang accompanying me on walkies-

What a nice bunch of guys.

While they have been enjoying their evergreen treats and ivy from the back fence, they are really excited that the grass seems to be growing again already.

So much so in some places (around the yard), that the man felt compelled to mow for the first time this year-

Crazy, eh?

That means it’s almost pruning time.

Roses.
Fruit Trees.

And bare root tree planting time.

Figs?
Cherries?

And garden planning time.

Veggies, dye plants, herbs. Oh My!

Exciting, eh?

But it doesn’t feel like it.
Its a dank, dreary mess out there today.

And so we’ll play make-believe.
And we’ll go back to the days when the grass was long and the sun was high-

this one’s kinda hazy, like a memory…

to the days when handspun grew on trees 🙂

And berries were blushing on the bushes

These days will come again, I know. But right now it seems a long ways off.

So, in the meantime here are the general directions for this hat-

First you knit the cable-y portion. Pretty sure what I did here was

K P P C6F P P C6B P P K

Twist the cables every 8th row.
Knit this pattern until you have the length equal to about the circumference of the head you’re knitting for, slipping the first stitch of each row to make a nice neat chains on the sides.

When you’ve got the right length, pick out the cast on edge (suppose it would have made more sense to start with a provisional caston, eh?) and use the 3-needle bind off technique to join the ends.

Now you pick up stitches for the crown of the hat.
Instead of picking up the edge stitches themselves, you are going to pick up stitches from just behind the edge, on the back side. This way your chain of slipped stitches forms a nice neat border for the cable panel.
I usually find that picking up 2 stitches out of every three works well.
Once you’ve got your crown stitches picked up, the rest is worked in reverse stockinette. Alternate colors each round, and decrease 8 stitches every other row.

Pick up stitches on the other side of the cable panel in the same manner and knit 2×2 ribbing for about an inch, then knit three rounds (to make the edge roll, and cast off very loosely.

And there you are.
Hope it keeps you nice and snug until La Nina releases her hold on us.