a visit with Auntie Jill

Dan's sister Jill and the kids were visiting from Calgary this weekend.  You can see that Berlyn and Auntie Jill had a lovely chat!

my google girl

Our sweet little Berlyn just shy of two months old when I took this picture last weekend.  Isn't she a beauty?

She is now cooing and smiling these big open-mouthed baby smiles.  Totally melts my heart.  Her favorite cooing sound is goo followed by a gurgle so that it sounds like google.  She's a girl ahead of her time.  We love her so much!

I finished another little sweater for her.

Elizabeth Zimmermann's classic Baby Surprise Jacket

using the handspun Spunky Eclectic Little Periwinkles organic merino that I finished spinning in the fall.

I spun this 2-ply with the Baby Surprise Jacket in mind and I'm pleased with it.  I like so many things about this pattern:  its garter stitch stretchiness so that it can be worn by a growing baby for a long time, its sleeves that start out being full length then become three-quarter length and out of the way as the baby grows and gets her little hands into food and other messy things, the clever pattern that folds into a sweater when you're done knitting and you only have to stitch up the sleeve seams, the clever increases and decreases and the final folding that moves the stripes into interesting and symmetrical design features, and finally I like that it looks so great in handspun garter stitch.

Now I'm taking a little break from knitting baby items and have started the Business Casual KAL socks.  I've had a few false starts due to my making a mistake and issues with the choice of yarn and needle size.  Once I have knit enough to share I'll take some pics.

i.s.s.

This lovely performance gave me goosebumps!  I don't know how to embed it so here's the link.

We've come a long way since 1969.

baby mine

Done!

Baby Mine by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
(link to my Rav project page for this one)

This is a lovely pattern and I have enough yarn left over to make a pair of Baby Merry-Janes if I use the leftover yarn from the little Maile Cardi for the inner socks.  When I ordered the yarn I couldn't decide between the Quilla colorway that Yarn Harlot used for her pattern or the more pink Rosebud so I bought them both figuring I would use the extra for something along the way.  Quilla is almost white (more true on the page at BMFA than on the photos in the Baby Mine pattern) so I chose Rosebud for this cardi.  I found the pinkish pearl buttons in my stash and they are perfect!

Our weather has warmed up significantly today (just below zero this afternoon and melting on the back steps) so I was able to take a decent picture of the cardi in the sun room.  We are going to need a lot more warm weather to make a significant difference in the snow mounds though.  Here is my view (or lack thereof) from my kitchen window.

enough already!

We have had a brutal winter so far.  Snow, snow, and more snow combined with alternating bouts of brutal cold and melting temps.  It got cold last week with wind chill values of -40 to -50 C (-40 to -58 F) for several days.  I was sure happy that I didn't have to go to work and could just hunker down at home.  When I took the dogs out yesterday morning I thought that it seemed quite warm.  When I came back into the house I checked and found that it was -18 C (around 0 F).  I guess that it's like hitting your thumb with a hammer to take away a headache that -18 felt balmy once we were used to the really dreadful cold.  This morning we had another snow storm and there is more snow due tomorrow.

We did have a couple of pleasant days last weekend so I grabbed my camera and took some pictures to share with you.

 The shelties love the snow!  Even when it was forty below they rolled in and ate the snow happily and had to be coaxed inside.

Bentley is not a fan of the cold and snow at the best of times but he had surgery three weeks ago to repair an inguinal hernia and his underbelly was shaved.  He didn't need any encouragement to make the trips to the back yard brief.

Here he is a couple of days after his surgery.  The collar is inflatable and worked great as an alternative to the dreaded Elizabethan cone collar.  He was able to eat and drink with it and it made a comfy pillow when he slept.  (The brand name is Pro Collar if you're interested.)  I got it at our local Pet Depot store.

He is nicely recuperated and doing great now even though his belly still is cold.  Notice the blur that is his wagging tail as he looks at me.

The following pictures show you how much snow we're dealing with.  Keep in mind that these were taken last week so we have even more today after the latest storm.  Things could get really ugly if we have a fast melt this spring.

The dogs could easily walk over the fence into the garden if they wanted.  So far none of them have bothered because they'd only find more snow in there.  Even the compost bin in the back corner is completely snowed over.