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What do you do when you're slogging through 17 inches of black stockinette stitch in the dark evenings of winter?
After only seven inches of stockinette are done?
Why, start a new sweater, of course!!
The yarn for Rogue came in the mail - hurray! Harrisville Highland in Azure.
I bought it on weaving cones, skeined it off, and gave it a bath to eliminate the spinning oils. It blooms so nicely, becoming a much plumper yarn.
I'm off to start a sleeve/swatch.
Quick and silly - from a meme going 'round...
SHUFFLE SURVEY
RULES:
1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to the question.
What does next year have in store for me?
Passenger Seat - Death Cab for Cutie
What’s my love life like?
Tell Me - Stevie Ray Vaughn
What do I say when life gets hard?
Little Drop of Poison - Tom Waits
What do I think when I get up in the morning?
Cross My Fingers - Tom Waits
What song will I dance to at my wedding?
There She Goes - John Prine
What do you want as a career?
You Call It Jogging - Jimmy Buffett
Your favorite saying?
Feeling of Falling - Bonnie Raitt
Favorite place?
Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova
Where'd you go for a road trip?
Sunday Morning Coming Down - Johnny Cash
What would you listen to while driving?
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
What do you think of your parents?
Round & Round - Bonnie Raitt
Where would you go on a first date?
Nature Boy - David Bowie & Massive Attack (Moulin Rouge)
Your life’s theme song?
Our House - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (ooh, I LIKE this...)
Describe yourself?
I Take My Chances - Mary Chapin Carpenter
What is the thing I like doing most?
When I Was a Boy - Dar Williams
What is my state of mind like at the moment?
It's Alright with Me - Harry Connick, Jr
How will I die?
Suffer to Sing the Blues - David Bromberg
Your funeral?
What's Up? - 4 Non Blondes
What will I title this bulletin?
Kashmir - Led Zeppelin
It's time to put up the hem.
The pattern called for using a regular cast on, then sewing up the hem at the end of knitting the sweater.
I like to use a provisional cast on, then knit the hem together with the appropriate row.

This sweater has a ten row hem, so after knitting ten rows on the front side, I put the provisional edge on a needle and do a three needle knit together for the eleventh row.
It's a bit futzy to begin, but once you've done a few stitches, it's very slick.
Best of all, no sewing up the hem later!
I cast on the carry around sock project last night.
Toe up socks, 64 stitches around on size 0 needles, garter rib stitch.
I'm enjoying this Alpaca Sox yarn - it's very soft. The colors are pretty, too.
Another freezing cold Minnesota day. 4 degrees for the high, -13 for the low. At least it's sunny!
A provisional cast-on, 278 stitches around.
A ten row hem, a purl turning row, and Dale of Norway Osterdalen has the beginning of a body.
I like to knit the name of the recipient and the date into the hem.

Here's the sock yarn I picked up yesterday.
Classic Elite Alpaca Sox - 60% alpaca, 20% merino wool, 20% nylon in the baby blues colorway. (I have another skein in the Emeralds colorway stashed away.)
Time to cast on another pair of carry around socks!
No school today - President's day!
We had a girls day out. Girl of the House got her ears pierced. Or perhaps, I should say, re-pierced. They'd been pierced in kindergarten, but due to lack of interest, she let them grow shut. She chose the blue zircons - what Claire's passes off as the December birthstone.
We each got a new pair of shoes. (I will be ready for this new job!)
We did one geocache. We were thinking about a few more, but the windchill was sub-zero.
So we went to see Enchanted. We both enjoyed the movie. (But isn't $11.50 for two matinee tickets an obscene price? And then, add popcorn and an icee to it - we walked out with 75 cents change from a twenty - YIKES!)
We went to JoAnn's and got buttons, embroidery floss, and sewing thread for our crafts. GotH wants to make a few button bracelets. We stopped at Half-Price Books and left with five books. We hit PetSmart for Chip-puppy food and visited with the rabbits, gerbils, ferrets, mice, rats, guinea pigs, snakes and lizards. Gotta see 'em all!
We hit Knitter's Palette and I got some sock yarn. I was looking for some washable wool, but nothing quite suited. We went to Penzey's Spices for Cajun spice mix for the jambalaya we want to make.
Then we stopped at Leeann Chin, and brought supper home. Yay Leeann Chin!!
Sunday, Paul and I got out and finished placing our three part geocache in the Carleton Arboretum. We though it had been appropriately placed last weekend, but when we went to publish it, the second stage was too close to another cache. We hiked out and moved it. It was a nice enough morning, we saw many skiers and hikers. We felt a bit stealthy, trying not to be observed.
However, we weren't as stealthy as the beaver who's been eating up the trees down by the river. This looked to be fresh beaver dinner. We also saw one sneaky deer, hunkered down in the tall grass, pretending he was invisible.


When we came home and made brunch, this deer decided to join us. She walked right up to the bird feeder outside the kitchen window and started to snack on the sunflower seeds. This feeder is about eight feet from the house.
Baby Surprise Jacket continues. Not too much more to knit!
I went to make some lentil soup for supper last night. Going through the cupboard, a sudden question arose. "Holy cow, how much salt DO we have?"
I pulled it all out to have a look.
Yes, we have six kinds of salt in our cupboard! And that doesn't include the salt grinder on the table.
Rock salt for the grinder, kosher salt for cooking, the old classic Morton's salt (dated as opened in 2004 - does salt go bad?), iodized sea salt, canning and pickling salt, and finally the salt grinder brought in from the camper for the winter. Yikes!
So we had some yummy lentil soup with smoked sausage for supper and waited for the big snowstorm they promised was coming.
And waited, and waited... The big snow storm went to the North and South of us. We got about a half inch.
See, I TOLD you there wasn't going to be any more snow for us!
The Baby Surprise Jacket grew a bit more.
I guess I'm postponing casting on for the body of Osterdalen.
Thursday evening we were off to the RV show in Minneapolis.
Normally, we would attend on the weekend, but I'm on call this weekend, and must remain within 20 minutes of the hospital. (Hey, it's my LAST weekend call!!!)
We really enjoy walking around, looking at the wide variety of campers and all the necessary accessories. We're not really in the market for anything new, but it's fun to look!
We came across this wild race-themed sales area. Yes, indeedy, this is what EVERYONE needs to drag along in their camper. A rug, an awning, several recliners and chairs, a table, a grill, even a race themed collapsible storage bin. Frankly, it hurt my eyes. Now it can hurt YOURS, too!
We always like to think up a little activity to spice up the evening. Our mischief that night - all of the campers/RVs have stereo systems, some more extensive than others. In the campers we entered to look around, we tuned the stereos to 93X and turned the volume WAY up.
It was great fun to stand back and watch the next people entering the camper/RV. Didn't matter - $10,000 or $300,000 RV - they cringed a bit, explored the RV, and never even turned the volume down. I imagine a few sales people were puzzled later, when they entered their RVs to loud head-banging music. I like to think a few of the young ones had a bit of a giggle.
After our evening of mild subversion, we stopped for supper at White Castle for a rare treat. While waiting for our Slyders (hey, one of their brochures told me how to spell those burgers), we discovered White Castle has informational brochures! (The worst of these was, of course, the nutritional information brochure!)

I got lots more black stockinette done in the truck during the drive.
Pretty soon I can move on to the colorwork!
A few days ago, I finished plying the superwash merino. Personally, I think it looked much nicer on the bobbin as a single. The colors got all smooshy in this two ply. It would have looked better if I had navajo plyed - the colors would have been more consistent.
Still, it's a pretty yarn. Don't know if it will be the originally planned baby sweater, or maybe a couple of nifty hats. I'll have to keep an eye on it, see what it tells me.
Late this afternoon, Paul and I went into the arb and placed two geocaches. We won't publish them until there is new snow to cover our tracks. (Not much of a challenge to find a cache when there are tracks leading directly to it!)
We saw some interesting things.

Out in the middle of nowhere, way off the path, someone has put up a tree swing!



In a quiet little spot along a little used trail, someone made a skiing snow angel.
I love that you can see it was a skier - he held his poles while making the angel.
As the sun was setting, we had this view to the southeast.
Carleton College has a big wind turbine, just peeking over the snowy field.
Looking to the southwest, we caught the tail end of the sunset.
We came home to a bubbling pot of vegetable beef soup. We opened a couple of beers, made some dumplings, and warmed ourselves up.