Gettin' ready for SNOW!

After being absolutely spoiled by balmy weather in the 40's and most of the winter's snow melting away, it appears that winter is coming back full force. The forecast for the weekend is snow, snow, and more snow...10-12" total is predicted by mid-day Sunday! It has already started this evening and the ground has returned to a full white cover.

Fortunately, the kids and I found lots of good books at the library today and I have *started* casting on for Bean's sweater. I foolishly decided to do a ruffled hem on the sweater. Just for the record, if I ever decide to do a ruffled hem again on anything bigger than a wrist or ankle, please shoot me and put me out of my suffering. I am ending up with 6 stitches per inch with the superwash wool and I will be making a 28" circumference sweater (okay, one small blessing...it's little Bean instead of *gasp* me or--worse yet--daddy!) so that's 168 stitches. I am going for frilly with a k3tog type picot ruffle so that means casting on 504 stitches. Of course, I can never get the right tail length on the first try, so I cast on 250 stitches and realized my tail was WAY too short. I started with a longer tail and have cast on 250 and am still slightly short of my original slip knot, so theory says I should make it to 504 just fine. If the casting on doesn't kill me, I think that knitting 504 stitches in the round might. Fortunately, it will just be the hem and then I can get decreased down to a much more manageable 168 stitches. With luck, I may be to the decrease by the time Bean graduates from high school. A snowy weekend may be just the thing.

In spinning news, I don't think I ever got around to blogging about our trip to Susan's Fiber Shop a couple of weekends ago. We looked around her shop, which has an absolutely amazing amount of yarn and fiber and patterns and books packed in. They are in the process of remodelling, so things will be more spacious in the spring. I got to stroke pretty yarns and fibers and Daddy and the kids got to look at sheep out the window (she has her own flock). While I was there I got a half a pound of cheap roving to get some practice. I am planning on making a scraper mitten for Kitty Daddy out of some of the spun yarn. So far I have spun and plied a spindle-full (about 22 yards). It isn't the prettiest stuff I've seen, but at $0.63/oz., it will do for practicing and the colors are manly enough for a Daddy scraper mitt.