ZEKs LITE

Blue hat, more yarn tasting

Here's the finished blue hat.  Crunchy bunchy cables.  It's soft.

Z looks cute in it. A little pokey on the top, but hopefully the tassels pull down the little "ears."

I also began some more yarn tasting of Beaverslide Dry Goods yarn, this time with the 65% merino, 35% mohair blend.  It's completely different, a little bit silky.

This yarn is mule-spun, on antique equipment that gives it a very hand-spun feel.  I love it.

I also am proud of myself for figuring out 2x2 ribbing invisible cast-on.  It wasn't hard: Do a 1x1 Italian/tubular caston and switch the order of the stitches on the first row.

Visitors from the south

We got some almost-surprise visitors this weekend. 

Me-Mom and
Pop-Pop were on an unexpected journey, and came by to paint Z's nails and kiss Pete for a few days.

One positive thing about Pete's condition is that he's more sociable, so he took all the extra attention well.

Yarn Tasting

I'm sampling some yarn for a chunky cabled sweater.  This is Beaverslide Dry Goods Mountain Midnight.  It is 90% merino, 10% kid mohair.  It's wonderful.  I'm also going to try some with mohair.

Here's a week-old picture of last Wednesday's snow.

We got barely a dusting, but it was enough to give our dancing solar snowman a reason to wiggle.  I have a feeling it's all the snow we'll see this year.  It's been a warm winter.  I'm not complaining--the walking weather and the sunshine are welcome.

 

Reading our treads

About this time last year I started writing down the miles I walked and jogged.  Turns out I put 1,160 miles on my sneakers.  I showed my worn shoes to the good fellow at the local shoe store and asked him to read my treads.

He had me jog on their treadmill, with the camera behind me and the screen in front of me. I watched the back of my feet jogging along.  I am not symmetrical.  My left foot points out, requiring me to swing my left foot and arm around to the front if I want to run in a straight line.  It accounts for my hippity-hoppity stride that a couple folks have commented on.  It's also why I stand like Mary Poppins.  Ideally, I should have two different kinds of shoes, one for each foot, since they wear differently.  But I'm not going to do that.  I bought one pair.

Spring is a good time to read our treads and get some fresh ones.  I've got a conference-sized table up in the living room, covered with papers to file so I can do taxes.  Going through the past year's numbers is like counting miles, reading our treads.  Not a bad year -- could use a few more vacation and travel receipts, a few less medical bills, but otherwise, pretty OK.

So for the fresh start Spring calls us to, Z and I joined the Montgomery County Road Runners.  We signed ourselves up for the Beginning Women's Running program. By mid-summer we will run a 5K and get a T-shirt. Woo!

Spring things

Mitts in the works.  These are a tester.  They'll be done again in blue.

The bulbs in the potts are poking up.

The orchid is ready to bloom again.

Pete is getting really skinny, as his illness progresses.  We are trying to keep him comfortable and warm.

Look at all my colors

It happens sometimes -- I cave in to the urge to amass a palette.  I don't quite know why I picked Brown Sheep Nature Spun.  It's good for mitts, which I'll make more of for next year's craft fairs, but it's also just in all these tasty colors.

Some of the colors were not in the box because they were on the table, going into mitts.