I have not fallen from the face of the earth, but from the edge of my blog! Luckily I took my knitting with me and have a few things to show.

The first is the Hemlock Ring Blanket in progress. This is my second go at the pattern. About midway through my first attempt, I realized I had misread the chart and was knitting three rows even instead of four between the feather and fan shaping. gah! I am almost finished and I have to say that both times have been pleasurable knits – it’s a quick fun project and has a huge wow factor that hides how simple it is. Simple if you can tell the difference between three and four. Otherwise there is a learning curve!

The second project is my Amelia Sweater. My knitting schtick seems to be finding something in every project on my needles. This time it was the pattern’s fault. There was an error in the pattern which has since been corrected. It was a simple fix etc. but there was some time spent figuring it out and then bitching about it. Anyway, it is done and I am happy with the result!

In other news, D#1 was just home for her spring break. She was here for a week and went back to school on Saturday. D#2 arrives for her spring break this Friday. There is a spring break revolving door!

my Fatbabies tried to kill me.

After  my slip on the ice last week I knew that I had to get some better footwear, something with some treads forgodssakes.  What better place than to start with the blogs? who knows more about footwear than knitbloggers?

I remember Vicki talking about her Merrells, and I know plenty of other Merrell fans.  Also Merrells have the slip on models which are crucial since apparently I am too damn lazy to actually bend over and tie shoelaces.

This is how I come to be on the Zappos website adding Merrells to my shopping cart.  “hmmm, only one thing?  I came all this way to only buy one thing?  What were those cute boots that Carol blogged about not too long ago, crybabies?  They really don’t look like winter boots per se, but Carol is from New England and they are boots, so they must be good.”  A quick search of Carol’s site, not crybabies, Fatbabies.  I have to buy them for the name alone.

Well everyone knows that Zappos is fantastic and my order is here practically the minute I give them my credit card info.  The Merrells are divine – so warm and comfy!  And the Fatbabies are gorgeous – adorable really, in the way of  fat babies everywhere.  The right one is a little snug.  My right foot is slightly bigger than my left and with some wear they should stretch out.  And so begins the process of me stretching them out.  I figure short bursts of daily wearing and they will be good to go in no time.

Which is how we get to the part where my Fatbabies tried to kill me.  I am driving along and wearing my Fatbabies.  I am about an hour into wearing them and I am looking forward to getting them off my feet since they are becoming uncomfortable.  I come to a stop light and I stop.  My good friend is with me and we are chatting away when all of a sudden we hear a revving.  An engine revving.  what the hell?  It is pretty loud and I look around to see what jackass is revving their engine here in the suburbs in the middle of the day.

It’s me.

My fatbaby clad foot on the brake is slightly numb.  Added to that is the general clunky-ness of the design.  I believe that I somehow managed to have my foot on both the brake and the gas simultaneously!  good grief.

I am going to give them another outing today, rest assured I will be a passenger this time.

I am ashamed to say that I got this wheel back in November and failed to blog about it. When I first got it, life was busy and I didn’t mention it. Then I was blogging sporadically. Then taking a picture seemed insurmountable. The longer I didn’t mention it, the harder bringing it up seemed to be! Suddenly, I couldn’t make eye contact with my blog – we were keeping secrets from each other. ridiculous.

Well, here it is – my new Jensen!! I am deeply in love with this wheel. I love the way it looks, and of course the way it spins. There is something about the double drive that offers more control over the spinning. It seems lighter and faster. I was trying to describe it to Boar and told him it was the difference between driving a stick shift and an automatic. For my birthday, Boar and the girls got me three extra bobbins and a lazy Kate to go with it.

I have been spinning exclusively on the Jensen and was considering selling my Lendrum. For the moment, I have decided to hang onto it. The Lendrum is a great wheel and is portable where the Jensen is not.

In other news, I had a mild case of spring fever yesterday – the temps around here were approaching 60! I got out the ladder and cleaned the windows and then managed to give the cars a quick wash. It feels good to get rid of the grime!  Today we are back to a more seasonable temperature – which is good because I couldn’t take anymore cleaning!

or how my crotch is on the mend …..

thank you for all your get better wishes. My leg is feeling much better. Because reading blogs is all about the too-much-info factor, I will tell you that the injury was not to my ‘hoo-ha’ but to the hamstring of my left leg. I iced it and then remembered that years ago I had bought this massager thing at Costco (quit it you dirty, dirty girls!) and got that out and now things are feeling much better. It’s more of an overuse pain as opposed to the muscle ripped from the bone thing that had been going on.

It is my turn to host our knit-day today. I have a big pot of cream of chicken soup on the stove – it’s a new pressure cooker recipe and I will let you know how it turns out.

Knitting? you want to know about the knitting?? I am hard at work on Amelia – getting very close to the underarm.

When I come back I promise:

• pictures
• to tell you about my new wheel