A long, strange weekend.

If you don't live in northeast Ohio, you might not know just how weird our weather has been the last couple of weeks. The week before last, it was close to 50 degrees most of the week. Then we got a winter storm that Sunday night. This past Friday, I had a foot-high snowdrift in my driveway. I opted to work from home instead of driving in to work. This was the view from my lap most of the day:


"Thanks for keeping my lap here today, Mama."

Last night, we had massive thunderstorms and I woke up to a soggy basement. Not cool. I burned a personal day to mop and set up fans to dry stuff out. It's mostly dry now and nothing was damaged. I learned several years ago to put anything in the basement on plastic shelves and/or in plastic bins.

But the weekend wasn't all bad. On Friday I got a call from a local TV station saying I'd won 4 tickets to opening night of Shrek the Musical at Playhouse Square! They had a Shrek trivia contest last week and I mostly entered for the fun of taking the quiz. It was a very nice surprise to win, though.

I signed up last week for my first ever knitting retreat. A couple of my friends from my Thursday night knitting group said they were going and the woman who wrote one of my favorite sock books is teaching there. It sounded like a lot of fun, so I decided to go for it. As it stands now, I'll probably be rooming with someone I don't know, but that's okay. I usually don't spend a lot of time in the room when I go to crafting retreats anyway.

I'm using that book to knit my Christmas socks. I think I'm done with the increases and will start the foot next. They are only about a row or two off of being identical. Pretty good for me, since the first two pairs of self-patterning/striping socks were definitely fraternal twins.

Women's Basic Toe-up Socks, in shiny Christmas yarn

On Saturday, I cleaned up the snow that my plow guy left in my driveway (not very happy about that, but at least it wasn't the whole driveway), then I went to the farm to knit. I did enough rounds to finish the next pattern repeat on these:


Sinuosity sock pattern, Destination Yarn in Sea colorway

These have been snoozing for quite a while and I'm happy to be working on them again. I think I'm doing better with the cables now than a year ago when I started them.

On Sunday, I spent a lot of time in my sewing room, but don't have anything to show for it, except a cleaner sewing room. I cleaned stuff out, and reorganized what I have in there. I had lots of help, of course.


Emma, you're snoozing with "kittens"


"Mama, I think I feel a pea under here"

Today, after I mopped the basement and took a nap to make up for the sleep I missed due to the thunderstorms, I stitched out the label for Big Blue. I had typed it up in my embroidery software Saturday night.


Yeah, it was well-aged fabric....

Now I just have to finish stitching it down and get the binding finished before my guild's quilt show at the beginning of April.

In other news, Blue likes to put his favorite toys in his bed.


Yes, two of his favorite toys are pink fuzzy things, what of it?
And yes, I think I need to wash that bed cover again.