The gardening gods must have felt honored by my recent obsession, and decide to grant me an indulgence (because of course, it's all about me). It was in the high 60s here yesterday. When I got home from work, I went and changed and headed outside to do some mid-winter yard maintenance. I cleaned the pond filter - it had gotten a bit sludgey and the little pond fountain was barely clearing the surface of the water - and then I raked up two bags of leaves that hadn't gotten done in the fall. I was out there for about 2 hours, in p.j. pants rolled up to the knee, barefoot. I had put a fleece pullover on, but even that was actually too hot.
That was wonderful!! What a delighful break in the middle of winter. Apparently today's supposed to be similar, temperature-wise - there's even a chance of a thunderstorm! - then it's back to the 40s and 30s. Ah well. It is January, after all.
Actually being outside, in the yard, in the fresh air, got my gardening imagination fired up even more. I was finding all kinds of new projects I'd like to do. It looks like I'm coming up with years worth of gardening work. Well, there's nothing wrong with that ... provided my house doesn't fall down. Oh yeah - there are some house issues here, I'll talk about them another day. I don't want to spoil my warm-weather buzz.
I'm still plowing away on the log cabin blanket, but it's going to be time to finish it soon. Partly, because I'm getting sick of it, and I need to stop before I'm so tired of it that I never want to see it again (or, accordingly, use it as it was intended) once it's done. Partly because I'm getting lazy now that I don't much care anymore. Trying to use up yarn, I've run into strips that aren't the right size, are several rows short of the width they're supposed to be. Which is going to make the outermost rounds of the blanket look all wonky and out of symmetry with the rest of it - the inner sections which all look so tidy, being the same size. It's possible this won't really matter, since it's a very folk-artsy looking thing anyway, but I won't really know till it's too late and it's done. I'd hate to put all that work into it, only to have it come out looking like something totally trashy that I don't even want to use.
So, I suspect very soon, within the next week or so, I'm going to be declaring it finally done. The only thing I still have to get for it is some black yarn. Since I made the center square black, I decided to do a border all the way around the outside in black too, partly to add some polish to it, and partly to set off all the interesting colors I used throughout. But I don't have enough black yarn for that, and I will go pick some up this weekend just for that finishing work.
I've got to start a pair of socks pretty soon, anyway. My boyfriend's having back surgery next Wednesday, I need hospital knitting, and I'm not dragging that huge blanket around for that.
I have some inkle progress and experimentation to report as well, but that needs to wait for pictures. Busy, busy ... and it's only January!
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