Some call it summer. We've had temps in the 80s for a few weeks now. The upside to that is many of my milkweed plants are in full bloom, and with the blooms come the monarch butterflies and their caterpillars and even chrysalises already! We had at least 2 hatchings last week!
Several new kids in the neighborhood, above.
I was making great progress on the Ann Dale reproduction sampler with a goal to finish it this year, when it was announced that there were a couple of errors in the chart. While waiting for the corrections to arrive I finished a few knitting UFOS:
Another Tanta shawl, prior to blocking (low on the priority list just now).
A 2nd sock (Knitpicks yarn, discontinued) for Afghans for Afghans.
And a hat, soft as can be, from Cascades Pure Alpaca. Interesting that all 3 projects were in the orange color family. To celebrate St. Patrick's Day I cast on this lovely color of green (Wasabi!) in Shibui yarn; pattern Embossed Leaves. After knitting 4" of sock I realized it would be more suitable for the Jolly Green Giant, so I unknit the whole thing and started anew with size 1.5mm needles, down from 2.0mm, and all is well.
Then the itch to stitch hit me, and I started My Brother's Keeper from Plum Street Samplers. It was only after 6 hours of stitching that I noticed my first block was positioned the wrong direction on the fabric. Arrggg...it only took about an hour or so to snip out the stitches, including a letter and a half stitched over one. Thankfully I have a pair of scissors specially designed for snipping erroneous stitches! This is the newly stitched block, positioned correctly.
The Crescent Colors and Samplers Threads are beautiful, as is the Vintage Exemplar fabric by Lakeside, but it's hard to capture the real colors.
It was an emotional sports news week here in Jacksonville, as many Tim Tebow fans (including me) waiting with high hopes to hear that he might be coming to play for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Alas, our hopes were dashed as the Jets signed him to play Up North. That's closer than Denver but not close enough in our books!
Hope you all have a wonderful last week of March (and how did that happen?). I'll leave you with a snap of my new favorite rose bush, showing off her blooms in the front garden.
Thanks for stopping by!
