Winter’s last snowman

snowman_lowresThe March snow is wet. It’s the best packing snow of the year. This snowman practically rolled himself. Setting his midsection in place was tough. He’s mostly water, after all. Forgive his headgear. Some snowmen will let people put anything on their head and call it a hat. He’s wearing a keyhole scarf knitted of Malabrigo worsted, but he’s too stout of neck to use the keyhole.

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Four hungry deer browsed on the property for twenty minutes, mostly under the bird feeders. These two were the most bold. Or the most hungry. One mostly stood like a sentinel at the lake’s edge and browsed on our neighbor’s cedar tree. The herd eventually moved on, only to be replaced by three more deer. The newcomers nibbled on sunflower seeds. One walked up to the snowman and chewed for a bit on his left arm. Not any sustenance there. He tried to eat the pine cone buttons, but had to settle for just making off with a pine cone eye.

Cleckheaton “Team Cap and Booties”

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This fun set, sized for about a six month young one, is knit in…gulp, Madelinetosh Sport. It was left over from a recent project and I didn’t want any of this yarny goodness to go to waste. This sportweight wool is right up there with my all-time best sport or DK weight. I just wish we didn’t have to take out a mortgage to knit something with it.

My only modifications were to leave the “stops” off the bottom of the booties. Stops are what the Australian-based Checkheaton company calls them anyway. I’d call them cleats. They are very cute small-sized bobbles that you knit one by one and then attach to the soles of the booties. I was worried they’d be a choke hazard.

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Road Map scarf

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This is Susan Barstein’s SknitsB’s Road Map scarf, shown here in six shades of Blue Sky Alpaca Silk. They looked so perfect all skeined up and ready to go that I almost hated to get started.

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I loved knitting this and think it came out just as I expected. Very sweet and a tad showy. The only thing I forgot? That I don’t much care for scarfs that have a public and a non-public side. I’m not someone to drape a scarf as if it were some sort of stole or vestment. That’s a little more showy then I can pull off. I prefer my scarves wrapped a few times around my neck keeping me toasty warm.

I will get use out of this, though.

The pattern was perfectly written. No mistakes. It’s very easy to keep tooling down the road through stitches that the designer calls “tire treads,” “car bingo,” manholes,” “bumps in the road,” “a road less traveled,” “coastline waves,” “cobblestone roads,” “speed bumps,” and “end of the road.” Not a bit of boring. Well, miles of applied I-cord on the vertical lengths, that was boring.  “Are we there yet…are we there yet?”

Here’s a closer look at some of the sections:

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This is my first tour with Blue Sky Alpaca. It’s incredibly soft and yummy. But I’d have liked it better, for this project, if it was a bit beefier.

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