Baby, it’s cold outside!

Colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra! To put it succinctly.  The lunar eclipse was last night, and it was impressive.  Everyone else went outside to look at, but I wimped right out. Even put on my night shirt just to make it abundantly clear that I was not venturing forth.

Carrie, her young man, and Emily came up for an over-night visit, and to celebrate a couple of birthdays and Christmas.  As always, the visit was filled with a fair bit of comings and goings, confusion, laughter, adult beverages, and good food.  Doug made ice cream to go along with our favorite coffee cake, plus he purchased blueberries and raspberries.  Yum, yum.

My darling daughter knows me very well.  for my birthday, she gave me —

The chocolate needs no explanation.  Just note that it is upstairs, in my knitting corner.  The wool is Lizzie-Anne mini-skein set in the Soft Sock base.  The colour way does not have an official name.  I am not sure what it will grow up to be, possibly a shawl of some sort combined with a solid for emphasis.  In any event, I will have fun browsing Ravelry for ideas.

We also celebrated Christmas.  I know — that holiday was last month.  this was the first weekend that we were able,to get together with both young ladies, and so we waited until now for presents.  Again, my daughter knows me well.   This is from The Blue Brick, Killarney sock, in a colourway named Eggshell. This will probably grow up to be socks, but one never knows!

I knitted on my gloves over the weekend, and finished one glove.  I also cast on the second glove and started the ribbing.  (I am using Paton's Next Steps 7 for the pattern.)  We were watching a delightful little movie called Danny Deckchair, and the glove was perfectly mindless.  If you get the opportunity, I strongly recommend this little gem.

Newsom is coming along delightfully, although you can't really tell that it's a sweater from this picture.  I have joined the sleeves and am now finishing up the yoke.  I am really impressed with this James Brett Innocence.  So far, I have used only three balls of yarn, and I might just get the entire sweater finished without breaking into the fourth.  Very nice feel to the fabric, economical.  If it washes up nicely, I'd say this one is a real winner.

And then we got a box of new wool from one of our distributors.  Cascade Yarns Whirligig, which is an 80% superwash merino/20% acrylic.  I adore the feel of this yarn in the ball -- it's squishy and soft.  Of course, I started something brand new -- after all, I had cold, empty needles!  This is Passe-Partout, designed by Maanel and found on Ravelry.  Easy to read and execute pattern, wonderful wool.  Cannot go wrong.  And we have four colours ...