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So I finished the first baby blanket on Friday evening and delivered it to my friend at church on Sunday.
She was very happy with it and presented me with a check right away (although I think she must be a bit mathematically challenged as the check was written for more than the price I told her I was charging for the blanket.
The organist asked about my progress on the blanket that he had ordered, and since I had the work-in-progress with me (like all good knitters, I never go anywhere without something to work on) I pulled it out of my bag and showed him how it was coming along. He loved the shade of yellow that I had found and seemed anxious to get the finished blanket, and then he surprised me by announcing that he really needed me to knit a white one just like it for him as well. So I guess I'll be using up the extra white yarn I had from the last white blanket I made earlier this month. Just as well, since I'm trying to work from my yarn stash as much as possible instead of buying new yarn.
On Tuesday evening it was warm enough for thunderstorms and rainbows. This morning when I got up, came downstairs, and looked out the kitchen door, I saw this:
Looking out the front door wasn't much better:
Granted it was mostly melted by late this afternoon, but I was totally unimpressed by the whole thing. I'm not a winter person to start with, so having winter slop over into what is supposed to be spring is not very impressive to me.
Can't wait for "sunny and warmer" to arrive!
I was just working on the computer and listening to the rain when I noticed that it had gotten quite a bit brighter outside. I looked out the window and saw this absolutely gorgeous rainbow in the sky. I grabbed the camera and snapped a couple of shots, but like so many things in life, the photos don't really do justice to the actual live rainbow. 
A dear friend from church had recently asked if I would be able to knit a baby blanket for her to give to her friends who are expecting a baby soon after having miscarried their first child. We agreed to meet at church on Tuesday evening so I could show her some sample blankets and some patterns. She looked over what I had to show her and quickly settled on the white blanket I had made - except that she wanted it in green. I assured her that it was no problem to make a green version of that pattern, and as I was gathering up my blankets and patterns to head home, the church organist asked to look at them, as he also has friends who are parents-to-be. He really liked the green blanket that I had, except that he wanted it in yellow. So now when I go to Springfield tomorrow I have to go yarn shopping as well.
Yesterday was a wonderful spring day, so I spent about an hour and half in the afternoon raking up leaves in the play yard. (Note that I didn't mention getting ALL the leaves raked, as the central feature of our play yard is a very large oak tree with a propensity for holding onto last year's leaves as long as possible in the most miserly way; consequently I'll be raking up newly dropped old leaves at least until mid-June.) At the end of that time I had a pile of loosely stacked dry leaves roughly the size of a small car. Ideally I could have tossed a match on the pile, watched them burn quickly, and been done with the whole lot in about twenty minutes or less.
Unfortunately our local city council in all their infinite wisdom (insert heavy sarcasm here) has decreed that today was not a good leaf-burning day. In fact the only acceptable days to burn leaves, according to the council, are the first seven calendar days of any given month. Never mind that the first seven days of March were cold, rainy, and extremely windy and therefore totally not conducive to leaf burning in any form. Supposedly the rationale for limiting burning had to do with a small handful of vocal residents who claimed that leaf smoke aggravated their respiratory conditions and that burning should be banned entirely. Since that is totally impractical for most of the population, they opted to limit burning to a specific calendar time frame.
The only problem is that their plan doesn't work. Had I been able to burn my leaves today they would have been gone and forgotten about. But legally they have to sit and wait for another two weeks before being burned. Of course it started raining about 4:30, so they are no longer dry and loosely packed. In the two weeks before April 1, they will continue to compact and be rained on, and develop huge quantities of various molds. When I am finally able to burn these leaves, the resulting fire will be dark, smoky, and full of mold spores; consequently creating much more respiratory inflammation than the same leaves burned dry would have done. Multiply that by 800 or so local households all burning on the same few days instead of spread out throughout the month, and the result is indeed irritating - even to those of us with healthy respiratory systems.
Some people have suggested that other methods of disposing of leaves should be employed and leaves should not be burned at all. It's a concept that's great theoretically but not so great in practice. Composting the leaves might be an option, except that our trees produce such a prodigious quantity that we would quickly find ourselves knee-deep in composting leaves throughout the entire yard (oak leaves don't break down readily - they easily take two to three times as long as some other leaves to decompose). Bagging the leaves and hauling them off is time-consuming as well as expensive since someone has to purchase the bags as well as the gasoline for the hauling vehicle. And so it is that I am left with a huge pile of wet molding leaves that I'm hoping to burn in April, as they will be much worse if I have to leave them until May.
Wouldn't it be nice if the city council would just admit that they made a mistake and repeal the burning ordinance?
I had a little bit of extra time this morning to tinker around with the blog, and I finally figured out how to add something - a miniature representation of my Etsy store items. This block shows a randomly selected group of my Etsy listings with a link to take you directly to my Etsy store. I haven't yet figured out exactly how it determines which items to show, so if you click back later you may find different items pictured.
Anyway I hope you'll take a look. You never know when you might find something that you just can't get by without!
And so a new month has arrived, bringing with it yet another new and interesting knitting challenge. I've been conversing on Etsy for a couple of days with a potential customer who was interested in a blanket I already had listed for sale, only she wanted it in a different color. When she confirmed this afternoon that she did indeed want me to make the blanket, I was here at home with my peacefully sleeping grandson and a seven-day deadline to finish the blanket (which of course I hadn't started yet, not having known about the order ahead of time). Naturally I didn't have any appropriate white yarn available here at home (so much for my resolution to diminish my stash as much as possible), and there is no longer anywhere local to purchase yarn. However, Mike and Jeremy were in Litchfield doing some sort of ham radio project, so I called Jeremy's cell phone and asked if they would be willing to stop by the-store-which-shall-not-be-named on the way home to pick up some yarn. When they arrived in the yarn department they called me, and I was able to explain exactly what kind of yarn I wanted, and naturally the yarn I needed wasn't there (that's the ***-**** way!) although there was an empty bin with the appropriate label attached. I was then able to talk them through finding an alternative and eventually they came up with something that I could use in place of the yarn I had originally wanted. Then they hung up and headed off to check out.
Some time later, they arrived home and handed me my bag of yarn and a bonus!
Yes, my son totally understands my chocolate addiction.
Needless to say, I got busy working on both items. So far I've knitted about three inches of the baby blanket and it's gone rather quickly. And yes, there still are some peanut butter cups left in the bag. I figured I'd need at least a few to get through yet another Monday.
She was very happy with it and presented me with a check right away (although I think she must be a bit mathematically challenged as the check was written for more than the price I told her I was charging for the blanket.
