Telegram for Mother Nature

Dear, Mother Nature, it's April! Just thought I'd let you know. What is up with this weather? It snowed last week. Chicago makes me (more) depressed. I was riding on the bus, looking out the window. The sky was cloudy and gray. The buildings were brown and gray. The earth was brown, the trees were bare. Just nasty. I need sunlight. It's always around this time of year that I'm like "okay, Chicago, we get it, you're cold. You can stop now." Cuz we've had enough.

So if I can't make the sky blue and the trees green, guess I'll just have to knit and crochet those colors. So I have this lovely Touch Me scarf that I crocheted. I got this yarn on sale and it was still pricy, especially for the little yardage. And with the speed of crochet, I had gone though (censored) dollars in about 3 hours! It is luxuriously soft, though. The stitch is from 220 More Crochet Stitches, crocheted on an I hook. Chicago's brown and gray + the blue and green I'd like to see come along.



With the leftover, I also made this choker. Band is knit in 2x2 ribbing, flower crocheted, leaf knit. Chicago flowers, please come back!



I still have some leftover in brown and green, that I'm going to use for a small necklace. This one, I think. That's where I got the knit leaf instructions, anyway.

And I finished my Clapotis! In HandMaiden Lady Godiva "Nova Scotia". I used just a wee more than 2 hanks. I knit on size 6s, one less increase section than in the pattern and 2 more straight sections. So if I had only done one extra straight section, 2 would have been enough. The other 1 and 9/10 skeins will be for Perfect Periwinkle from Fitted Knits, I think. I also held with the Lady Godiva a strand of Drops/Garnstudio's "Glitter". Very fine, 10 grams gives 700 yards, so I only need one spool, and at $4, a very cheap way to add glitter to a project.







I absolutely love this thing. I think I've worn it every day since I finished, rather than the Touch Me scarf. I like that it's so much wider than a normal scarf, it's got heft (sorta like me since my recent weight gain). And it's purrrty.

So there are blue and green knits. Um, Mother Nature, take that as a hint.

In other news, I started a group at meetup.com for natural black hair, as I can use all the advice I can get. On occasion, my hair looks, I think the technical term for it is "busted". Totally doesn't help that it's all uneven from when I got angry and whacked it all off with the craft scissors. I have a lot of hair, it is really really thick, and it is a serious effort to keep it reasonable. So I thought I'd get together with other women who wore their hair like this and maybe share some tips. It was great, we're all so cute, trust me.

And my semi-miniature crown variegated African violet trailer is also looking happy. All crowns are in bloom or bud with color, which means it could be a good show plant with a little grooming. Unfortunately, not all the crowns are showing the variegation.



And one final thing, Bloggers, what's up with the restricted blogs? I don't subscribe to anyone's feed, but every now and then I go through the comments left for me and try to look at people's blogs. But for some of you, I click on your name and it tells me that regular folk like me can't view your blog. Damn, I never get invited to the party with the hip kids. Not cool, people, not cool. Ah, knitting, you never reject me!