Snow Day!!

Well we have a snow day today! Why are we surprised? It is the end of Feb and we have had such a mild winter...I should be whispering this...we could still get a lot more snow days. What shows the feeling about snow days than this picture.
     Am still working on the blue sweater...have finished the fronts and am now working on one of the sleeves...thought about working both sleeves at once but then thought it could be tempting fate...although...if there was a mistake in my knitting......they would be matching...right? Anyway am only knitting one at a time and was doing sooo well...making sure I marked what row I finished before I put my knitting down...then I had not been able to work on it for a couple of days...today I thought I would knit a few rows while I had a cup of tea...found I had not marked what row I ended with,  thought I knew which row I was on and four rows knit found out it was not right so by the time I ripped back the rows I just knit and knit them again...only got an inch knit!! Now I have put it in time out...actually I guess I am in time out...what am I going to do in time out...see if I can find something chocolate...hmmm....might have to bake something...made some gluten free chocolate chip squares the other day... they were so good...but of course they are all eaten.... and can not get them off my mind.......

When the blue sweater or I am in timeout I knit socks, have all the orders knit and delivered so am trying to knit up as many as I can to stash away, although when orders come in it always happens I do not have the size or color they want. But I will be ahead for the farmers markets coming up in the spring. Just got my yarn order back from the mill this week, I had sent my alpaca fibre in about a year ago and it finally was finished, you know I had forgotten the color of the alpaca fibre I had sent...thought I had sent a mixture of colors but it must have been black fibre as the yarn came back a beautiful black. Have almost finished a pair of socks out of it and I love it. Just got the socks I have finished soaking in their bath and will get them  out to dry in a minute.

Also wanted to dye some of the grey alpaca/merino yarn to knit some pattern into the grey socks and give them some zazz. RH is off to a Llama club meeting today so I should get the socks blocked out to dry and get the dye pot on the stove while I have no interruptions...and of course...after I find some chocolate........

This sweater will never be finished!!

They look like angels when they are asleep but now it is our bedtime they are having tussles all over the house leaving hair all over, sometimes it is play but then turns into fights.
   The hydro saga was not over, they came early yesterday morning and said they were coming back sometime in the afternoon and replace all the hydro wires so we were without power for most of the afternoon but now we do not have to worry we should be good for years.
   Now onto the blue sweater ......I have been working steady on the right front dreaming of getting to the sleeves and had a good third of it knit....then discovered I should have reversed the cables on this side......so it is ripped out and I have started again, am going to try to get one pattern repeat finished before I go to bed. It did go through my mind...however briefly...that maybe I could just have pattern on the left front...and knit the right front plain...but no...better do it right. I am not going to tuck this away again...I am going to finish it.
   We had a bit of winter weather today, a bit of snow and colder but is supposed to be back to warm weather by Sunday. I am so waiting for spring, just had a seed catalogue arrive in the mail today. Well off to knit and then off to bed.

I AM BACK!!! HOPEFULLY!!

 View of the hills from the kitchen window.

Well Blogger is finally recognizing me again, I hope!! Haven't tried to post anything yet!! When I tried to write a post I was told I did not have a blog with them?? They were after me to try the new and improved and now I have been forced to be new and improved, will see how it goes. Can not believe the month of January is gone and I had only posted once. Our lives have been nothing but stress lately, keep saying this time next year we should be settled. First of all we have had such terrible wind storms, house had been barely here and we were losing shingles off the roof and as the shingles that were put on are only guaranteed for 120 and the wind was over that we were on our own, guy came and replaced shingles then four days later more wind and away went the shingles again so RH went and bought shingles and a lot of glue and fixed it himself, no one knows how to do the job properly anymore, when we have done it ourselves we have never lost a shingle...so am hoping that stress is done. Then lately we have been losing the power to part of the house on and off and these new smoke detectors go off with horrid shrieks which almost pierce your ear drums, specially when it happens in the night, electrician came out and found some wires burned a bit in the electrical box in the house....not a good thing...so he replaced them and away he went...that night same thing...so they thought it was something else so replaced that......that night the same thing...by that time I was ready to move out, I had such a headache from the alarms going off, I said to RH what else is on that breaker... he said only the basement lights and the bathroom fans and the smoke detectors.....I said turn the bloody thing off and go get the smoke detector from the trailer and we will put that up and that is what we did, next morning we phoned the company we got the house from and talked to the people that had installed the electrical in the house and they said to phone the hydro company and have them come out and check everything. The guy arrived after dark, our main hydro shut off is way off by the old barnyard site so off he went over there and when he checked that the hydro box was sizzling...not a good sign!! wires were burning off there too!! They replaced the main switch and so far o.k. hope that problem is solved. This is a old farm site so we are slowly finding all the glitches in things.
   I am still living out of boxes as we have not got any shelving up yet, RH has all the basement walls finished right up to the drywall on them and we have a large storage room ready for shelving, he is picking up the shelving today and as soon as we get that up I can start sorting things out, all my fibre is in bins and that wasn't bad when I had the bins sorted so I knew where things were but as the walls were being put up the bins were moved from here to there and I lost track so it was a real treasure hunt when I needed something. I had finally knitted up all the sock orders and got them delivered and thought I would get out all my unfinished articles.....well maybe not all of them...that would be too confusing...o.k. I got out a couple of them.....then the problem was to figure out where I left off in the pattern........remember this sweater, back was finished and I had started on the left front.......with all the pattern. Could not figure out where I was

in the pattern so it was rip back until I could see where I was........now I know why I dropped this project and started something else.......there are three different patterns in the fronts and you do not work from a chart...you do this row from the lace pattern...then this row from the cable pattern etc...if a person could just sit and finish the whole front without interruption you would be o.k. but even with me marking down where I left off in the pattern it was a chore, so have finished the left front...well almost finished... the last few inches is in time out... until I get the right front to that point and I can do them to match up. Then I only have the sleeves to knit. The only way to get this pattern was to buy the whole kit and it was acrylic yarn in the kit, at the time I thought I would knit the pattern up in the yarn in the kit and then knit it in a natural fibre, well when you get used to using natural fibres it is hard to knit in synthetic yarns. will carry on and finish it. Had just started working on the sweater and had a order come in for two more pair of alpaca socks, got them knit up and phoned to deliver them, lady had bought a pair at one of the Christmas markets for her husband  and he loved them so much he had not taken them off and wanted more......well when I called her she asked if I could reinforce the toes as on these socks as the toes on the pair he had were getting thin.......now.....this would have been so much easier to do before I finished the socks...right!! O.K. ripped back the toes of the socks and found a fine nylon yarn to knit in with the alpaca yarn and almost have them finished...again. Have to get the spinning wheel going and spin up a fine alpaca/nylon yarn to use for reinforcement on socks in the future.

Now this is the other unfinished article I got out to finish, why would I get two out to finish that had so much pattern in it...to make myself crazier!! This is my first really fine yarn shawl and pattern is not too bad when you work on it steady but have the same problem of trying to figure out where I left off......the dumb thing is I did spend time ripping back until I could see where I was....made notes on a piece of scrap paper...which has now disappeared.....I had had a good talk to myself about writing things on odd pieces of paper but guess I better give myself the talk again, my solution to this was to have a note book and everything is written in that, not as easy to misplace. As looking at the shawl and the sweater both laying there was stressing me I decided to tuck the shawl away until the sweater is finished.
   So that is what I have been up to lately besides stressing over blogger disowning me, having to vacuum everyday because of cat and dog hair and dust from the building downstairs all over everything........now if blogger does not let me post........I will not be happy. Now the good thing...we have to have a good thing in this post...right?........son Tom came out and got the router up and working so we can use the computers, the ipads and the printer where ever in the house!!