March Madness

Dear Mom,

My Hero shoveled about 8 inches of snow off the driveway this morning. Another inch or two is expected before it all ends this afternoon. This is reportedly a 100-year record breaking snowfall.
Buried under that snow, in the front yard, crocuses are blooming.....
Love,
Kim

Alpine Tweed

Dear Mom,
My Alpine Tweed sweater is finished and on display in the yarn shop. I knit this as a class sample AND for myself. I have the fabric to sew a dress to go with it, and the plan is to wear them to church on Easter.

Pattern: Alpine Tweed, designed by Jared Flood from this book.
Yarn: Berroco Vintage
Buttons: Shrinky Dinks, made by me! ( I traced portions of the flowers and leaves from my fabric onto my shrinky dinks for perfectly coordinated, unique buttons.)

I do believe the next sweater is gonna be another one for me(!) using some of my hand spun yarn. I do believe it will be a cardigan...... stay tuned.

Love,
Kim

Practically Perfect in a Whole New Way

Dear Mom,
By far, Olive has been the bestest, easiest puppy I've ever raised. And now my cup runneth over. Bless her, she goes out to the back yard and entertains herself by playing tetherball!

We may go through a bunch of balls this summer- this one is obviously already skinned and deflated- but a dog who wears herself out? Priceless. I love her.
Love,
Kim

Spun

Dear Mom,

I definitely need to make an effort to spend more time spinning. Sundays for Spinning, perhaps?
I finished spinning the fiber on Sunday evening, and finished plying it on Monday.
.....contented sigh......

Love,
Kim

Mary Poppins

Dear Mom,

Until recently, Olive could have easily been nicknamed "Mary Poppins" because she is Practically Perfect in Every Way.

With Patsy, I feel like I've taken (or was in the midst of taking) a graduate course in Dog Behavior. One of the things I learned is that a dog at about age 1, is like a teenage boy with keys to a Ferrari. No sense and little impulse control. By our best estimates, Olive will be a year around the first of April.

Hence some of the recent behavior.

For example, last night she was grounded to her crate for the night because she decided to ignore curfew and surf the counters at midnight. (I'd baked cookies for the Young Lady's lunchbox and Olive apparently decided to be sure there weren't any crumbs left behind to snack on.) Olive tried to fake us out by coming to bed, then sneaking downstairs after we were all tucked in. She has no idea how finely tuned my radar is- it has been honed by Patsy, Bumper, and two teenagers. She then openly defied my "it's bedtime" commands. Thankfully, Olive's stomach wins out every time and a cookie in the crate was all it took to end that episode and get me tucked back in and sleeping.

But her most offensive, in-my-face naughtiness/dog boredom, to date, was this:

This is what was a neatly wound ball of mohair and some roving. She really went for the weak spot on this one.
I trashed the mohair. In fact,in order to salvage the roving, I had to cut the mohair away. There were only a small handful of felted bits of roving that were beyond help and I finished spinning all of that yesterday and started plying it last night.

The ideal solution for Olive, well, for ALL OF US, would be for Spring to get here already!

Love,
Kim