Oh, I do love this next set of project spectrum colors! Yesterday’s dyeing was all devoted to orange and purple and brown. When Sarah pulled out all her different shades of purple yarn to show her blog readers, she was very excited to find one that was purple AND brown. I wondered if I could dye anything purple and brown and have it come out pretty and I think I did. It is too late for photos tonight, but you can be sure there will be some later this week!

So besides thinking of purple, orange, and brown, what have I been doing? Well, I finally packaged up all the prizes for my blog contest winners and they are heading to the post office tomorrow. It is a good thing blogiversy contests only happen once a year because that was a big project. I do hope the winners like what I thought they would like *crosses fingers*. (Speaking of which, Spinning Spider Jenny is having one too, if you which to pay her a visit she can be found here.)

I also (and this is SO exciting) went shopping at a new grocery store for me. Yup, I ventured away from Torrington Price Chopper and headed over to the Bristol Price Right. I was just recently telling LFG how much I miss Alba and I was so sad they didn’t make it anymore and lo and behold, what did I see right in front of me on a shelf right at my eye level? A lone box of Alba. Just one sitting there. Why just one? I don’t know, but I snatched it up and hid it in my cart before anyone could swipe it from me.

Yum. Only it is now made with Splenda. Hummm… will it taste the same as my childhood memory??? LFG, shall I save one for you???

Ok, before I head over to my Sunday night knitting, I just want to document this. This is the August 5, 2007 sky in Connecticut. We’ve had this sky for 2 days now. I’m pretty sure that this is an extremly rare event and I want to post this so when we get to days and days and days and days and days of gloom, I can look back and remember that it truly is possible to have this…

Oh yeah, and I finished Harry Potter!!!

Signs of spring are everywhere today. Daffodils blooming, birds singing, leaves finally starting to bud. The birds are crazy active too; starting their spring mating rituals. As I sit at my kitchen table and look out the window I am eye level with the trees tops due to the slope of my backyard. It is so interesting the way the birds flit from one branch to another. To me it looks like complete chaos, but to them it must mean something really significant. They are like giddy teenagers in love flirting around the high school corridors. I am tempted to get out my binocs to study them further. Possibly I can gleem some information as to what makes them act the way they do. (The birds, that is, not the teenagers!)

So I took a walk this morning through my yard and my parent’s yard to find some good yellow for Project Spectrum. While it is a bit of a lackluster year for Daffodils, the Forsythia are florishing!

I just took a bit of time to do some knitting. After so much entrelac-ing lately, it is nice to just knit! This Baby Surprise Jacket is sure going to be a surprise though! I know where I want my stripes to be on the finished jacket, but I really have not clue were to put them as I’m knitting so I think I am just going to have to be happy with what I get! While I was knitting I decided to listen to a knitting podcast and I saw in my e-mails from this weekend that Kelly from Knitpicks just started one. I wanted to listen to it mostly out of curiosity because you know anyone who works in a LYS is going to have a love/hate affair with Knitpicks. The podcast was actually very sweet. She has a soft soothing voice and her topics were true to the knitting community and interesting. She told about how she learned to spin and then knit and what type of sweaters she makes. She reviewed her love affair with Elizabeth Zimmerman which was really nice to hear as I was knitting an EZ pattern. She talked about how she and the other women knit during their staff meetings as the men watch on jealously and she mused that they should be taught to knit too as to which I wholeheartedly agree – what fun that would be!

So back to the Baby Surprise Jacket — I have to say for some reason I am having a super hard time with keeping the numbers of stitches correct! I’ve already had to rip it back a couple of times! I think that mostly says something about my state of mind lately! Not too many brain cells! Well, this will be a good warm up project for when I bring Cece (from ChicKnits) back out to play. Many many many brain cells are needed for Cece!

Here is BSJ thus far:

And here is Cece from almost a year ago:

Can you see the difference? Does anyone know how to grow brain cells real fast????

In less than 3 hours after officially ending my yarn diet, I fell off the wagon…

Let’s just say, if Spring is not going to come to me, I’m going to knit up some of my own…

April showers bring new colors to Project Spectrum. Goodbye to gray and blue and white and Hello to Pink and Green and Yellow! Whoo hooo!!! Spring is here (or so I have to keep telling myself)!

To get myself warmed up for the new colors, I took a few photos around my house. It wasn’t too hard to find some green and pink and yellow. I had a couple of assistants to help me out:

The first thing we found was the felted bag in progress for Agent J (and yes, you are correct; I have not worked on this project in weeks, you caught me! ):

Then we found some pink and green yarn balls from Shelridge Farms which I have to swatch for the shop sample for the Entrelac Socks:

Next we went upstairs and found this Quilt in Agent J’s room:

And right next door, the girl’s bathroom has a bit of pink and yellow and green:

After that we proceeded back downstairs to Hoops and Yoyo’s favorite area of all:

The coffee making area! My coffee cups are pink and yellow and green!

So, what is NOT pink and yellow and green?

The outdoors, because, of course, this is freaking Connecticut you know! (But I’m not really bitter about this weather, nope, not me!)

Everyone asks me, “So, just went do you celebrate your birthday? Do you celebrate February 28 or March 1?” Like I really have to pick just one day. I don’t have a birthday so I just designate the whole month of February as my birthday month. I have little use for March. That is not my month. It really started a few years ago when my sweet and indulgent husband began to bequeath me little gifts over a few days during the end of February. There would be a note and chocolate on the seat of my car one morning and a little gift by the coffee pot the next. A few days quickly turned into “my birthday week” and now, I think, what is a week when I can have a whole month! Does that sound a bit spoiled? Wanting the whole month for myself? What about everyone else who has a birthday every single year without fail? Now that sounds a bit spoiled to me. Who needs one every year anyway? Really – you just have one and then another one rolls around the corner. So please don’t begrudge me my month as it makes me so very happy. It is the little things for us leap day babies, you know.

Last night my mother and my sister, Llamafarmgirl, gave me a fantabulous little birthday party. The girls and I dropped Dave off at the airport yesterday morning (no one puked or anything – I think that is an awesome sign of good things to come!). We came home and cleaned like maniacs (or rather, I cleaned like a maniac and tried to encourage everyone to pitch in and help). We had a little time for some rest and play before we headed next door. Mom and LFG prepared a nifty little dinner of stuffed chicken (of the previously frozen variety), veggies, and salad — just good stuff that everyone likes. And then there was CAKE! Mom bought a cake with purple frosting and palm trees (Tamara means palm tree) on it! There were the cutest little candles that spelled out the words “Happy Birthday” too. There was singing — the little agents know a heck of a lot of birthday songs — and presents too! My mom gave me some spending money for CA (I hope to find some time to plot the LA yarn stores out on my map.). LFG gave me the bamboo fibers shown in the photo above, some GRE vocab practice words (ack!), some hair stuff, some gum for the plane, and some mixed cds. Then we played Whoonu by Cranium which is a really quick and fun game and listened to the “way back weekend” on the radio. All in all, one of my favorite little parties ever!

Llamafarmgirl was inspired to buy me the bamboo fibers for spinning after reading Spinning Spider Jenny’s post, Sunny Bamboo Hanspun & Tips for Spinning Fine Yarn from February 14. Jenny’s yarn is so beautiful. It really looks so much like honey that you just want to pour it over your toast and into your tea. The colors that LFG chose for me have inspired me to join Project Spectrum. I have been toying with joining this for a while, but how could I not with gray and white fibers so lovingly gifted unto me? It seems like this is a very low-stress, low commitment group to join and it covers all varieties of art and craft fields. As to my new bamboo fibers, I don’t know what they want to be yet. I don’t know if I will add to them or color them or just use them individually, but there is something about the grayness that appeals to me. Are they grays that want to be left alone or are they calling out for a pink or a blue or a teal? Perhaps they desire a dash of turquoise…

IHA has left (on a jetplane). There is a strangeness that lurks in a home when someone is missing. There is no studying and no note cards and pencils strewn across every surface. There are no humongous shoes hanging out right in front of the door. There is no one to download the girls favorite podcasts on their mp3 players. There is no one to turn on the blanket to prewarm at night. But it will all be worth it because by next Thursday afternoon he will be back to us, no longer a slave to his bar review materials. All ours once again.