Two Steps Forward, Five Steps Back

I finished the second Play Day Mitten last night right before bed and felt very proud of myself... until I held it up with the first mitten to find that the second mitten was at least 1/2" longer than the first.  Grrr.  And I had already woven in the tail.  Double grrr.  There was no easy going to bed after that.  So I painstakingly picked out the tail and frogged down to where it matched the first one.  I'll knit one round even to get the picked up stitches back in order, then I'll plunge right into the decreases for the top.  Don't you hate when that happens?  I'm going to see about knitting them 2-at-a-time next time so I have a better chance of knitting a pair.  I don't care if the stripes line up, I just want them to be the same size.  I want to make a matching hat too but I'm afraid I don't have enough of the yarn, and weighing the remains and then looking at the pattern I want to use, I don't.  So it only took a flash for my brain to think "ah! there's that ball of solid red yarn downstairs, I'll use that" plus the pattern I want to use is plain stockinette with a garter panel, so I'll use the variegated yarn for one part and the red for the other, not sure which one will go where yet but it'll look cool, guaranteed.

Since LC is too small to get candy for Easter we've got a couple books to put in her basket but I wanted something homemade too.  I found a pattern for a small blanket with cotton on one side and some really snuggly stuff on the other.  I stopped at Hancock on my way home from work.  Uh-oh.  It was Senior Discount day; people my age (and somewhat younger too) get 20% off their entire purchase(no matter if it's full or sale price) and there was a lot of cotton on the Spot the Bolt table which was sale fabric on more sale.  Uh-oh.  Inroads were made in my mad money but I didn't empty the little wallet or have to dig into the grocery money so I did okay.  I was restrained, I only got a yard of each but the snuggly stuff' was twelve bucks a yard--on sale.  Yikes!  I won't be laying in a supply of that anytime soon, but I've got it all washed and I'm looking forward to whipping up a little blanket tomorrow.

I was sure I'd work my way to the bottom of the inventory orphans crate yesterday but a course changed, one we teach quite often, so I wanted to change it on the sheet we use as a reminder of costs, etc.  Well.  The damned Word document I had formatted and saved last year wouldn't open, not on the Mac, not on the PC, so I had to start over and type it all again.  It's a lot of putzy formatting and tabbing and typing dotted lines; it's a pain and it's time-consuming, so I didn't get all the orphans dealt with yesterday, but I have big hopes for today.

This morning I was up early enough and not too bleary-eyed to take a photo of the pretty pink clouds, it was amazingly warm out there too.  This nice weather scares me; things are bound to turn cold and ugly before winter is really done with us.  I'm keeping my boots and warm things handy.  Don't want to offend the winter gods, they've got tempers.  

April 2--Snowy Woods with Wolves.

Red-gold wolves fly
from the trees.
Boughs droop under weighty festoons
of wet spring snow.
Sunlight tattoos shadows
across freshly covered fields.
Paw prints stamp the surface
with lobo's calling cards.
~~~~~


Now we're in for it; April is Poetry Month so I'll be laboring with few words but trying to make them work harder until May 1.  Bear with me.  Or play along.  Off to shower, etc.  It's a work day!
--Barbara