Since It Insisted on Snowing Yesterday...

... I had to go snowshoeing today.  This afternoon after finishing the Bay Lakes Knitting Guild's April newsletter (yay!  hooray!) I dug out my snowshoes, boots, and pole one last time (I hope) and took a spin around the yards.  After supper my calves reminded me how much they love snowshoeing uphill--not.  I stretched them out a bit and I'll yoga the heck out of them tomorrow, then warm them up in the shower, they'll get over the shock.

I don't know how much snow we got yesterday and overnight--maybe 6 inches--but with the wind that came screaming out of the north in the afternoon and spent the night rearranging the snow, I was very glad to have a nice big, powerful, RED snowblower to deal with it.  When the wind comes from the north it blows the snow over the top of the house and drops it, plop, in front of the garage doors and as far down the driveway as it can manage.  Yippee skippy.







 

Getting the newsletter done, filling in all that white space, left me little time for knitting or sewing today.  After supper I took the bull by the horns and decided to cast on a sweater sleeve.  I've wanted to make this particular, asymmetrical cardigan ever since I saw the pattern a couple years ago but everyone who'd made it and put notes and comments on Ravelry said that it's narrow in the shoulders and tight in the sleeves.  I had collected some yarn, thicker than the pattern calls for, but didn't know how to figure out how to change the pattern to make it fit me.  But after last month's BLKG meeting program I think I do.  I've been dithering around plugging numbers into the sweater's schematic and finally decided to just get started.  I plan to knit about 6" of the sleeve and then hold it around my wrist to see if I need to add or subtract stitches.  This whole thing is fraught with uncertainty but I've decided to plunge on.  It's only sticks and string, what could go wrong?





While I was out snowshoeing I passed the neighbor's giant maple tree and look what I saw.  Buds!  This crazy tree is the last to turn colors and drop its leaves in autumn but it's the first one to have buds on it in spring.  Life!





The sun was shining all day melting the snow hanging off the front of the roof, dripping down on the red branches of the cotoneaster shrub at the corner of the house.  This picture doesn't do it justice.  The ice was sparkling like diamonds in the sunshine.

April 4--Henry Townely Green, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Deep in the wood
Titania comforts the lovesick donkey, Bottom
while bored fairies lounge
behind the tree
eavesdropping
making sport of his pain.
Fauns cavort in tall grass
but the sad donkey man 
notices none of it.
~~~~~

Tonight I was reminded that male cardinals like to dine just after sundown before the light totally fades.  This dapper fellow came for a few seeds before flying off for his evening rendezvous.  It's supposed to be bitter cold tomorrow.  Oh goodie.  Isn't it supposed to warm up in April?  Even just a little?  I'm tired of living in the arctic.  But I do love snowshoeing... I can't win, can I?
--Barbara