it’s warming up a bit around here and the outdoors are calling.

seen in our front yard recently, a bright shot of purple:

some deep greens:

and some black:

we got a grill on freecycle today! it works great and just needed a little cleaning.

i’m a person who loves winter, but i have to say, even i am excited for spring.

in knitting news, i finally finished all of the seaming on the toy i knit for my knit group’s charity project:

the pieces were each super quick to make, but there was soooo much finishing. being sick and having pink eye didn’t help the sewing get done at all. but after it was all done up, i fell in love! this little dinosaur is so cute and the perfect size to hug. it’s hard to give it up, but i know a little kid in need will love it more than me.

when i got into work at the yarn store last week, i noticed something new hanging among the staff-notes, next to the register:

a nice note from a customer i had helped the week before! how sweet! it’s nice to be able to help people with all of the silly knitting tricks i have stored in my head.

speaking of knitting - here is one of the projects that i completed recently. it was one of the deadline projects i mentioned:

it’s my first store sample! the yarn store puts certain projects on display to encourage customers to buy the patterns and/or yarns, so someone has to make the items. employees can get the yarn and pattern for free and then get store credit as payment for the labor of knitting the project. basically, we work (knit) for free yarn! not too bad. stop by the store and you can see my work perched above the sock yarns.

(the sock is actually long enough to go just over the knee, but the store doesn’t have a leg long enough to display it. oh well.)

welcome to the world, baby-proc:

congrats jeff and eileen!

whip up some cake batter and pour:

instant chocolate cake:

and not just any cake…waffle-cakes!

my sister and niece came up for a visit this thursday thru sunday! it was fabulous to have them around. we did a lot of hanging around the house and playing with toys. but we also ventured outside of the house to explore the town, see a dog show, go consignment shopping and hear some stories read.

the story and song hour was at the eric carle museum of picture book art, a place i adore. after the books were read, we wandered around the exhibits. landry fell in love with this picture:

and we played with paper in the art room:

where she grabbed a piece of blue paper and carried it around for quite some time.

she was willing to trade the paper for a very hungry caterpillar, which she hung onto for most of the rest of the visit:

she did put it down for a few minutes to play with some yarn, though:

that’s my girl.

on sunday, we swung by the open house for the new co-op that will be opening soon in town. it is still under construction:

but they wanted to let people see the progress. especially since it has been in the works, and faced many setbacks, for 10 years:

luckily we’ve only had to wait one year since first hearing about it. and now it is finally going to happen. at the open house there was a final push to get people to join the co-op:

and we did!

it was funny because it felt like it was the place to see and be seen this weekend. there was a huge crowd. tom and i probably know less than 15 people in this town, and most were there. every one of the locals was meeting and greeting.