Spring Flowers

Hi Mom - Your house looks great! It must feel so good to be rid of the carpet and the wallpaper. Especially nice to curl up in the finished house with all the bad weather pounding hard in the Northeast - from snow to Nor'easters to who knows what is next. Hopefully you are bearing up well through it all.

We are alternating between rain and bright sunshine, with a steady wind off the ocean the only constant. The 'breeze' makes running a bit of an experience - somehow no matter which direction I'm moving in, it's always into a wall of wind - sometimes strong enough to almost knock down! But I'm bearing through and tomorrow I'll enter the last week of my 'training program', up to 3 miles each run, 3x a week. I'm impressed with myself, even if it still doesn't seem that I'm loosing any weight! I'm not sure if I'll try to keep increasing the distance or work on improving my speed since I'm really a bit of a pokey turtle. Especially considering that Hans, the original founder of Nathan's company in San Francisco, finished the Boston Marathon yesterday in less than 4 hours, with an average pace of 8.3 minutes per mile. (Congratulations Hans!) He leaves me in the dust!

The mix of sun and rain is bringing out all the flowers here and it is really beautiful to walk around the city right now. Here are some shots from recent wanderings, a pink flower (do you know what this is?) growing along a school fence in Cow Hollow, one of a cluster of vine-wrapped callas in a side garden down the road from us which I get to pass every time I head down to catch the muni, and the tulips by the windmill in golden gate park:




My knitting projects are steadily growing along too. I am through the body of the first (long) side of the water bottle cover (silly though it may seem) and am now on the neck shaping. I am also back up to the halfway point on my Lady E version 2 thanks to a concerted effort to try to get through a tier a day - so far I am keeping up with it and I am almost back to where I was before I ripped it back:


(and yes, there is a brown/gold streak running through almost every square, along with scattered speckles of white - really pretty)

I am making so much progress on these two, in fact, that to counter the steady repeat by repeat nature of these two, I have taken the leap to cast on two other projects in the past two weeks as well. (This makes a total of 4 projects OTN, which is a big number for me - I like to get things finished!)

First, as a little birthday present to myself, I decided to finally cast on the Rowan Eveleen (which has been waiting so long for me to be done with Lady E so that it can be her turn!) I have been working slowly through the 14-row lace pattern, which is really pretty in the way it makes these scalloped shells:


I am trying not to push through this one too fast, enjoying the laciness of it for now. I am now half way through the second repeat, with 9 total before I get to the flower pattern on the chest. I am working both the front and back panels at the same time, so even though it's slow for now once they're done I'll be able to move straight into the sleeves and finishing. I think this will be really pretty!

My second project is a bit of secret for now, but here's a teaser. It's a crochet pattern that I have wanted to try for a while, inspired again by Yarnstorm and her rippling along (which has inspired a whole ripple along blog, so I'm not alone). Since I don't have the pattern book myself I've had to work at this a bit to get the ripple effect I wanted, but so far it's working out well. You'll get to see the finished object (or at least the work in progress) when you get here in May...


I have also been listening to a new podcast, The Knitting Cook. Lots of great recipes, fiber talk and adventures of a woman living with her husband and (now three) kids in Germany. I can't wait to try my first one of her recipes - will it be the bean and spinach soup or the prosciutto and mushroom pasta sauce? Although the salted caramel ice cream sounds good too...

Right now, though, I'm listening to all of the news on Virginia Tech, thanks to our new XM home kit (a birthday present from Nathan) which allows me to get my CNN fix in every day. All of these stories are just so sad - the number of people lost and injured is just too big and the finger-pointing that has already begun is just so pointless. Hopefully someone will find a way to figure out why these kinds of things keep happening here. Maybe it's time for me to step away from the computer, make some tea, and try to enjoy the sunshine and flowers instead...

Hopefully you are having some sunshine today too - and that ours will last until your visit!

Megan