Where is springtime?

A windy warm walk yesterday, an inch of rain, high wind, and a 35 degree temperature drop overnight and it is still falling. Snow flurries while dealing with the chooks this morning.

Even the Thanksgiving cacti are confused.

Both of them are blooming and the Christmas cactus has buds.

Yesterday was repair day. There have been some issues in our bathroom for a while and it was time to replace and clean out, a great excuse to give that room a deep cleaning too. Plumbing doesn’t intimidate me like electricity, so taking a trap apart or replacing toilet parts is no issue. Hubby’s tub is a giant jacuzi style that is not jetted but spa sized. To clean it, I have to get in it which I don’t like to do with cleaner sprayed all over the inside. I read you can use dish soap and a broom, but I can’t imagine how you would rinse it all out. As for electricity, I gave up on the dining room light after a conversation with Son 1 who concluded we have a short in there somewhere, not a switch issue. It is off and the switch taped to prevent accidently switching it. Next time he visits, he will examine it, repair it if possible, or replace it with a new fan and light if not. In the meantime, we moved dinner time a bit earlier so we can see what is on our plates.

I finished plying and skeining the Christmas gift wool. It ended up 492 yards of 18 WPI yarn. I’m still trying to pick a pattern for it and toying with spinning a complementary color to use with it to make a generous wrap. It is a pretty, subtle gradient and very soft.

A few years ago, I knit a pattern that was popular at the time called “Free Your Fade,” using 5 distinct colors that you blend with alternate rows as you are ready to change colors. It is one of my favorite wraps, it is huge, can be worn as a shawl to cover shoulders or a generous neck wrap over a sweater or coat. With the gradient, I wouldn’t have to alternate rows except to change skeins if I can decide on the coordinate skein. It wouldn’t be quite as large, but still a nice size.

It is too overcast to capture the colors from gray on the left to wine on the right, but you can see it’s size.

It is pruning time. The fruit trees, the grape vine, and the rose all need pruning. Not today, it is too cold outside to want to work out there. It is still falling toward a 25f night, the forecast says it feels like 21f now. By Sunday it warms back up into the 50s for a few days, maybe I can get it done then before the 4 days of rain expected next week. I’m not sure what I will do with all the clippings though as we have a burn ban in place. They can be hauled to one of the areas we can’t mow or hay and leave them to become part of the floor of the woods at some point. There are two small trees that have fallen into the haying areas, the tractor can pull them out of the way.

Yesterday, on our way home from the hardware and our walk, we drove on along the upper edge of our property on the road. We hadn’t done that for a long while and some jerk has dumped a huge upholstered chair and a broken cooler into our property down the hill almost into the creek. I think we can put a tow strap around it and haul it back up to the road using the tractor, but then I don’t know what we will do with it. Neither of our cars can pull the trailer any longer. We may have to enlist daughter’s help to pull the trailer to the dump. People can be such inconsiderate slobs.

I would love to hear your comments on this post.