It's been a while... But I didn't want to post with out significant progress, so I worked hard and made some significant progress (it didn't help that I couldn't find the battery charger for my camera).

I finally made it, with some difficulty and ripping out, up and over the heel of the elfines, and I say "hang what I said last week! I love magic loop, toe up, two socks at once!" I love doing heels where I don't have to pick up stitches. It seems to go so much quicker (never mind the huge hole you can see in the middle of my heel... I didn't pull the yarn tight enough. But after ripping out and starting the heel over twice, I didn't have the heart to do it again. I'll fix it during finishing). I really love these socks... they are so comfortable and look so beautiful on the foot (even with my sock-dented left leg there... also from a pair of handknit socks... why, you might wonder, is one leg sock-dented and the other not? because i have taken to wearing only one sock, so that I can try these on every row or two to see how good they look... it's so satisfying!).

My hourglass is knitting right along as well. I'm just past the second increase and plugging away. This yarn is such a dream, I can knit without looking at all. Which means I can watch good movies and interesting TV and not worry about missing what's on the screen. It seems silly to put up progress shots of the body of a sweater -- it's just a tube. But...


Like much of the east coast, the forecast this weekend called for snow, and lots of it. Normally, by February, I'm ready for winter to quit. I get depressed by the continuous cold, the darkness, the inability to spend extended periods of time outdoors (I grew up in virginia, so winter sports are kind of foreign to me)... But this winter was the winter of no-snow. I left Philly before the snow hit, and by some strange arrangement of mountains and pressure systems, we get very, very little snow here in my region of Appalachia. It hasn't really felt winter-ish all winter. The tiny snow we got last weekend is the first snow I've seen on the ground all winter, and that snow barely lasted through sunrise. But today -- today I woke up to an actual snowfall, and one that was still in progress. We're reported to get anywhere from six to twelve inches (which means, probably, that we'll get five). I've not been so excited about snow since I was in middle school and snow meant the possibility of school cancellation. I went out and took pictures this morning, shoveled my stairs (fell flat on my tush in the process), and prepared to get snowed in. I've got water, homemade chicken soup, a stack of good movies, and three knitting projects to finish. Bring it on!