Dandelions

This is the first real spring I ever experienced and I love it! All the sudden changes of nature around me, the flowers and the different shades of green the trees are so busy creating, make me very happy!

In Israel we say that if you over sleep during the alleged spring or fall you are going to miss them and in Arizona, although we managed to catch the beautiful wildflowers in bloom a few times, it is really always summer – if you ask my humble opinion.

I really like all those Dandelions that seem to grow everywhere and I don’t quite understand why people don’t like them.

Last Saturday we went on a road trip to Vermont and to the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival where I bought the most colorful yarn from the Green Mountain Spinnery; Unfortunately they don’t show on their website the two colors I chose for my Ulmus – The minute I saw this shawl on Kirsten blog, I knew I must knit it.

The Dandelions in the green grass look just like my yarns!

The Dandelions in the green grass look just like my yarns!

While driving in Vermont, I realised the yarns I chose look just like the Dandelions in the medows if you catch them with the sun on them from the right direction, so very lovely:

The start of the shawl with its name origin

The start of the shawl with its name origin

Those colors and the pattern make knitting Dandelions a very happy mission and the shawl grew quite a bit during our long drive from Vermont back to Toronto yesterday:

My Dandelions Shawl has relatives in Toronto too!

My Dandelions Shawl has relatives in Toronto too!


I hope I will manage to finish it in time as it is a present for an upcoming event!

More about our trip and the festival which was actually my first ever real wool festival, in the very near future.

Morning Visitor and Some FOs

A few days ago, Joe rushed me out of bed and down the stairs to see this:

A morning visitor in our back yard

A morning visitor to our back yard

He told me it is a Pileated Woodpecker, I never saw such a big woodpecker before in my life! I thought it is a weird flying chicken but I have to admit I was quite sleepy at the time. Later we heard someone drilling in the background, Joe said it is the woodpecker, I was sure some neighbour is working in his back yard.

And I am still knitting, sometimes.

While in Israel I managed to finish a shawl I knitted for my mother’s 80 birthday:

My mother and her Koigu Shawl

My mother wearing her Koigu Shawl

I had a lot of problems deciding on the pattern and yarn for this present, I started quite a few shawls; one was too lacy, the other too dark and yet another one was too warm.

In the end I settled on a simple shawl knitted in Koigu KPPPM and at long last managed to finish it before we left Israel (the 80th birthday was in January, shame on me!). Lucky for me, my mother liked it a lot and wasn’t mad at all about the lateness of the present.

During our flight back from Israel I managed to finish one of those shawls I started for my mother, I had enough yarn only for a mini shawl but I find it really useful in this time of year in Toronto:

My mini Noro Shawl

My mini Noro Shawl

I really like the color combination of this Noro Silk Garden Sock colorway – 252.

(Note to self: it is really useful to brush hair before modeling for photos,,,)

New Things

I am not used to:

Lovely sunny but oh so cold days.
Lovely colorful birds on our front lawn and loads of squirrels too.
Lovely gray cold days with rain that never stops.
Lovely big fat doe staring at me when I open the office blinds in the morning while she keeps eating our flowers (Saki was not pleased at all!).

Doe in our back yard

Doe in our back yard

Day after day of excellent reasons to use all my hand knits.

I think I like Toronto!