February Lady, in June

After finishing my Deep Breath sweater (still haven't had the right weather to wear it) I promptly started a February Lady sweater. I'm using a lighter weight yarn than the pattern calls for. Some friends have done it this way, so I thought I would give it a shot. Here is my progress so far:

I'm really in a groove with this sweater. The lace is a 4 row repeat. Two of the rows are essentially just purl--those are kind of neutral to me. One row I really like to do (row 3 for those who care) and I'm not loving row 1. But over all this works out for me. I get through row 1 because it annoys me and I want to get it over with. Then I relax with a purl row. Then I am rewarded by row 3! Then another purl row, and I'm ready to deal with the annoyance of row 1 again. It really does keep things moving.

Contrast this with the Spring Forward socks, where I'm essentially neutral about all the rows. It makes me just not care. And since I'm not loving the way the way the color is working out on these socks I think I'm working towards frogging them, something I hate to do, but will ultimately free up the yarn for something that I will have fun with.

I don't know if I have posted pictures of the socks before--they are knit with a merino/tencel blend from Ellen's half pint farm, purchased at the NH Sheep and Wool festival last year. I put them down ages ago and I just haven't wanted to pick them up again. I'm at the gusset of the first sock--but these pictures were taken before I got to the heel. See how there are dark splotches of color (pooling). Every time I see them, they look dirty to me--add that to the fact that I don't enjoy knitting the pattern--well you see where this is going.

Meanwhile, even though I think we have had a grand total of 6 hours of sun in the past 2 weeks, I still have a few flowers popping up.

The day lilies started opening yesterday.

And my nepal cinquefoil is not dead after all!