It's April Already

::pokes head around corner:: Is it safe to come out now? No more snow? Are we done with the puking? I see sun. I see things blooming. It's 80 degrees. Whew. I think -- I hope -- the winter from hell is over.

We had a Spring Break which was not much of a break. We stayed here. I couldn't even get very much knitting done. But I do have things to show you, so all is not lost.

A little progress on Elegant Empire. You knit this one sideways, in two pieces. First you knit the sleeve, then you cast on stitches for the front and back and knit up one side, over the shoulder, and down the other. It's an interesting construction:


Yes, that's all I've managed to do. Sigh.

But I did start something else in the meantime. I wound up a skein of Wollmeise lace yarn because I was trading half of it with someone else for a half a skein of a different color (the skeins are so huge that you can get a nice sized shawl out of half a skein). Since I already had the yarn wound up, I went ahead and cast on for Evelyn Clark's Shetland Triangle, a pattern I've loved for a long time. It's a very easy knit, which suits me right now. I've just completed 4 repeats of the main pattern (8 are called for, but you can do more):


In real life, the color is a little more of a purpley red than the photo suggests.

I read a good book recently, too. It's The Girl With Glass Feet, by Ali Shaw. It's magical realism, but not cutesy magical realism. It's about a young woman who visits a remote island and finds her feet are turning glass, and the people who try to save her. The story moves along nicely, with interesting characters, but I really loved how the author played with the idea of glass as metaphor -- many metaphors, in fact. Some you think you know, like "heart of glass," for example. You read on, sure that you know what that means, metaphorically, making judgments of characters accordingly, until the narrator turns it around, and shows you another view. If you are turning to glass, do you need to be treated like glass? The first-time author is young (I think born in 1982, sob), but has a lot of promise.

And look:


We're getting ready to get the 2010 vegetable and herb patch up and running. We planted two different kinds of peas, sugar snap and sweet, as well as carrots, green beans, broccoli, tomatoes, and cucumbers. We'll just go ahead and plant the lettuces from seed when we transplant these. I've had good luck with lettuce growing from seed outside. We'll get some herb plants out, too. Sr. Jr. wants strawberries as well, but I don't know if we'll have room. Mmmm, memories of the fresh-from-the garden salads I had last summer are already making my mouth water...