We're having a heat wave...

After a week or more of subzero weather, it actually got up to about 20 degrees F today. I could go from the car to the house without zipping up my jacket. Unfortunately, we're supposed to have a high of 5 degrees F on Thursday but a little respite is nice.

Last Thursday I went to the knitting group at the library. There were 14 women there including myself. I would have enjoyed it more but I ended up teaching a couple of ladies how to knit. I really wanted to just sit and talk with other knitters but two people showed up who wanted to learn and Mary (the librarian who organized it) asked me to show one of them how to cast on. This lady picked it up really quickly so that wasn't too bad. But the second one didn't have a clue and I couldn't get through to her how to cast on. I tried to show her the long tail cast on and how to do the knit cast on. It just wasn't working. We both got a little frustrated. She ended up leaving a little early. I felt bad but I wasn't impatient with her or anything. She just didn't get it. We are meeting again on Feb. 3 and I am not teaching this time. In fact, there was a lady there who was knitting continental and I'd like her to show me how. I know I can knit continentally since I tried it once but she purls, too. That's what I want to learn. I hope she comes back.

Donna, Sue and I were supposed to go to Albany last Saturday and hit a couple of yarn shops. The storm that moved up the east coast ended those plans. Albany is an hour's drive away and we weren't going to get caught that far from home in the snow. We ended up with about 10 inches of snow. That's not too big a deal for this area but it does slow things down a bit. We had a little impromptu knitting session, though. Sue wanted me to show her how to do 4 needle mittens and Donna wanted to look at my Yankee Knitters sock leaflet so they both came over for a couple of hours. That was fun.

I posted a picture of a cabled hat that I'm working on. Donna got it at knittingonthenet. com/patterns/hatbulkyhat.htm. I'm not done with it yet but the sun was shining this morning so I decided to get some pictures. I'm making out of Patons Shetland Ragg chunky yarn. It's 75% acrylic, 25% wool. I like the way the hat is coming out. I'll probably give it to charity. I'm also going to post a picture of the scarf I started this morning from my Starlights yarn. I cast 16 stitches on size 13 needles and am doing knit 4 rows, purl one row until I run out of yarn. It looks like the drop stitch but not as lacy. I didn't think I'd have enough to do a fan and feather stitch out of this yarn. I do have 310 yards of a nice green homespun that I might try in a fan and feather pattern.