52 Weeks of Happy 1/52

I bumped into a new blog this week- LittleBirdie. I really enjoyed checking out Jen’s “52 Weeks of Happy” posts and have decided to join in.

                (photo from Little Birdie)

“It's absolutely true - it's not about money or success.It's about how you look at life and then live it.” Jen

I find that happiness noticed-multiplies, and thought it would be fun to share four “Happy Makers” each Tuesday. That will be a lot of happy by next January!

So here goes...

1.Finding a forgotten photo (the one above) buried in work documents. A reminder of Spring walks in the woods.

2.Trading with the chickens- treats for them.

3.Eggs for me and eggs to share.

4.Learning something new.I added an i-cord trim and picot edged cuffs to to the Baby Surprise Jacket.

Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come,

Whispering 'it will be happier'...”Alfred Tennyson

NaKniMitMo

So we’ve had a turn in the weather. Winter is back. This weekend it felt good to get on with some mitten knitting. January is after all National Mitten Knitting Month.

There’s a group on Ravelry "NaKniMitMoKal" and lots and lots of beautiful mittens are on parade.

I’ve played with this Alice Starmore mitten pattern before, but have never managed to commit to a color way. Now somehow the red and green works for me - makes me think of cardinals in the juniper bush outside my kitchen window.

Infected

   So last week I was at a meeting and got infected. Yep infected. A friend had brought a beautiful sock she was working on. I used to knit socks… a lot of socks. I taught myself to knit socks using Nancy Bush’s Folk Sock book way back when David was two and knit socks obsessively and collected sock yarn even more obsessively. Then without me really noticing I was working on other things and the love affair cooled. Funny how these things go though…

   I know I’m not the only one…something’s in the air right now. I signed up to attend Socktoberfest at my LYS Beyond the Rainforest, I clicked and joined both the Through The Loops Mystery Sock Knit a Long and Lollie’s Socktoberfest group  on Ravelry and even bought the new emag Sockupied from Interweave. (note- much hub-bub on line mostly about the price and the fact there are only three patterns and that it’s not a subscription but a stand only publication – I must be easy – I am really enjoying it )

   So I cast on some Fair Isle socks from Charlene Schurch’s book Sensational Knitted Socks using Brown Sheep’s Wildfoote, a yarn I used to use way back when. It is a little splitty, but the price is right, and knit at a tight gauge it holds up well, and comes in scads of colors. The pattern calls for a short row heel and star toe- both new to me – we’ll see how it goes…