Picture-heavy post.

(I'm off for Spring Break this afternoon so there won't be any posting next week).

I'm almost all packed (I have a couple hours after I get out of class to do last minute things. Like, I forgot to go to the bank yesterday.)

First off: I think one of Clinique's designers must be a traveling knitter.



This is their most recent "giveaway" bag (which came with a bunch of sample sizes of things I mostly don't use; I'm going to take the lipsticks and see if they're good colors for my mom - they don't look like they'd be for me, and besides, I rarely wear lipstick). It's the perfect size for a 100 g ball of sock yarn, socks in progress, the 7" dpns, a tape measure, and my folded up copy of "heels by number."

So I've stowed the pink Magic socks in there (the simplest ones and the closest ones to being done) to knit on while I wait for the train.

Now for some flowers.

Remember how I said I thought my redbud tree was gonna die after the ice storm, because it lost some branches and I said I thought it looked like the heartwood had a fungus?



Well, it's flowering more heavily than it ever has, and it looks healthier. Maybe removing those branches was good for it.

And here are some of my daffodils. They're starting to look a bit battered as it's been quite warm here and we had fairly violent rain a couple nights ago:



And finally, one of the little wildflower things that shows up when you don't dump chemicals on your lawn.



I think it's Anemone cylindrica. This one was actually in my neighbor's lawn. It's a little out of focus, the wind was blowing a little bit.

And finally, some Old Knitted Stuff.

First of all, I call these my St. Urho's Day socks:



They're the Finnish socks from "Folk Socks," only done in green and white instead of red and white (Tho' Finnish would be blue and white, no?)

Anyway - I call them that because St. Urho is an apocryphal Finnish saint, who celebrates his day today (March 16), the day before another, more famous (and I would argue, rather debased-in-its-celebration-in-the-U.S.) saint's day. They are "St. Urho's Day" because they are a Finnish pattern but St. Patrick's Day colors...

St. Urho supposedly drove the grasshoppers out of Finland and saved the grape crop. Presumably that was during the warm period of the Middle Ages (the time shortly prior to the "Little Ice Age.") I don't think grapes will grow in Finland now....

The socks have a cute little spiral-rib top, a pattern that I've appropriated for other socks I've made:



And here's another pair of colorworked socks - and another pair using what is touted as an old Scandinavian colorwork pattern:



The pattern is in Vibekke Lind's book and is called "Night and Day." I presume, from the alternating light and dark triangles.

Here's a close-up:



These are actually like the third pair of socks I ever made - they are very nearly ten years old now. And they still look fine - they have no holes, they are not worn, they're not even all that pilled, considering that they're knit out of Wool-Ease.

And to me, that's the value of handknit socks: they last a long time, or if they do get damaged, they're worth repairing.

Some flower photos for today.

The weather the past couple days has been nice but it's going to be borderline hot (lower 80s) and stormy this weekend, so I'm afraid my flowering shrubs may not last much longer for this year.

Forsythia:

This is one of my favorite landscaping plants. Even though most of the year it's just foliage, the yellow flowers in the spring are SO BEAUTIFUL and so bright. I remember growing up as a kid in Ohio, this was one of the first things to come out to let us know spring was coming.


And this plant was a "surprise" plant when I bought the house. It is Japonica or flowering quince (Which, alas, is considered an invasive plant in some countries - I think Japan is one. It does not seem to be here or else I suppose I'd be duty bound to dig it out, or at least hate it.) And I don't hate it. I love the flowers. It's lasted longer this year than many years, I think because we've had cooler nights and we got a big second bloom of this stuff after the first flowers got destroyed by a windstorm.


And another shot. I love the color of these flowers; it is unlike anything else in my garden.

I think I'm beginning to master the art of getting close-up shots of plants (I did also take one of my daffodil but it didn't come out so well).



And here's a bee (I THINK it is a honeybee and not some kind of mimic bee-fly) visiting the japonica. Bees love this plant. But I never get fruit from it; I guess the one I have must be a sterile cultivar (which is probably GOOD, given Chaenomeles' invasive tendencies.)