For The Birds!

I know I am a little bit late for Easter, but aren't these the cutest? I started making these little birds several months ago. At that time I only got a couple of them done and they still needed eyes and a beak. Last week I started sewing on some buttons for eyes. They looked so cute that I couldn't help myself. I started making more of them! I still can't stop! They are so addictive!

Spring?

I know this is going to be hard to believe! But some crocuses are actually blooming in front of my house - just a foot or so away from a gigantic 5-foot snow drift! They are like a breath of fresh air. I was very excited when I first saw them! Could it be that spring has actually arrived? Although we celebrated the spring equinox last Thursday, our weather forecaster feels that spring is still about six weeks away. Our daytime temperatures are barely above freezing and at night it is very much colder.
It will actually be a good thing if the snow takes another month or so to melt. If it melts too quickly we could get flooding and dangerous water conditions in our local streams and rivers. That would not be good! So for now I will enjoy my bright yellow crocuses - my little bursts of sunshine - and hope for the best - a quick, but safe spring!

Even if it's Winter Outside, I Can Still Have Spring Inside!

My sister brought me these lovely tulips and hyacinths when she came to visit me last week! Instead of looking outside, I can now look at them sitting on my coffee table. They make me forget how much snow is outside and they give me hope that it will all melt one day and spring will come!
The hyacinths are magnificent! They have a wonderful smell. I wish I had smellablog, so you could all smell how nice spring smells!
And these are the flowers on my Oleander! They are blooming away nicely in my solarium! The room is surrounded by windows, but these plants don't seem to care if they look out and see the snow! They are blooming as if summer is here already! Nice, eh?

More Snow!

Okay! Are you fed up with my snow photos yet? Here is one of our driveway. You can see how the snow piles are higher than our car. See how my DH has piled the snow from the driveway into just a small pile near the sidewalk? That is so that we can see pedestrians when we back out of the driveway. The pile on the other side of our driveway is even higher! That drives our neighbour crazy! He hates snow on his property! But there is nothing that can be done about that this year! This is the year of the big snow! I am sure we will set a record. I even think that we have set one already! We live near the Lake. Lake Ontario, that is. It is less than a kilometer from our place. And because of that we get more snow than the rest of Toronto. So we may have even surpassed that old 1939 record already! Oh, boy! I can hardly believe that I am hoping for more snow! This is crazy. Isn't this enough?

Are You Fed Up With the Snow Yet?

Another photo of our house with snow! This is the front lawn. Nothing has been piled up here, so you can see how deep the snow is. It is hard to believe that there is grass under all that white stuff! And that we will have to cut it in a couple of months - or maybe less!

More Photos

For some reason Blogger would not let me upload any more photos yesterday. When I tried again this morning, I still could not upload more than one at a time. So here they are, one at a time, especially for Winny! This is the front of our house. My DH has been trying to keep the snow piles around out driveway small, so that we can see when we back out onto the road. But it has not been easy. Luckily we life on a nice, quiet street with very little traffic and few children.

Is There an End to All of This?

I know it is already the first week of March. So where the heck is spring? The March Break began last Friday, just as we were getting another blast of winter! I don't ever remember so much snow on the ground at this time of year! My crocuses should be coming up by now, but they are nowhere in sight - even the ones close to the house are still buried in snow! Another 32cm of the white stuff fell on us this time. Since the beginning of this year's winter we have had 195cm. The record, set back in 1939, is 207.4cm. We could break that record this year, because more snow is on the way. It does look pretty though. Don't you think? Hopefully by July all this should be over!

A Black Hat!

Finally finished the black hat for my DS! It fits perfectly! And he loves it! It's made of synthetic yarn - Red Heart. I used a set of 5, size 5.5mm double-pointed needles.

Here are the directions.

Cast on: 120 sts.
Join stitches and place on 4 double-pointed needles, making sure not to twist stitches.

Round 1: K 2, p 2, to end of round.
Continue in this manner until the hat measures about 5 inches.

I did 50 rows for the black hat. There should be enough for turning up the edge of the hat.

Begin decrease rows:

Round 1: K 2, p2 tog. to end of round - 90 sts.
Round 2: K 2, p 1, to end of round
Round 3: K 2 tog. purl 1 to end of round -60 sts.
Round 3: K 1, p 1, to end of round
Round 4: K 2 tog. to end of round - 30 sts.
Round 5: K
Round 6: K 2 tog. to end of round - 15 sts.
Round 7: K
Round 8: K 2 tog. to last st. K 1 - 8 sts.
Break yarn, leaving a end of about 20cm.
Run end of yarn through remaining stitches and pull tight.
Secure yarn and work end in.

That's all there is to it! My DS thinks I should make a few dozen of these and keep them around as Christmas gifts for the rest of my life! Hmm. Good idea, I guess. But I am tired of making hats. Right now I am working on other things. I found a darling little baby sweater on Oiyi's blog. (I will give you her blog later - Right now I can't figure out how to link someone else's blog to mine!) I made one in a day and then played around with the pattern to make another one, a little larger. I will post photos as soon as possible. I also have another hat with a kind of complex cable going on that I just can't seem to get around to finishing! Better do that too, before this 'hat phase' completely escapes me.

Oh, well. Back to work!