It’s absolutely amazing, how fast the black fly swarmed me after getting out of the van.   They were clouded around the outhouse door when I went to get sunflower seed out to load the birdfeeders.  They are biting.  I have a very itchy bite on my collar bone already, just to prove it.  Damn, I hate them.  This will make garden work VERY unpleasant this week.  So the season begins…
Here in the far north, where days are longer, nights are shorter and the bugs bite harder, spring is just starting.  My daffodils are in bloom, the forsythia is still yellow, and the leaves are barely showing in the woods.  It’s déjà vu all over again.  This is my year of the three springs.  (I went to Maryland and Pennsylvania a few weeks ago, remember?)

The back of the Ribby Cardi is done, finished on the drive up this afternoon.  Bu checks it out here…   

Yep, looks more like a sleeve, but my experience with anything silk is that it blocks out much more than expected.  That IS a good thing. 
All for now, I’m unpacking and settling in… and trying to get used to dial up again.

The weather this spring has been so overcast and cool, that my outdoor gardens haven’t begun to show much.  But indoors, it has been one of my best years ever.  My orchids have bloomed continuously since early winter.  This is what’s blooming now.

To all of you who made it to the WEBS tent sale this weekend.. I was thinking about you.  There have been an awful lot of fabulous fiber forays this spring and they are not over yet.  Next weekend is Cummington.  I”m going to miss it.  It’ll be too far to go for one day.  I’ll be traveling North this week to get the hostas split and transplanted for the season.  We have thousands, literally.  In a good year, I’d be planting the vegetable garden now too.  This year, it may have to wait, everything will either rot or just get stunted anyway.  Sometimes waiting a couple weeks is better, even with our super short growing season.  At least the beds will be ready when it does warm up.  Guess I’ll be looking for those 57 day veggie varieties. 

I’m fickle.  See, I admit it. I’d use the ‘yarn harlot’ term, but it’s taken, you know what it means.

• I KNOW I said my project bags were full.  I found an empty one. 

• I KNOW I said I was going to finish the shell etc. first.  Margene’s ( sorry, Margene, I NEED a scapegoat here, and C just won’t work for this occasion) comments were pretty discouraging, especially the part about the yarn growing.  Who wants a shell with sagging armpits.  I already have enough sag in that department. 
• The good news, I used my stash!  I went shopping in the Stash Stacks.  This IS very VERY GOOD.

I went through my stack o’ patterns.  I eliminated everything I had swatched for.. who knows why.. it was the weekend, maybe the moon was in the wrong phase for whatever I had thought I’d make, whatever..
I went through my yarn.
I swatched again.. and voila!

  The first 8 inches of the Ribby Cardi.

What I did NOT condsider until I had the first 6 inches knitted:

• that the striping on the fronts will be broader, bigger
• that the striping on the sleeves will also be broader, bigger

My first thoughts on this are that I may knit the two fronts at the same time with a steek separating them, thus keeping the thinner stripes for the body.  The sleeves, I’ll leave them alone.  This was the first time I have used Noro’s Silk Garden.  I haven’t thought  much of the quality of the Noro yarns, but this stuff knits and feels great.  It’s a little bit funky and very casual.  I’m sure most every other knitter has used it, I had stashed it.  Anyone seen a ribby cardI out of this??  I’m open to suggestions.