Ah, Spring!

Know how I can tell it's spring in Minnesota?

The tap water smells funny.

Oh, sure, the snow is gone, leaving yellowed, dormant grass exposed, and the city winter parking rules no longer apply. In four or five weeks, we'll have tiny, tiny leaves on the trees. The daylight hours are extending, so that's another clue. Mostly, though, I can tell because when I turn on the water, out flows a stream of stink.

Here in the City of Lakes, in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, nature excretes and decomposes daily, but during the winter, all that natural goodness freezes. Come the spring thaw....mmm a winter's worth of stored up smells all melts and runs off into the Mighty Mississippi and eventually through our water pipes. Get a whiff here. (I'm all about the links today, aren't I?)

I'm all about spring, because we've been on Spring Break here at Chez Rox. We flew south, to AZ, where it's brown year round, and it was a balmy 72 during the day. We ate outside frequently. I drank iced tea and ate salads. The first evening and the second day, I was knitting all the time. (All airplane knitting had to be ripped out due to my inability to count.) I knit an entire sock in a 24-30 hour period.



Folks, I actually got sick of knitting. So I turned to my Kindle, which it turned out, was totally out of battery and I forgot to bring the recharger. Michael, my knight in shining Mercedes (borrowed from the FIL) drove to Radio Shack to get me a micro USB cable so I could use what he calls "that piece of plastic." As in, "Are you still staring at that piece of plastic?" To which I respond by clicking the Next Page button.

I spent the next five days reading Susan Wiggs's Lakeshore Chronicles (there are five books in the series so far and I read one each day, but not in order. I started with #5, then #2, 3, 4 and finally, #1) until my eyeballs were too sore to read anymore (except I also read a 6th book by a different author, the name of which and whom escapes me.) I also got to see Bonnie, my best friend from high school, twice, for hours at a time.

Then I started on the second sock and we headed for home. I'm just getting going on the gusset at the moment. Perhaps I'll finish it this weekend.

Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot in the Huckleberry colorway
Needles: KnitPicks 2.5mm, 32" fixed circ (That's a US 1 1/2, although they call it a US 1)
Method: cuff down using Magic Loop
Gauge: 8 sts/in, 56 sts