Mixed up seasons

The seasons seem all mixed up, though I know they aren’t.

Winter has been really mild this year, with comparatively little snow. What snow we did have came in small bits, I think we were only snowed in once (usually we are waiting on the plow three or four times in a given winter due to heavy snowfall).

A couple of weeks ago, melting started in earnest. Nice and warm and drippy and soggy, but slow, so the ground can soak up the moisture. The perfect weather for pastures and replenishing the ground.

Then we got a blizzard a few days ago. That was well on the way to melting when we got another, smaller one, last night. No lambs this time – and it’s mostly melted now already.

In my knitting work, I’ve got mixed up seasons happening too: I’m working on an afghan in autumn colours.

This is a beautiful new yarn from Mary Maxim – it is acrylic, but it is nice acrylic (and I don’t say that often). It’s soft and the colours are bright and gorgeous.

Mary Maxim is having a design competition, and I’ll be entering two projects: this afghan, and a shawl that is also underway (in brighter, more spring-like colours, thankfully). The shawl is still too small to take much of a picture, it’s curling up and hiding the stitches, so once it is a little larger I’ll let you see how it is coming along.

All the yarn for these projects (plus more!) is a gift from my parents, who went to the Mary Maxim store in Paris, Ontario and chose it specifically with the design competition in mind. My mom is a quilter and certainly has a good eye for colour, and when my dad was small, he stocked Mary Maxim yarns in the shop his family owned, so these projects are extra special to me.

It’s been a weary sort of day for me, so it’s a good day to just sit and do some easy knitting with pretty coloured yarn.