A Big Fat Goose Egg and a Dime

The pussy willows are out at the Springbrook Nature Center in Fridley, Minnesota, and the Canada geese are nesting. Red-winged blackbirds are staking out their territories in the wetland, trilling their songs from atop reeds and cattails. A few early green plants are poking out from under the oak-leaf litter.

My friend L., her daughter E., and I took a walk around the wetland this morning. It's a short loop that takes us over a float bridge across the wetland, and through the woods and across a couple of small streams.

I was the first to make a find: A dime, half-buried in the mud near the picnic area. As we walked along the muddy trail, we looked for signs of deer, but only saw shoe-prints, and a few marks that could have been from anything.

L. had the next find, a dead tree that showed marks from both beavers and woodpeckers. Then, at the first stream crossing, we noted that there was still ice among the reeds, even though the ice is out in the big Twin-Cities lakes already. There were several sets of animal prints in the mud under the bridge: raccoon pawprints, goose footprints, and some paw prints that could have been from a small dog or perhaps some other small mammal.

I remarked that I didn't see any green shoots yet, but E., aged 6-1/2, pointed out plant after plant that was peeking out from amongst the leaves. My excuse is that she is several feet closer to the ground than I am.

Once we got to the wetland itself, we saw a pair of mallards. The geese, too, were paired up already, and we saw several that were deep in the reeds, presumably sitting on nests. One gander motorboated angrily at us through the water. The footbridge was messy with goose poop. As we were crossing, E. exclaimed, "An egg! Look, an egg!" I thought she was misinterpreting a splotch of white bird poop as an egg, but indeed it was an egg, a big fat goose egg sitting right on the planking. That must have been a very misguided goose. We all felt a bit sad for the abandoned egg, but it is early in the season, and there's plenty of time to start another clutch.

There were gulls out near the water, too. As soon as we re-entered the woods, we could hear a variety of bird-chatter in the trees. Crossing the next creek, we could hear the water trickling over a natural rock-dam. There was a lot of ice still in the creek; the spring sun hasn't yet been strong enough to melt it under all the trees, bare though they are.

Later, going home in the car, we recapped who had seen what, and who had been the first to make a find on our nature walk.

I was thinking of the pussy willows and the beaver tree when E. said, "Well,Carol found a dime!"

Yes. Well.

I'm waiting for turtle season, which is better than 10 dimes in my mind.

A good blog; More lace

For your daily dose of hilarity, check out the Cakewrecks blog at www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com. 'nuff said.

It's been sort-of snowing yesterday and today. Yesterday it rained, sleeted, snowed, rained, and even hailed for about a minute. Today the snow is coming down in big, lazy, fluffy hunks that look like polyester stuffing. It's nature's April Fool joke.

I am still under the spell of lace knitting. I ordered a beautiful kit from Fiddlesticks Knitting called the Daisy Meadow Scarf, which uses 1 ball of Fiddlesticks' "Exquisite" lace yarn, which is 50% merino and 50% silk.

It's a triangular scarf / shoulder shawl which starts at the back point and increases at either side. I got through row 50 twice (ouch) yesterday. That's what I get from working without a lifeline. The yarn is, indeed, exquisite, but both slippery and sticky at the same time. (It's easy to lose stitches, but when you try to rip out, the yarn sticks to itself similar to how mohair behaves. Grrr.)

I started knitting it on Addi Turbo Lace needles, but it slid around too much. Also, the sharp points on the Lace needles split the yarn. The second time around, I used my size 5 Plymouth bamboo circulars, and they work much better for this yarn and pattern. And I am putting in a lifeline every 8-10 rows. Those "slip 1, knit 2 tog, PSSO"s are just too hard to unwind without disastrous results in this cobweb-weight yarn.

I am so proud of myself, however. For the second time in a row, I managed to put aside my project when I started to get frustrated, instead of barreling ahead and causing further destruction and rage.

Now, for an update on "Children of Lir". I figured out what my problem had been. (Recap: It starts with a provisional cast-on. You knit down one side, then pick up from the CO, then knit down the other side. When I went to pick up from the CO, I thought a plain row to pick up in was missing from the pattern). I was right; a plain row was missing. But not because the directions were flawed, as I thought. It was because I had blithely proceeded without reading the directions for the specific type of provisional CO to be used. If I'd used the one specified, (a long-tail CO with one strand of waste yarn and one strand of project yarn) I would have created the plain row in which to pick up. Given that I made a crochet chain and picked up in that, I had a "raw" lace row to pick up in, and an upside-down lace row at that!

It took me most of a week, but I finagled and fudged and twiddled and dang if you can find where I made the join. Now I'm happily about 8" past the midpoint. This is a good advanced-beginner lace project. It can be knit in a DK weight yarn (I used Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool), it doesn't have anything more complicated than YOs, K2togs, and SSKs, and you can easily see the pattern forming as you knit. It's only patterned on one side, so you have WS purl rows to "rest". The pattern is in "Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls" by Martha Waterman. However, you will want to chart the pattern on graph paper for yourself, as the book only includes written-out instructions. Graphing it makes it much easier to work.

I've been stalking the aisles of Borealis for a couple weeks, plotting other lace projects. There's a small half-circle shawl in "Victorian Lace Today" that's shown in Jade Sapphire's Lacey Lamb in red that I've gotten the itch to do. And I want to make something out of one of the Isager yarns we have in the store, but I just haven't put together the right combination of yarn, color, and project yet.

I'm happy to have such woes as these. I could be sandbagging in Fargo, or waiting in an unemployment line; instead, I'm dithering about re-knitting and project selection. See you at the yarn shop!