That's What Weekends Are For

It's Monday morning already, even though it feels like it should only still be last Friday.  It was a good weekend, and a savored one, even though the house is still in disarray, and the last load of laundry is going through its 6th wash since an unfortunate accident involving a bottle of aroma diffuser (allegedly nag champa-scented but yeah, not so much) and the already loaded, open washing machine.  It was a weekend of learning and loving, the high points being a class on Saturday and a date on Sunday.


I took a class on "Learning to Knit with Wool", taught by Claudia of Countrywool.  It was a beginners' class but because there were only two students, she did a wonderful job of working with what we didn't know rather than rehashing what we were both comfortable with.  I'm proud to say I now know how to increase stitches, maybe fix a mistake or two, am far more comfortable binding off, got to work with a different yarn than my 'usual' alpaca--Brown Sheep Company's Lamb's Pride which is a merino/mohair blend that is soft and springy, learned about 'spit splicing', (although I assure you, no spit was--or will ever be--involved) which joins yarns together with nary a trace, and no weaving in of ends to be done later, and....drumroll please....how to cable stitch!!!!!  What a glorious feeling to create a cable stitch, to add dimension and an actual desigm where there would otherwise be...flatness.  Claudia referred to it as 'magic', and it felt that way.  I only did a swatch, but I'm ridiculously tickled by it:

How cool is this?????

 

Her teaching style was patient, skillful, matter-of-fact, and thorough, and I came home feeling less intimidated than I have been by knitting.  I came home and worked on the cable stitch a while longer and then began finishing off the shawl.  A few loose ends remain to be woven in, but it's just about done.  Turns out to be much wider than needed, but it's soft and functional and I'm longing for a few chilly evenings so that I can knit while wrapped in its embracing warmth.

And then there was Sunday.  We ventured to Windham and Hunter to see what 5' and 7' of snow look like.  While a week's worth of melting took away some of the awe factor, seeing the guy using the front end loader to dig out his driveway, and the house whose entire walkway to the door was flanked by snow walls taller than us gave us deep respect for the people dealing with that mess!  And then.....Linda's been working long and hard, so I asked her on a date without telling her details.  She's been wanting to see Alice in Wonderland, and after a consultation with my sister, I decided to REALLY surprise my beloved with an IMAX 3D version.  I'd never seen anything 3D,and it had been decades since she had.  Wow.  If one is going to splurge on movie tickets, one gets her money's worth with this version.  The storyline was a tad slow, but the expected favorite aspects were present.  Some reviews called Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter a 'manic Carrottop', but we found him restrained and touching.  There was humor and the visuals were intense, and while it would have been lackluster at a regular theatre, it was quite the ride seen this way.  Our date continued with an Italian-style dinner and...well....we both were sound asleep about 20 minutes after we got home.  Hey--romance means different things at different times; last night it meant falling asleep snuggled up after a very sweet day.