I've been busy

It's been a busy couple of weeks. I had cast on for the Reversible Vest from Knit One Below and was making great progress when I ran out of yarn last weekend with literally 27 stitches and 2 inches of knitting to go. And there was no more of that color in my stash. So off to Ravelry I went hoping that some kind knitter would have some in their stash that they were willing to part with. Hurray, last night I got a response and I'm now waiting for the skein to arrive.

In the meantime, I've gone back to work for Creative Spaces Landscape Design and Construction. This week was spent indoors building our garden display for the Home and Garden show here in Columbus. The theme this year is Hooray for Hollywood and our booth theme was Terminator 2, "HOSTA la Vista, Baby". Steve designed a garden full of hostas, rhodedendrons, ferns, evergreens, flowering cherries and tulips. Complete with a waterfall, stream and pond and a garden shed that could have been lifted from the movie. Think of the urban industrial, graffiti covered buildings in the movie. My assignment was to help lay it out and help supervise getting it built. Steve had broken it out into day by day tasks, and was there most of the week to help, especially with building the water feature.

Everything went fairly well except for the water feature which had developed a leak that we could not find. To the shock of my crew, Steve and several of the adjacent landscape companies I went so far as to peel off my boots and socks, roll up my pants and waded into the pond in an attempt to get it repaired and put back together. And yes it was very cold. To my amusement what really bothered them the most was that I was going to walk barefoot across the concrete floor of the building to the bathroom to rinse my feet off and put them under the blow dryers before putting my socks and boots back on. They thought that was so unhealthy. I pointed out that they were a bunch of guys who played in the dirt all day, and didn't wash their hands before eating lunch, and that I had seen them eat food they had dropped on the ground so they had no room to talk.

We also spent some time adding graffiti to the garden shed. By 4:30 Friday afternoon we had it done, groomed and the plants watered, ready for the preview party at 7. I had a phone call this afternoon that the water feature is dry, so I'll have to refill it before I start work in the booth tomorrow. One of the partners in the company is leaving for Florida in the morning, so I'll be taking his place in the booth this week. This should be interesting.

I've also been working on finishing a super secret birthday present for my friend Barb's 60th birthday, which happens to be today. The Soft Wavy Wrap in these striking shades of acidy green from Fleece Artist. It happens to be one of her favorite colors, and is knit of an alpaca boucle and a mohair that have been painted the same colors. It's a six row, eleven stitch repeat and very simple.

I've also been practicing my long draw woolen spinning technique and have 3 bobbins complete so far. I want to spin the February offering for the Colorways Club into a woolen yarn rather than my usual worsted/semi-worsted yarn. Here's what I managed to get from the January fiber. It's really nice, but typical of handspun in that it's a bit dense. I would like to get more air and more yardage out of the same size batt. So woolen is what I'm shooting for.

And on a final note. The witch hazel starting blooming on Thursday. Proof that spring is really on its way.