Spring has Sprung

The temps are warming up and I am enjoying the nicer weather, although we did have to turn the heat back on in the truck because it was very, very cold in Minnesota and South Dakota. We are in Washington state on our way to Olympia for a delivery tomorrow morning. Just about everywhere we have been, the land is showing a definite greening and farmers are farming and grass is growing and there are flowers everywhere.

As we were coming across US 212 in Montana through the Northern Cheyenne Reservation we saw this sunset:

We also saw a rainstorm in the sky. It looked like the rain wasn't hitting the ground, although the area all around it had gray, overcast skies.


And then, as we got further west into Montana, just past Bozeman, as we were headed across I-90 I was reminded of the winter just past:


We had just left Three Forks, MT, where we had stopped for lunch at a deli called Wheat Montana. It is a place that is a farm, a bakery, a store and a restaurant. Their motto is: We sow it, grow and dough it. They also hold the Guinness world record for taking wheat from the field to the table in the least amount of time. It was done by taking microwave ovens out to the field and making a bread of some sort in the microwave, but they took it from the wheat stalk to grinding to making the bread and baking it in some 8 minutes and 13 seconds. To read about them and the care they take in making a chemical free product and the commitment to sustainable agriculture go here. Where was I...oh yes, I took this picture to show that there still is some snow left in the mountains when this very large bird flew into my picture. It may be an eagle, but I am not sure. As quick as he was in my picture, he was gone and I didn't get a chance to identify him. The picture next to it is of some more snow that is left in the mountains.

The last time I posted, I promised some yarn pRon. That is part of the reason that I haven't posted in so long...I hadn't had the time or the sunshine needed to take some pictures of some of the things I had gotten recently. I was finally able to do that yesterday as DH was fixing a problem with the truck in the small town of Whitehall, MT. Just a warning...may be a little bit picture intensive, as if the preceding wasn't... ;-)

I got several sets of these stitch markers from Hide and Sheep who can be found here. I really like the ones that I have with me, but they have kind of changed their configuration and they now have larger gems on them. They are really neat looking. The really small ones are for sock needles and the other ones are for needles that are up to size 7 (US). Here are some pictures of them.

Now for the really good stuff....YARN and some fiber.

This is some yarn that I got off of ebay from a seller called Francis Patrick Sales. This is hand painted and I think that it is hand spun. This is the second time that I have ordered from them and I love their yarns. Just look at the colors in this. I believe that the color way is Mountain Maize, but I don't have the label right here. Anyway, this yarn is soft, the colors are gorgeous and it is 100% merino. YUM!!!!
This next yarn, while the colors are very nice, is not nearly as soft as the Francis Patrick's. It is either from ebay or etsy (I know, bad blogger) and I probably won't buy from them again, but I liked the colors. This is not a very soft yarn and it isn't very tightly, either.

This next bit is some fiber and a drop spindle that I purchased a little while back from an etsy store MaineWoodsYarns that is wonderful. The colors of roving is called Biloxi blues and I really like them. I haven't spun it yet, but I will soon.

The rest of these pictures are my WIP's . There is a DW dishcloth:

and there is the Felted Market bag that I am making for my Mom in an orange and a deep olive green color that will be cool when it is done, but it looks a little strange right now:

And here is the washcloth (face cloth) That I am knitting for my mom. She got one for Christmas, but she wants another one, so I am using some Elann Adara that I bought as a result of enabling from Janet on the Dishcloth group on Yahoo. I had posted this before, but the colors were so off that I needed to repost the right colors and it looks so much better this picture than it did before. It is a basket weave pattern that is fairly easy and is kind of mindless once you learn the pattern.
I didn't post another picture of the socks that I am knitting for my ds. There hasn't been a lot of progress, but I didn't want to post them so that I didn't confuse the people that look at my blog that think the little starting parts of the sock look like a the top to a bikini...like I would be knitting a bikini...(snark).

I was hoping to get a good picture of Mt. Ranier, but everything here was overcast and socked in, so no Ranier. I posted the last time we were out her that I could have gotten a really really good series of pictures of the Mountain, but the camera batteries died and there weren't any more that were charged, so I didn't get wonderful ones that time.

The next time I post I should have some FO's to post. I have several things that are almost done and I need to get the socks for ds done just because I need to get them done.

Until next time....