alban eiler: spring

Oops! I fell off my effort to post daily on the blog. The week got too busy and I was working on report cards, so every time I sat down at the computer, I felt like I had to enter grades...
It is finally Spring, according to the pagan/cosmological liturgical calendar. It's even reasonably warm, though today the sun has faded off into some greyness that is somewhat less than cheering. I am heading out tonight to a spring celebration in Gwinnett County with some druid practitioners I know, whose rituals I've started attending. They are pleasing, a small group, simple rites, earth and sky and sea centric. I am not an official member of their group, but a welcomed guest.

My knitters had their swap last week. I gave my swappee Gudrun Johnson's Crofter's Cowl, in green cashmerino aran. What a sweet pattern to knit. Even the grafting, 80 stitches in the round, was not difficult, and I think I may have finally mastered Kitchener stitch by memory. 80 stitches will do that...I also added in some homemade soap, stitch markers, and some rosemary shortbread that was to die for. Really. My own swapper gave me a skein of beautiful olive malabrigo worsted, destined to become part of a cabled tea cozy, I think. She knit me the long-queued, deeply-coveted Selbu Modern hat, in some grey and charcoal alpaca/bamboo yumminess, and gave me the cutest green frog bowl, which is now holding hexipuffs, but I'm thinking next winter to use it to house some hyacinth bulbs for forcing.  No pics because I am lazy, and I left the hat at work yesterday.

In my own knitting, I'm working hard to finish a gift for my upcoming Outlander Swap, and then it's back to the WIP effort. I'm feeling the itch to cast on a whole bunch o' things, but I'd like to get a few more things off the needles before that happens. Namely a pair or two of socks. I love wearing handknit socks, but damn, I hate knitting them... No. That's not strictly true. I like knitting them, I just find them slow and tedious. I get tired of the sock before the pair gets finished. I think I am going to take ONLY SOCKS to VA over my spring break so I can make some headway on the 3 pairs I have on the needles. If I finished even one pair, I would feel like I was making some forward movement in the effort.

I've been out of coffee this week. I'm trying hard to eat up the food in the house, so I haven't been to the store, which means there's been tea every morning. Today is no different. Now I have perfectly decent tea - Peet's Irish breakfast, with milk and a tiny touch of sugar, so it isn't really a hardship, and it is lovely with toast or a piece of the aforementioned rosemary shortbread. Yesterday I made a chai soy latte, and I'm thinking this period of no coffee might just be transformational. I have no intention of giving it up for good, but it's nice to go off it every now and then. It helps keep the tea stash trimmed to a reasonable size.

Other things going on this weekend: gym, serious housecleaning efforts to accomodate next week's houseguests, spinning guild (yayayayay!) and the associated Decatur errands of Rainbow Grocery(a tiny little health food store), preliminary shoe shopping, and barbecue eating.