No Joy In Mudville

Or in Philadelphia, either. Sigh. Our Eagles looked good, until the end of the second half of the game when the defense apparently forgot there was still time left that they were supposed to play. It was at least a close game that could have been even better. Sigh. 

Oh well, it was a good season, and it was all fun while it lasted.

I guess it's also just as well, since it rained all night here, and those celebrations could have been even messier ... 😉

Moving along, I have been trying to psych myself up to start the pair of replacement fingerless gloves for The Tim. I think the fact that the weather has failed to feel like winter has left me devoid of the inclination to get them going. I'm telling myself - and him - he'll at least definitely have them by next fall.

When I went to come into the house yesterday after my shift at the yarn store, I noticed this in our on-the-street planter.

I love daffodils, and normally I'm thrilled to see the first one, but this is just way too early. We very well may not have a serious enough cold snap again to damage them, but if they start now, they likely won't last much into March. Stupid climate change.

The funny thing is that every year, we pull out a bunch of daffodils because they get green but never bloom. And then the next year, we have even more come up and bloom, like they are mocking us. Or maybe they're just saying, "Whew! Thanks for giving us some room." (I don't speak fluent daffodil, so I can't know for sure.)

This afternoon I have my annual appt with the gynecologist, which I'm not looking forward to because, really does anyone look forward to that? I really like the dr and most of the time it's no big deal, but there are plenty of other things I can think of that I would rather do. But the good news is that since that's today, it will be out of the way first thing, and the rest of the week is clear of any appts, which after the past few weeks, is a nice feeling. I feel like I've spent all of the time I haven't been at work in dr's offices, or waiting to have tests done someplace. To have a few days with absolutely nothing will be a treat.

I hope all of you have a good week coming your way as well. Hang in there.

Things That Have Made It Feel Spring-y

Hello sports fans!  OK, maybe I'm the only sports fan, but that's how my mother used to wake us up for school every morning (again, I was the only one remotely interested in sports ... my sisters were interested if a cute boy was on a team or something, but other than that, forget it).  

Anyway, how was your weekend?  It wasn't actually too spring-like here in Philadelphia - cool, rainy, and then even when the rain stopped, it was mostly overcast.  It was a good weekend to do some knitting reading, and catching up on recorded TV, as well as watching college basketball.  (I wanted Gonzaga to win last night, but at least it was a good game.) 

I kinda sorta finished the first Ty Dy yarn sock, in that the "tube" is finished, but I didn't do the afterthought heel.  I decided I'd wait until both socks were ready for that, and do it all at once.  Well, so to speak, who knows if it will be straightforward enough to do two at once, or one a day ... I thought I'd taken a picture, but I know realize it was an Instagram photo, with Jack blocking most of the picture. Shocking, I know.  Anyway the yarn is more like blocks of color, rather than stripes or even pooling.  But every once in a while, there's a random one-row/part of one-row stripe.  It's weird.  And I feel somewhat obliged to try and make them match, since the blocks of color are quite large.  We'll see - if it starts to aggravate me, I may end up with mismatched color block socks.  

But I digress, I wanted to show you some things that made it feel like spring to me.  

First up, my new box for my Box o' Socks:

Isn't it pretty?  I like it because it's not just springy, but it's not just a regular box.  I was using a gift box from Nordstrom's which was a lovely silver box, but The Tim kept putting it away with some other gift boxes I'd saved.  And I don't think many socks would have actually fit into it, in the end.  This one is nice and deep, so I can layer them if nothing else.  And if I don't do another Box o' Socks next year (or anytime soon), I can still have a lovely box for various uses.  I'm sure I'll get my money's worth - it wasn't that expensive to start!

Next, the happy daffodils in the front planter of our house!  Believe it or not, this photo was taken on Sunday, and there are even more of them today!  They started budding way too early, but even the cold temperatures and some snow didn't deter them.  I love daffodils, they always look so happy to me.  Even if nothing else blooms or "takes" this year, at least we had lots of daffodils!

Baseball season has started, and yesterday the Phillies won their first game of the season - yay!  I'm hoping they will have a good season this year.  Last year they weren't too bad, considering most of the team was new players, and there were some standouts.  I know they won't be heading to the World Series, but I really hope they improve on last year.

Not related necessarily to springtime, but related to knitting, I recently watched an episode of the podcast Treehouse Knits.  I liked it, but I especially liked the segment where she gave some information on the background of Icelandic Sheep.  Plus the photos of the sheep made me happy.  If you decide to check it out, the specific part about the sheep starts at about 17:30, and goes for approximately 7 minutes.  That alone with is worth seeing/hearing.

Just one more thing - thank you for your kind comments from the part of my last post where I talked about giving the woman a hug when I learned she was taking her dog for her last walk.  It turns out that a reporter at one of the local news stations saw her post, and contacted her for a story.  Granted, they misspelled my last name in the article, but it's still a nice write up.  If you are interested in reading it, here's the link.  As I mentioned when I shared it on Facebook, I mainly wanted people to stop and think about how much a small gesture of kindness can help someone more than you might think.  :-)

That's it for now.  I hope your week is going well so far.  And I hope you will come across some things that make you feel like springtime has truly arrived.