Instead of Irritating the Dog

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? ―-Henry David Thoreau

I could be wrong, but I think Mr. Seymour might be getting a bit tired of me being at home all the time. He can't seem to get a decent nap in without me hassling him for a cuddle and some attention. I guess I am SO needy. Sorry, little dude. We've got a-ways yet to go:

We've been very lucky to have some beautiful weather here on Vancouver Island. We got a good rain the other day which meant everything suddenly burst into bloom:

I adore these magnolia trees. They are so pretty, even if the petals do make a mess of things:

Our yard is always slower to begin blooming since we have so much shade around the house. These azaleas seem to be the ones to start before anything else. I love the way the bud starts out like little folded pieces of fabric before they open up to show the pretty pink inside:

I haven't just been irritating my dog all the time. I decided to try out an orange chiffon cake recipe, which I secretly made to keep the hubby from eating all my breakfast muffins. The problem is this has backfired as I believe I have eaten more pieces than he has:

But I have also been trying to fill the fridge with more healthy options to pull out for lunch, like this vegetable chili thing that I made the other day. It's nice and hearty and filling and full of fibre:

Speaking of fibre, I managed to finish off this improvised project the other day. It's made from skeins of Drops Alpaca and Drops Alpaca Silk. I wasn't entirely sure what it was going to be, but I sewed up the ends and added a bit of a border to each side and it turned out to be quite a nice, soft, comfy cowl:

It's made up of squares which I knit in instarsia stripes in sort of a log cabin pattern:

I just swapped around the colours to make different combinations:

Near the end, I got a bit fed up of figuring out which combination to do next, so I just knitted a few plain stripes to finish it off. I rather like the effect:

And really, once you get it around your neck, it just looks like a random jumble of colours, which is a pleasant result. It's nice when knitting doesn't get over-complicated:

Meanwhile, I would up this skein of Madeline tosh laceweight last week to get it ready to play with next. It is a skein that has lived in my stash for far too long, and I'm not sure why. It is a mesmerizing shade of teal blue in a colourway called Nebula:

Rather contrary to my statement about knitting not becoming over-complicated, I am knitting it into a fairly intricate lace shawl, based on some of the work by Herbert Niebling. Those in the lace knitting world know that his style is the epitome of "over-complicated." And contrary to my normal way of working, I am knitting it on absurdly small needles (for me, that is). My go-to needle size is a size 6 (4.0 mm) but I'm knitting this on a size 2.5 (3.0 mm), which is already 0.25 mm bigger than the suggested size in the pattern. I'm probably playing with fire and will likely run out before I finish the pattern, but I looked at a few of the finished projects for this pattern and it actually looks really nice even if you don't make it to the very end. Still, the small needles mean that, even after knitting 53 rows, the result of all that labour is quite under-whelming:

And so, I am keeping busy. I planted some seedlings and cleaned out my sock drawer and have grand plans of organizing my shoes at some point. I mean, I have to do SOMETHING to keep me from irritating this guy all the time. All this disruption of his routine is clearly taking a toll:

Time to go sweep the driveway. Stay safe and sane, my friends.