Alice, The Herdwick Sheep Cushion

Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness. ― Mary Oliver

The forecast said we'd get a bunch of snow. I didn't want to believe it, but there was no denying it when we woke up yesterday morning:

I had ordered a cake from the bakery for Valentine's Day that I was supposed to pick up yesterday, but the bakery emailed me on Friday and said that, due to the pending forecast, I could pick it up a day early if I wanted. I was quite happy to because 1) cake and 2) early cake is better than no cake. It was so pretty and so delicious that I would have quite happily skied down to get it if I had to:

Still, the snow is pretty, and I am even more ok with it since it came on a weekend and it's a holiday tomorrow and I don't have to deal with it at work until Tuesday. Until then, I'm quite content to trudge around in it with the doggy and to admire how it looks on my favourite tree at the front of the house:

Meanwhile, I've been enjoying working with some bulky yarn and big needles this week. This is the result. Meet Alice:

Based on her colouring, I'd say she's a Herdwick, but I don't know for sure:

I made this from a delightful design from Purl Soho in an attempt to use some bulky weight yarn that's been in the stash for a while. I was a little dubious about working all those bobbles with knitting needles since I usually find them super tedious, but I think the bulky weight and the large needles made them much more manageable. I wasn't sure I'd have enough yarn so I skipped out one of the repeats of the even section, but I don't think she looks any worse for it. I found it weird that the pattern didn't say to put stuffing in the head, which gives it kind of a 2-d look if you look at her from the front:

I also didn't make the legs since I didn't feel like doing anything too fiddly.  Besides: she looked pretty comfy lounging on the couch with Mr. Seymour:

I still have two more balls of the same yarn in berry pink. Perhaps sometime I will give her a punk wild friend. We'll see...

Meanwhile, the snow continued to come down today, so it was a good day to sit down and wind some yarn:

This is some indigo-dyed cotton from Scheepjes called a line called Skies. They are all dyed in shades named after clouds. This is the fingering weight version. I have two colourways in my stash: Stratus and Altostratus. I plan to hold a strand of each together to knit myself a top. I'm hoping to make the Midsummer Aran Knitted Sweater by Ginerva Martin. Given the weather this weekend, knitting something called "Midsummer" is quite daring, but maybe it'll speed us to more temperate weather conditions:

It's been a while since I followed a sweater pattern and this one looks like a doozy, but we'll see how it goes. It took me an hour to knit the first round after the cast on. What is it about that first row that sucks so much? It's like trudging through deep snow on a cold morning. Good thing I've had some practice:

I'm very glad to know I have another day off tomorrow, so I've got time to make some headway on this project this week. As much as I love a sunny day, there's nothing like a foot of snow on the ground to get your knitting projects going.

Have a safe, warm week!