Easter Weekend

Happy, happy Easter weekend.  We've been blessed by beautiful spring weather...way better than we usually get for Easter, especially when it's early in the year.  So today we spent outdoors:  gardening, riding bikes, visiting neighbors, decorating our eggs.  So much fun.  I worked in my perennial bed, trying to get it under control.  I'm working in sections, and it's looking so much better.  Then I cleaned my garden shed.  Perfect for working now!

Oh happy weekend!  I love it when our little family gets to be outside so much!  Even though we were a little low energy after a week with some sickness and rough nights, we  still had such a nice day.  I'm looking forward to tomorrow!

My native honeysuckle, budding!

Happy Bulbs!

We did a little excavating in the garden!

Rhubarb!  Transplanted!

Beautiful cutwork from my grandmother.

Eggs!

Knit eggs!

Sun and Snow

It's the first week of spring and it has been f-f-freezing!  Except when it's super sunny.  Which is usually followed five minutes later by sleet.  We've managed to get outside, usually running back in for extra hats and mittens at periodic intervals.  The cold weather has kept me knitting, as my hat obsession continues.

The neighborhood Great Horned Owl has been roosting in our tree and leaving owl pellets--very exciting!  As soon as I get them sterilized, we will have a dissection party.  Our bulbs are coming up, and today my son and I planted out the lettuce.  He also went around the yard taking pictures, and took some of these!  He's learning so many things right now, it's pretty amazing.  Baseball, for instance.  I'm sure the ball sport thing he did not inherit from either one of us!

Despite the cold, we're so excited that it's spring.  Easter is almost here, and today we got the decorations up!  I love love love spring, and get so giddy this time of year!

Owl Pellet

The artsy fence photo taken by my son.

The fact that I finished this is pretty amazing in and of itself.

Hats and Dresses

Lately I have been a bit distracted by hats and dresses.  It's a little out of character for me, a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl, but it's true.  I have been wearing more skirts over the past couple of years because it solved the age old problem of "what do I have to wear that is dressy enough for work but cool enough for the summer?"  Then even more recently, I rediscovered the dress.  It solves the almost-as-ancient-a-problem of "what do I have to wear with that?"  The awesome thing is that skirts and dresses are fairly easy to sew.  In theory, that is.  In practice, it's hard to find the time to get out the sewing machine and have at it.  Which explains why my son has three pairs of pants that are waiting to be patched, and why I have two skirts in my sewing closet that I cut out this winter but haven't made up.  Not to mention the dress I made myself six years ago that is still not hemmed.  

This issue underscores, of course, why Pinterest is so popular.  Because you can just pin the ideas for dresses that you want to sew, and it makes you feel as though you are making progress, when in fact you are doing nothing of the sort.   I have some seriously cute skirts and dresses pinned,  and I like to look at them and pretend I am going to get to them someday.  Which I might do, eventually, after I hem that dress and patch my son's pants and sew up the two skirts.  Right.

That brings me to hats.  Making hats is pretty quick, and this winter I'm already knitting my second hat.  The first one was a lovely cloche (shown below) which I made entirely on the drive to Bend, OR and back, and the second one is a beret.  I've never had a beret before but I love the yarn.  It's Palouse Yarn Company Yum and believe me, Yum is the perfect name for it!  It's wonderful to knit in, and by the end of the week I expect I'll have a new hat, which will promptly be put up until next fall since it's already warming up quite a bit.

So that's why I splurged recently and bought hats for spring.  They are from the milliner's shop in Portland, Bonnet.  I am in love with their hats.  My friends and I discovered them by accident while we were searching for a yarn shop near our hotel in Portlandia.  And Moscow is weird enough to get away with hats, right???

My Easter bonnet! [source:  Bonnet Boutique]

My new winter go-to hat! [source: Bonnet Boutique]

A hat I wish I had!

My summer hat! [source:  Bonnet Boutique]

Drooling over hats!!

 I can't figure out why it's sideways...

 

Made in New England

I recently returned from a work-related trip to the New Hampshire.  While I was there, I was able to make a pilgrimage, of sorts, to Independent Fabrication (IF), the bike makers who made my husband's mid-life crisis bike.  IF is located in Newmarket, NH, which was only about five miles from Durham, where I had my meetings.  I popped into the retail store unannounced, and received well more than the nickle tour!  The gentleman who greeted me showed me the bikes crafted for the North American Handmade Bike Show,  including this sweet cruiser with real gold for the detailing.  I picked up a couple t-shirts for me and hubby, and spent a while chatting about bikes and cross and other things that I don't know all that much about but hope to learn more.

The very cool part, on top of the generosity of the bike shop employee who took so much time out of his day to chat and show me cool stuff, was the fact that the shop and factory are in the old Newmarket mill building.  I love it when old buildings are renovated and re-purposed!  The mill building, granite of course, is located on Main Street along the river, and is now home to high-end shops and apartments.  Newmarket was a pretty little town, with lots of good places to eat and explore.  While I've never been particularly inclined to live in New England, I admit I love the small towns and the architectural charm.  And of course it's nice to drive around in a place where the ocean is in the East and the mountains are in the West.  Fourteen years in the PNW and the dang Rocky Mountains screw me up repeatedly, as in my brain I always think that if you are heading in their direction, you must be going West.  I have ended up going the wrong way on the I-90 multiple times here, but never in the East!

Looking back in the direction of the IF factory, from the rear.

Main Street, Newmarket, NH