St. Patrick was not Latvian

I know that, you know that ... but still, I here present to you...

St. Patrick's Latvian Mitten. If the design looks familiar, it's because it's the Child's Mitten/Sampler from the District of Latgale. A lovely mitten to make if one wants to learn to knit fringe, braid, and work with 2 and 3 colors per row; Traditionally it's done in white, red, blue, and yellow. But I'm almost out of white, cream, and even black in my fingering stash. And I'm very uncertain about mixing and matching other colors (not that it stops me much, but still ... uncertainties lurk). I had four greens in my stash, and St. Patrick's day is around the corner ... and so St. Patrick's mittens were born. This one is growing nicely, and may get finished tonight or tomorrow. My other knitting right now is a baby blanket (hibernating until I've got all my handouts for classes prepared) and a second sock.

I bought some yarn this month, and to be fair, I really think I should be adding that sort of thing into my stash. So ... 200 grams of yarn for a baby blanket (which has already gobbled up 200 grams, and should eat up the new 200 very nicely), 350 grams of sock yarn (for 3 pairs of knee highs), and 50 g alpaca laceweight for my lovely Sanquhar gloves. God willing, I will cast on for them in April. I haven't decided which Knit Picks laceweight I"ll use for the dark color. I've got a blue alpaca which would match fibers, and several wool colors. Am I insane for thinking of making my first pair of gloves in Alpaca? We'll see. I got 000 needles the other day just in case I needed them for gauge. Folk Knitting In Estonia was at the same yarn store, so I came home with that as well.

But you know, anything thicker than fingering weight yarn is starting to sound fat. The needles in this mitten feel thick ... and they're 3.0 mm. You can get used to just about anything, they say.

I finished The Mystery of Providence by John Flavel. Reading a bit each day is working for keeping on pace. I will have to stick to it in March, since I'm adding those knitting classes and leading a Bible study. It will keep me delightfully busy, and make it easier not to sit at the computer wandering around the web when I should be doing other things. The other things will be breathing down my neck! There's preparing music for Easter services, too.

We finished reading The Scarlet Pimpernel. Anyone who has tried it and got bored by the beginning ... persevere! The latter half of the book went quickly, and we are going to see if we can find the old film version of it. The new readaloud is The Hounds of the Morrigan (thanks, Shan!) During our break week, I had the children pick new books they wanted to read, one book each for the next six weeks. Filius, not in his teens (and his older sister isn't in her teens yet either) picked Plato, Dante, Shakespeare II, Darwin, and Various Shakespearean Plays. Why, you might ask? Because he wanted to make sure he would pick hard books so I couldn't ask him questions about them, since he wouldn't have understood anything.

The intent of the whole thing was to nudge them out of re-reads , Star Wars DK books, and Calvin and Hobbes. There's lots of good books out there we've not read yet. But Plato? I'm not ready for that yet. He's been interested in Plato ever since he learned Plato talks about Atlantis (he read that in a book somewhere. The boy reads everything in a book somewhere. And that somewhere covers a wide variety of locations. We usually can find them before they're due, though.)

Gulliver's Travel is the book of the week for him, though. Much easier than, say, Darwin. Or Plato.

And, for all of you down south of me who are hogging the snow ... send it north, please. Not too far north ... they've been hogging the snow too. But if due east of here 5 hours has had 84" this year, and we've had around 12" ... someone is Not Sharing.