Winter is much more attractive when it is not all over the roads

Plus, knit hearts are great for sending love

Yes, even I admit it, once the roads are clear, the white stuff can be very nice to look at. All right, all right, whatever. I took some pictures on the way in to work this morning (and didn't go off the road once, thanks for asking).

Where I was, although it snowed most of the day yesterday, the majority of the accumulation was over when I cleared off my car to go to work. The temps never got warm or sunny yesterday, so what fell didn't melt (on the roads, which is bad, or off the trees, which is pretty).

By this afternoon, the sun was out a bit, and the melting-off-the-trees had started. But this morning sure was pretty:







This shot is my favorite, though. If you look closely (click to make big), you'll see that the layer of froze over the top of the sign melted just enough to slide down slightly, but not enough to slide all the way off. Cool!


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Then, hearts. Last week, when my parents were having a rough time with Dad's health and all, I wanted to Do Something, which is hard from MA to FL. One of the things that crossed my mind was to knit a little something, so they'd have a little soft thing to hang on to, a tangible expression of love, if you will. And of course, it wasn't hard to find a pattern online (which I mostly kind of followed). The result?


The smaller one was made with a bit of yarn from some leftovers my grandmother passed along to me at Christmas. It's Norwegian, meaning it could have been her mother's, and is called Broder Twist (from, apparently, Sandnes Kamgarn Spinneri).


I picked it just because it was red, but it was fine to work with, and I'm glad I did it first because I could see what I was doing with it, unlike number two:

This is the Grazie from Schoeller/Stahl, which I had left from making my mother a pillow for last Christmas. It's delightfully soft and fuzzy but not so much with the stitch definition, so it was good to have an idea how to do what I was doing. I was pleased with how they turned out, and sent them off to their new home, where they arrived safely. At least for one evening, I felt like I was there with them.