Maybe Spring is on the way?

It's been such a long winter!  So I get excited over tiny things - like crocus buds!

They're tiny, but they're there!  There are even a couple that are "almost" blooming!

I did some spinning while on Ocracoke ...

... and I'm happy with the results! You might remember the hand dyed Falkland wool that I purchased from Serendipity Fibers at Christmas time.

I took my Journey Wheel with me to Ocracoke and had a lovely time spinning and plying half of the fiber (4 out of 8 ounces).

Now I have to spin the final 4 (sounds like basketball, yes?) and then I can decide what I want to do with it. I like the way the oyster shell mimics the colors in the picture above.

Annie Maloney & Friends Cables & Lake KAL

We started this on the Ravelry group, Annie Maloney & Friends, earlier this month. Annie gave us permission to publish one of her patterns, and we decided to do a KAL with everyone picking their own project. I decided to do socks, but, as usual, I couldn't resist adding my own twist.

The yarn is Knit Picks machine wash merino "Bare", and the socks are knit on size 4 needles.

This is the sock, side view.

The front, showing the instep.

And the back with the heel flap. There's a two stitch side cable that continues all the way to the toe.

I'm really enjoying doing socks that have unusual heel flaps. I realize that I can only wear them with sandals, but that's half the fun of doing them. Socks can be so boring, so I think that anything you can do to make them fun is a plus!

Ocracoke was wonderful!

We had a family reunion - our kids and their kids. This was the first time we had all been together since 1999, and one person was not born then!

The weather was cool and windy most of the week, but that didn't get in our way. The pictures will tell the story.

The Ocracoke lighthouse greets you as you come in on the ferry.

From the time our kids were little we stayed at the Harborside Motel, always known in the family as the "blue motel". So it seemed appropriate to have a picture of our kids with their kids in front of the office.

The waves were awesome all week, but by the end they were calming down. I loved the way the wind blew the tops off of the rollers.

Spectacular!

He/she was live, just washed up by the surf.

Flowers, which we won't see for months yet!

So pretty!

An eider drying his wings in the canal behind our rental home.

Sunset on our last evening there. That's the Ocracoke lighthouse, again.

And it's always disheartening to go from flowers to snow in one day! But a good time was had by all.

Ocracoke socks are finished, just in time!

Since we leave tomorrow on our vacation, I didn't have any time left over! But I did it.

These socks are short socks. One picture shows them on my foot, but I couldn't figure out how to take a picture of the heel. So, there are two pictures that show the flat socks.

Snake mittens?

When this was in the paper yesterday, I couldn't resist the thought, "ah ha, next project! Snake mittens!!!"