Not been riding much - in fact, haven't sat on a horse since Jan 28.

Here's our riding ring - I dragged it yesterday to break up the snow and ice - just hopin' that it will dry out sooner if I keep grooming it. But not quite ready to be ridden on! :(

And a chilly farm view. Beautiful, but COLD!

On the knitting front, making good progress on my projects.

Red Gansey - Completed first pattern row and about 2" into the next one. Another inch or so and I will start the underarm gussets.
Baltic Sea Stole. Added about 2" - Please note the yarn weight on this. Just for comparison, the pale blue life line is fingering weight koigu. ACK!
Hank's Socks. Made good progress. Stopped at my LYS (Eleganza in Frederick) to get some help figuring out the directions on the heel turn and gusset. She cleared me up! Decided to try to complete them doing the two socks together on two needles, but it was too hard to turn the heel that way. So one heel turned, the other ready to go. Then the gusset and whoosh up the calf - maybe done by next weekend. (BTW, Eleganza is carrying Bearfoot now -yummm)

Peg's Vest - Haven't touched it but have been thinking about how I want to do it and I think I have a plan. Once Hank's socks are done, I will get back to the vest.

Mid Feb update

How time flies when you are having fun!

After I do this will run out and chop away at some of the frozen snow coating the place. No pics at present of our frozen acres! Needless to say, not much happening on the riding front. Shad's leg is still healing, but is moving along nicely.

On the knitting front, I guess the cold weather is good for something!

Red sweater - almost completed first pattern row. Looking VERY spiff!

Hank's socks - if you look at the pic, you will realize that we have regressed. Wound up frogging the whole thing & redoing the toes with Japanese short rows. Highly recommended, much neater and tighter than wrapped short rows. I also decided to just use stockinette for the socks. He doesn't care about the fancy stitches and I am trying to teach myself how to do toe-up gussets, so the simpler the better this time around. I actually knitted quite a bit more after this pic. Am up to the gusset start on one sock and have about an inch or so of the blue on the second sock.

Baltic Sea stole - HURRAY! Have finally tinked back to the error. You may be able to see the lifeline sitting there. I just hope I calculated correctly as to where I was in the pattern because of course, I didn't count back on the rows I was tinking - DOH! So now I can start moving forward on this one again. If I EVER EVER EVER suggest doing anything in lace weight silk in future, please just put me out of my misery before I start.

Blue/variegated scarf is done, but I am very disappointed in it. Knitted it with Lisa Souza's sock yarn. The yarn is lovely, but unfortunately, the colors from one end of the skein to the other are quite variable and I don't think it does anything for this scarf. Might frog it and redo as a moebius - the color variation would work more as a feature there and less as a bug. Tried to get a pic of it, but the photo doesn't show how huge the change is. That's the good and the bad side of hand-dyed yarns - amazing variation - sometimes it works for you, sometimes not.

Peg's vest is on the back burner for a bit. Need to frog that too and rethink the design. Once I get going though, I think it will go pretty fast.

Now off to shovel (or pickaxe!)

Busy Bee!

Haven't been riding much. Hank was away for the week and it's fierce trying to run the place by oneself, especially in the winter!

But I have been knitting! and unknitting :(

Baltic Sea Stole - still haven't gotten all the way back to the mistake. This is so slow and painstaking. Once we start going forward again on this, definitely will be dropping a lifeline on this one for the next little while.

Hub's socks. Started them in all blue, but miscalculated the gauge and they were HUGE! So I frogged them and restarted with nifty hidden colored toes. I used short row toes to start, but have been trying to find gusseted heels because I think they will be a bit sturdier for him - just found this site on knittyboard - http://mysite.verizon.net/vze8mnnp/toesheels.html So I think that will help enormously!

My red gansey is coming along. Partly through the first pattern section. I am quite pleased so far. Almost done with the first ball - panicked at first when I reached the end of the ball because I only got 5 skeins, then remembered it's circular and that's the front and back done to this point (DOH!)

And started a little quick scarf out of some of the Lisa Souza. It's a simple twin rib pattern, but really shows the yarn off IMO.

I also helped a pal transfer her old computer to her new computer and went to a camera class this weekend. Gosh, it's no wonder that I am tired when I go back to work on Monday! LOL