Yarn Along 2016.11: The Green One

Can you believe I forgot today was Yarn Along day?  I can't.  Except that I did.  For some reason I worked the entire morning thinking today was Tuesday. It wasn't until I got home from work and sat down for some lunch, that I realized I had skipped an important part of my Wednesday--I hadn't photographed my knitting projects!  I wasn't prepared with a yarn along post!

Well, that just won't do!  So I'm making this a 'working lunch' and writing this post while I eat.  Joining with Ginny now that I remembered its Wednesday.

I didn't think that I had spent an excessive amount of time knitting in the past week, but my two projects have grown considerably.

As you can see, the foot on DS1's ginormous Vanilla Latte sock is almost half done.  It measures about 5.5" currently and needs to be about 12" in all.  I really do think using a striping yarn is the way to stay interested in knitting such a long sock.  I am amazed at how far along it is all ready.  Especially because most of my knitting time in the past seven days has been spent on my hat.

I've worked my way through the braid, the letter chart, the cones chart and the dressage horse chart on my A-X Dressage Horse Hat and am now in the decrease portion.  Not long now and I'll be done.  Just in time for some chilly weather to return this weekend.  So maybe I can wear my new hat without looking silly.  (Last weekend the weather was in the upper 60's, this weekend it is only supposed to be in the lower 40's).

In prepping these pictures, I realized that both my projects contain quite a bit of green.  And that tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day. I guess it's kind of fitting for this Yarn Along post to be mostly green then.  Things are looking pretty green outside at this little place here right now.  The winter wheat in the field is very green, and even the yard is beginning to show verdant patches where the grass is starting to come out of dormancy.

The song birds are arriving in larger numbers now, and the days are filled with music.  The nights are pretty lively too, with the frog chorus going out in the marsh.  No pictures of the frogs (I'm just not that quick--or lucky, take your pick--with the camera), but I did manage to capture a song sparrow in full trill on a maple branch behind the house.

I've gotten a new book (well, new to me, published in 2003) from the library.  It's Not Just About the Ribbons by Jane Savoie.  My horse-related reading has really picked up in the past month or so.  Now that all the kids are grown and gone from home I am transitioning back to focusing a lot on my riding.  Which means going back and reading a lot of the stuff (and people) I was interested in over two decades ago back in my life before motherhood.  Or, at least, before I was a wife and a mom of many with a household to run and six peoples' schedules to keep straight. (Have I mentioned I am really loving this Empty Nest thing?)