spring has sprung!

Really! It has! And just in time for Valentine's Day! Yippee!!!

Although a peek out the window belies this statement...



it is a fact.

(Unaccountably right now I'm reminded of a little ditty my friend Bronwen came up with when we were in high school:

Spring has sprung
Here come the turds
Where the hell
are the goddamn birds?

Man, the brain does work in mysterious ways...)

Anyway, here is my evidence that spring is here:

!!!! And not before time.

I picked this up at Romni Wools yesterday.

But it's not even PayDay yet, you say? What was I doing at Romni? Weeeeeell...

I had been doing some work at home in the early morning and was leaving late for the office. Late enough, in fact, to catch the 10 a.m. opening time at Romni on the way in. Where I had to go, by the way, because I needed some fine-gauge crochet hooks with which to string beads.

Good Kristina then made an (increasingly rare) appearance and reminded me that Amy had proffered a very good suggestion involving fishing line as a solution to this issue earlier this week.

Hardware store... yarn shop? Hardware store... yarn shop? What a choice!

But Romni is right near my streetcar stop closest to work (if by "closest" one means "5 blocks further west than the stop which is really closest, but a more scenic route by far"), so the choice became clear. Only for crochet hooks, of course.

You might well ask. It's that time honoured game in which my pocketbook (and any hope of ever buying property in this town) are always the losers.

As soon as I stepped into the shop, this leapt into my hot little (well, cold by that point - it was well below zero yesterday and I had been knitting in the street) hands:

Handmaiden Mini Maiden! Look at the pretty colours! The colourway is called "Blackberry" (I assume after the real thing, not after the obnoxious electronic rudeness-sanctioning device). How could I resist?!

Besides, it will be perfect for the Swallowtail shawl that I plan to start tomorrow at the weekend one of these days.

(Good Kristina: But I thought you already had this stuff for the Swallowtail?!?


Evil Kristina: Ah, shuddup.

I am always astounded by the efficacy of rudeness, even against myself. Maybe those Blackberry-wielding urban warriors have a point?! Hmm. Not one I wish ever to understand, mind you.)

I also scored the perfect buttons for my Bespoke:


...and some other very flashy vintage buttons besides.
I then left the shop, glowing with the satisfaction of shiny new purchases. A block and a half later, I realised that I had forgotten to look for these!

SIGH. I found 1.0 mm and .75 mm hooks (and whoever actually crochets with these and reads this blog, please contact me and I will send you a medal. Really. 3.00mm stretches the limits of my patience, which is admittedly not a hard thing to do).

All in all it was a productive day. I accomplished all this in my commute to and from the office:

Sleeve No. 1 of my Bespoke. (Did I mention before that I have found the cure for the dreaded SSS?! Take your sleeves with you wherever you have to wait in line/sit on a train, bus or streetcar, etc.)

I also reviewed some pressing legal research materials:

...and did a little light reading over the lunch hour:

(Dang. Did I mix up those photos again?! Bad habit).

Now it's off to work - but spring has sprung!! Does this mean all the snow has melted, d'ya think?

Er...nope.

Oh well.