Nanook of Cape Cod

We are still in the throes of winter. A couple of days ago we picked up another four inches or so; today the tally looks to be about an additional eight inches, bringing the snow total amounts at my house to about six feet since the middle of January. I am thankful it did not all fall on the same day! Most of it is still around. We had a couple of warmish days and a few periods of sustained rain, so the snow has packed down a bit and we had a little melting. Twice I caught sight of the bird bath closest to the house, but that welcome sight didn't last. It gets buried again in no time. I am reassured when it appears, the inch or so I can see looks OK. This week is much warmer than last week though, only one day with the high in the teens. I have great hopes for four days in a row next week above freezing. For a few hours the weatherman taunted us with a high next Tuesday near 60, but he is no longer saying that. Average snow amounts per year in Mashpee should be about 24 inches (mainland  Massachusetts gets about twice as much). If this is the new normal winter that climate change is bringing us Shana swears she's moving to Florida.

Boston's Saint Patrick's Day parade will still go on on the 15th, but they are having to change the route because there is no way the side streets that are usually part of the parade route will have a cleared lane wide enough for the floats by then. With eight feet of snow in the city this year since the middle of January getting it out of the city is proving to be a Herculean task.

I've got a few projects on the needles now. I am knitting the Must Have Cardigan in a deep teal Cascade 220 yarn, a pair of 2x2 rib socks in a Barefoot Colors yarn, a Croeso lace and cable shawlette in my beautiful cobalt blue alpaca Christmas yarn are currently on the needles. I am also going to cast on for a lace weight shawl, probably Lucidity from Beata Jezek. Lucidity is a big shawl, but it's been years since I have tackled a big lace project and I do have a lace weight quantity in my stash that would do the job.  This is probably enough projects to last me throughout the selfish knitting portion of the year, but with all the stinky weather we have had I have spent a fair amount of time knitting this winter. I've missed my knitting groups; we've missed meeting several times because of poor weather. New Englanders are hardy types, but the roads have truly been in such poor shape that all of us are sick of driving in snow of any amount. A couple of posts back I posted a picture of my Little Wave cardigan, but I did not post a closeup of the stitch pattern. I am hereby correcting that omission. It does not show up well in the pretty terrible pictures I posted of the whole sweater, but it's well worth a second look. This is a pattern from Gudrun Johnston, and it's just full of these lovely details.