Bob and Rainy's Heavenly Day

I love spring.  It is definitely my favorite season.  I love watching the way the buds on the trees are bigger at lunch than they were in the morning and are even larger when leaving work that night.  I love watching the grass turn green before your eyes.

What I don't like about spring in Wisconsin is days like last Saturday, where large globs of slush fall from the sky, mixed with cold stinging rain and leave an inch of semi-transparent grey goo on the ground.  

But this time we managed to take a yucky day, a computer, a guitar, and a ball of Malabrigo and turn it into the perfect day.

It all started when I went rummaging through the worsted stash and stumbled upon this little gem:

a full skein of Malabrigo Worsted weight 100% merino joy in the Whales Road colorway that I had bought to make my nephew a hat and never used.

Now I am not a big fan of variagated yarns.  To me, they can be too arbitrary and distracting -- it's white!  no, it's Red!  no, it's green!  now it's pink!  I really prefer tonal colors, where the yarn moves subtly from lighter to darker shades of the same basic color, cohesive without being boring.

For example, a variagated "muddled mess":

versus a harmonious tonal:

And yes, I know you can find as many knitters who prefer the variagated picture as you can who agree with me and prefer the tonal, it is totally just my subjective preference, but this is my blog so we are talking about what I like :p

Anyway, the Whales Road is just a little stretch of my comfort zone, tonal cool blues with a splash of tonal purples and rich mallards to make it more exciting.  It was the perfect antidote to falling slush.  But what to turn it into?

A quick search on Ravelry found the perfect thing, a shawlette (little shawl) designed to use a single skein of worsted weight yarn; aptly named 198 yds of Heaven (Rav pattern link).  There is nothing like lace on US 9/5.5mm needles
to give a sense of instant gratification.

So, Bob fired up his computer (mine was still in the shop <sigh>), loaded Heroes of Might and Magic V, and  made a new map, while I cast on my shawlette.  Heroes is a fabulous game and our game of choice for two reasons:  (1) it is turn based, which means I can knit while he plays his turn and he can play guitar while I do mine, or we can both walk away and do dishes or cook dinner without any negative results; the game sits and waits for OUR convenience, and (2) we can create custom maps that allow us to play as ALLIES.  I like my husband and like being married to him too much to play against him.  We are both too competitive to have THAT end well, trust me on this.  Game developers who lament their inability to woe women gamers should pay attention to this (but won't, which is why Heroes is unique).

And we passed a heavenly day of domestic and knitterly tranquility.

Our Happy Family:  happy Bob engrossed in his game with happy Noel taking a bath while happy Psyche looks on.  Happy Daisy is out of sight on her bed under the computer and happy Rose is off stage to the right waiting for me to put down the camera, pick up the knitting from my chair and pet her some more.

And by Tuesday, I had this:

Almost instant gratification.