They're Entrelacy

I finished my entrelac socks. This is the first time I have done entrelac (other that a couple of practice triangles at a guild meeting) and I'm happy with how they turned out. If you're going to try this you just need to keep in mind that you have to decrease your stitches by about 1/3, unless you're trying to create slouch socks. They also use up a little more yarn than plain stockinette. I was getting a little nervous towards the end of the second sock. It didn't look like I was going to have the same amount of ribbing, but it worked out and I have 6 feet of yarn left. Husband even commented on them, which never happens. He said they look warm, like a campfire.


This morning I'm taking Dad over to visit a conifer specialist. Dad's bringing him some pictures of this witches broom. Apparently every now and then a tree (this is a black spruce) grows a ... a branch tumor I guess you could call it. This is a particularly fine example of a broom, or so I'm told. Dad's hoping to take cuttings and have it propagated.

Later That Night...
We had a lovely trip top Woodstock to see Rich Eyre at Rich's Foxwillow Pines Nursery. We thought we'd go up (~1 hour drive,) chat for a little while, then start home and maybe eat lunch somewhere on the way if it was late enough. Well, we got there at 10 and left at 2. Rich can talk. We talked and talked, and then we walked around as much of the grounds as we could with a foot of snow everywhere. I was wearing the new socks, but didn't wear the correct shoes, so my toes did get a bit frosted. Then he drove us around to look at his mother's house and his home, which is where his research plants are, along with acres of other cool stuff. It was quite a day. We got home just in time for me to go get daughter off the bus.

And Now For Something Completely Different

I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. If you look at a map, it's that part on top that doesn't look like a mitten. On some maps it looks more like a piece of Wisconsin than Michigan, but we belong to Michigan. We usually shorten Upper Peninsula to U.P, then pronounce it semi-phonetically as Yoopers. A Yooper is a hearty breed of person who (in most cases) loves the outdoors, doesn't make a lot of money, and is likely to be of Finnish ancestry. You can hear many jokes about Aino and Toivo getting into trouble because of their lack of intellectual prowess. The photo below depicts two true Yoopers who gave Dad a helping hand with directions while they were trying to locate the Witches Broom.

I should point out that these particular Yoopers are actually Polish, rather than Finns, and their names are Uncle Tom and Cousin Dave, but otherwise these are fine examples of Yooperhood. (And to begin to imagine their accents, please rent the movie Fargo.)