Happy Easter!

What a nice day we had – if you don’t count the fact that it was cold and snowy enough to be Christmas instead of Easter!

Carrie was thrilled to find a half-eaten carrot next to her Easter basket when she came downstairs for breakfast. I didn’t leave it there, so the Easter bunny must have raided the fridge while we were sleeping. But he left behind a Little People Easter train for Carrie, along with a couple of books and a small stuffed bunny.

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We went to church, where I very nervously played piano and sang – I can’t believe I used to do this every week (sometimes twice!) and it was so normal, and now I get nervous and shaky and choke up when it’s time to sing the descants – and Carrie did a fabulous job of being quiet and attentive and good sitting out in the congregation instead of the “cry room”.

We talked Carrie into taking an early nap, and then headed to my Grandma’s for dinner. Carrie was hungry and as we were setting the table she kept saying “We eat now? Time to eat?” and I’d tell her we were almost ready. Finally she got fed up with waiting and said “OK, we eat now. We eat cake!” But she was happy enough with the ham instead – actually I think she ate more ham than I did – and wasn’t too disappointed that dessert was fruit and the cookies we baked yesterday instead of cake.

The only thing we didn’t do was any sort of egg hunt, but it was too cold outside really. There’s always next year!

Easter Preparations

Today Carrie colored eggs for the first time. I didn’t even bother for the last couple of years, but I thought she might enjoy it. Well, that’s an understatement! She’d drop the eggs into the dye (we had a couple of casualties with her method) and say “Bye, bye egg! See you later!”

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a “normal” egg coloring kit. You know, the Paas tablets that you dissolve with hot water and vinegar? No, there were several varieties of another brand: glitter eggs, tie-dye eggs, painted eggs… So I bought the kit with the paints. Carrie was delighted. Me? Not so much. Check out the kid’s hands:

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Plus, the dye colors just didn’t look the way they should. The purple was magenta and the green looked exactly like the blue. I wound up putting the “purple” eggs into the blue and the “green” eggs into the yellow to make them actually look right. Yes, I’m picky about my colored eggs. Next year I’m buying a Paas kit if I have to go to ten different stores to find one!
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Besides the eggs, we also made some cut out cookies of bunnies, chicks (or ducks), eggs and flowers. Carrie still only dabs a tiny bit of frosting on her cookies, but now she likes to pile up as many sprinkles as she can on that wee little dollop of frosting.

Now I just have to try to make her very colorful hands a bit less colorful before church tomorrow…

Look! Knitting!!

(I’m hoping that the exclamation points and the word ‘knitting’ will divert everyone’s attention from the lack of posting for the past several days…)

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So, the finished Pomatomus socks. These were actually finished…um…a week and a half ago…but between the toddler, the musicals, the never-ending battle I wage against laundry, dishes, dog fur and clutter, and just a general lack of free time, I haven’t had a chance to post about them. Having said that, I really liked this pattern. It was interesting and complex, but I found it to be a fairly quick knit. I even managed to work on them during bits and snatches of rehearsals where I knew I wouldn’t be playing for a while. They also fit really nicely, no sagging or bunching. I think if I did this pattern again I’d start the chart halfway through the first repeat, because the leg is just a bit longer than I like. But really, overall, a wonderful pattern to knit!
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And, since it’s becoming quite a habit to have a pair of socks on the needles at any given time, here are my new “girly” socks. They fit in fairly well with the Project Spectrum colors for April and May – well, at least there’s a whole lot of pink in them!
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In other Project Spectrum news, here’s a yellow bunny to go with the hat I made for a friend’s new granddaughter. (I cheated and started it last month, but who cares?) It doesn’t have a face yet, because the black yarn I need is trapped in my craft room behind half of our bedroom furniture. (Don’t ask.)

The final Spectrum color for this round is green. I have a much bigger project in mind for the green. It involves paint…